Spring is here! Or maybe just around the corner… we hope. No matter when Spring will actually be here, we are starting to enjoy the greening of vegetation which will soon lead to the buds and new blooms of all that blossoms! For as long as I can remember it’s the barely opened bud that is my favorite stage of a flower. I don’t know why but I do remember when I first realized that, in 4th grade in the confessional. 

I always went to Fr. Val Rodriguez, or as I called him ‘Tio Val’ (Uncle Val). He wasn’t a blood uncle but a good friend of the family and we got to call him ‘Uncle’. There is only one confessional sharing that I remember, and I didn’t agree with him (but I didn’t say so). In this confession Tio Val compared me to one of the many hibiscus buds in our backyard that were in the process of opening. And while I don’t remember his exact wording, the essence of his message was that the bud was just the beginning, the flower will be most beautiful when it fully opens. I remember thinking right away, “But I think the newly opening bud is more beautiful than the full flower.” I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut and ponder what wisdom he was trying to impart. And I have been pondering it ever since.

While I have always gotten the “point” of why the full flower is more beautiful (it’s fully itself, it’s pollen is ready, etc), I still continue to find myself taken aback over and over by the beauty, wonder and promise of that newly opening bud. Over all my years though, I just wasn’t able to find where I fit in ‘my bloom’ cycle. And now, at my age, I can’t possibly be an opening bud so beautiful and full of promise, can I? After all, there’s wilt all over my petals! 

And then it finally hit me, just this past year. I am not a single bloom, one and done. I am a flowering plant of many cycles. I am a perennial that continues to grow new buds, nurture those buds to full bloom and full purpose, and then allows those blooms to die, to be let go, and provide what is needed for the next cycle of blooms. Yes, there are times when my growth seems stagnant, and then no one is more surprised by me when an explosion of colorful new blooms breathes new life into my days, a joyful reminder that my cycles of growth indeed continue. Ahhh, Happy Easter!

– Adele DiNatale-Svetnicka