As the Light Dims My attention is drawn to that small blonde boy, young enough that his parents still dress him and comb his hair every morning before watching him climb up those bus stairs bigger than him. He sits in the grass, pulling individual blades from the field below him. Those lights on both sides of the garage door are turned on, inviting visitors even after the sun eventually sets on that gray house with a large brown door. As he sits, his grandmother stands over him explaining her plan: “First you rake the soil, then use the new blue shovel I gave you to bury this flower in the hole” she explained, forcing a small flower with little purple buds onto the boy. “Someday you’ll thank me.” When it became obvious he was not interested, she laughed, picked him up off of the ground in her arms, and pulled him close to the purple sweater she knitted herself. She grabbed his hand with hers and together they did everything she had just described to him.
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That was the day I learned to appreciate the nature that encompasses me. It started by noticing those purple bellflowers we planted as I looked over my shoulder from my bike, riding off to the neighbor’s house to play basketball. Soon, it became every new flower and plant that I was exposed to including that lively green tree with yellow leaves that sits in the front of my house, or the flowering cherry tree that we watch carefully in the corner of our backyard every time the sound floods over those tall sea walls.
powerfully than any plant since those purple bellflowers is American pokeweed. As I walked along the side of the salt marsh, its vibrant purple berries called out to me. In the sea of green, this purple menace was hiding in the back, isolated like it was aware and ashamed of the abilities it possessed. The stalk, placed all the way at the back, stretched towards me begging for my acknowledgment, like a man searching for a lover yet aware of his inability to love back. That glowing purple light of those berries calling attention to anyone who looks at it while it hides from those same possible visitors reminds me of my own house, the one that boy planted those purple bellflowers at so long ago. The house is hidden at the very end of that long one-way street with trees encompassing the road and covering the sky above, with those two lights on the side of the garage doors acting as a tunnel for any guests that made it that close to the large wooden door. Soon, the vibrant purple glow of the American pokeweed berries will dim itself into a blacker color with the darkness of winter, and leave me awaiting its return in the spring. As for my house, these lights on the two sides of my garage door will also dim for the coming season, but next summer they will not return to invite guests up that tunnel and into the tall wooden door. Instead, my house will be cleaned out, my purple bellflowers will sag into the driveway without the right care, and the light of my house will be permanently dim.
The plant that speaks to me more
-Conor Minson
