In my garden, in a shrouded corner behind a purple curtain of wisteria and a carpet of bougainvillea, there is a small green sprout. It’s a tiny thing, pale green stem and two small leaves twisting under the sun, swimming in the brown earth of a clay pot stained by the sun. In the springtime, when the rain comes, the soil in my pot will turn dark, releasing petrichor into the air. When the rain comes, my sprout swells, every veiny white root absorbing sweet water. When the rain comes, my sprout drinks and drinks, stem bulging, cells turgid; my sprout soaks in every last drop as if it can never get enough.
In my life, I think that I would like to soak up knowledge in the way that the dry earth soaks up the first warm spring showers. I want to drink every time the dark clouds come, their bellies fat with rain; I want to swell with every new experience: the start of every new year, the memorization of another scientific fact, the turning of a new page in my paperback book. I want to grow under the sunlight and the rainfall.
In the present moment, I am small, a tiny thing twisting underneath intermittent drizzles. My beliefs are not fixed, my ideas are moldable, my thoughts are pliant. My roots are thin and tentative, unfurling through the soil, testing the taste and the feel of the world around me. My grip is unsteady and wavering; there is so much I don’t know, so much to discover, so much to touch, to feel, to see. Sometimes, a tendril of root will reach a rock — or a rusty pipe or the concrete foundation of a building — and I will bend. My grip is still flexible, snaking around that rock or pipe or concrete, swaying to the rhythm of the earth around me.
And in turn, the earth is fresh and clean, offering me a whole world, sweet and cloying in scent and ripe and soft to the touch. The dirt is rich and the sky is dark; here is an opportunity. When the rain comes, I will touch and I will feel and I will see; when the rain comes, I will swell and I will grow. And in the future, in my world, it is always monsoon season.
