Like a Wildflower

There is something about flowers that pulls at me; they run so deep inside me they can be found in my veins. I search out perfumes that smell of gardenia and jasmine. A wisteria vine will whisk me back years and I am gardening with my mother. Peaceful as they grow I cannot resist the urge to pick them and adorn my hair. As I live I shall plant flowers in my wake and use the ones before me to decorate my life.

Flowers in a garden bring me serenity. There is order in their numbers and rows, even in the gardens that grow will with time. The structure, though restrictive, is comforting. A little order and the guiding touch of another are all that many of us search for. Even amongst my travels I find it. They settle down for weeks and months at a time. Those who travel alone are never alone for long; they group up and continue their journeys together. But every now and again you come across a gypsy so unique her presence glows and again I am drawn in.

Quiet and happy to observe she did not invite me to sit but once I was there she engaged me and soon I was wrapped up in her and desperate to drink her in. Her soft whispery voice told her tale. She had been in New Zealand for six weeks. She came here to learn English, but also, and more importantly to try to make sense of the events of the past year. She had lost her baby and I could see that it saddened her and I felt her pain running deep, but she was not devastated by it. She has gone out into the world searching and open to whatever the universe hands her. Her mine is “open to the journeys inside it.”

Yvonne is a flower that grows where she pleases. At the mercy of the elements, without a tending hand she is thriving. Cut a wildflower down and the next year, again, it appears. She is a wildflower that finds its way back to the garden and then out again. She does not belong with the rest of us, but on the open road and camping along beaches. She is fearless and open to the world and her surroundings.

I have been living amongst my ordered peers. This trip, my first venture into the wild brings me into contact with many others like me. Like a field of wildflowers we cluster together and travel the same roads, propelled by the same winds. We are together, but free to be. I am starting to put my roots down amongst the rest, but the pull home remains strong. For now though, I am content to sit outside the wall looking in from time to time.

February 7, 2007