Fiction Daily

Almost like a frisson going through the large universal human soul, everything is crunching and reordering. Waves around the world today of happenings that stem from our country’s economic crisis; scandals, fears and business scale-backs.

Human beings seem to bounce back from horrible, terrible times — our World Wars, genocides, apartheid, slavery. It takes a long time for us to realize the sin of our behaviors, and usually we won’t stop until someone threatens us with hardship, imprisonment or death. Or, we see the horror of what we’ve done and someone helps us see a way out of darkness. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln.

Slavery sent this nation into Civil War; World War II stopped fascism.

In our world this morning, there is unbridled greed, which allowed the most powerful nation on earth to become a big fat Atlantic City gameroom.

Good, honest people were suckered in by adjustable rate mortgages, with pie-in-the-sky promises that they could flip their house and make a bundle before the rate jumped. Now, they’re sitting in … or losing … homes they owe more on than they’re worth.

Meanwhile, million-dollar salaries among CEOs created an upper tier of wealth and power, and removed moral constraints.

So we wait and watch for the dust to settle after this whirlwind of change, and wait for the light after the storm.

Shutting the blinds to close out the day last night, I noticed something unexpected.

Our bougainvillea, a crawling bloomer that’s native to Florida, sits on a table by the eastern kitchen window. Each fall it comes in to join the peace lilies and philodendron, then struggles, day after day, to stay alive until May or June, when I take it outside again to flourish.

We’ve had this plant for nearly five years, I suppose. My husband chose it to hang on the new trellis we built several years ago, planning to hang it from the cross boards.

We liked it so much we brought it to the front yard, where it hangs each summer on a shepherd’s hook.

When it comes in each autumn, the first thing it does is shed its leaves to ease the stress of coming into a dry house environment. There it sits for weeks, bare, mere sticks, to all appearances dead.

Then slowly, as the weeks go by, I’ll see tiny sprouts on the stems, and soon, leaves push through.

Sometimes, there’s more, and yesterday, it happened: the bougainvillea was starting to bloom.

The sepals are pale red, not the deep crimson they’ll be in the summer, but there they are, nonetheless.

Bougainvillea blooms. Doing their best, despite the odds.

If you’ve ever spent time with plants, you can’t help becoming affected by them. Plants have such courage, resilience, and strength. They are so generous — sharing nectar with bees and birds; color and pollen with butterflies; food and joy for us human beings.

Whenever I see the color of a blossom, it’s almost jarring to see such gorgeous life expression.

I gaze and wonder, and remind myself that in this mysterious world of miracles, one thing is certain: Everything blooms.

Six this morning and the curtains opened to bring a snowy, white world into the old dusty one. Followed a wonderful sense of slowing down and soaking in the perfect stillness and appreciating brief hours of promise, of tranquility.

Snow here in eastern North Carolina … tobacco land … brings a sense of expectation, of hope. Those folks in Chicago may talk about their flinty strength, but here in eastern N.C., we welcome opportunities for hope. We come from generations of poor people, who work the dirt with sweaty arms, breathing air so thick it sticks inside your chest.

To wake and see a world covered evenly with blanched sprinkles takes us away from the dust long enough to dream of mountains, of mysteries, of peace and a comfort that’s almost within reach.

Outside the sun has climbed over the nearby trees and illuminating the yard with the day’s burdens, work to do, unpleasant obligations to complete, bills, threats and ordinary, familiar struggles.

Comes Father Sun to wash away the illusion and find us in our familiar soup, refreshed and rested after a glimpse of another, ethereal, morning.

TOMORROW: Tech Thursday