"If I choose to look up and not down,
it's because I know what waits below."
-- Sally Brampton,
Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression
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| Columbine flower 5-30-14 |
Columbine is one of my favorite wildflowers.
Happy, sun-drenched clumps of it run rampant along the south side of my house. They remind me of the funny stilt-walkers at a circus with their silly little belled, jester-hat blooms perched high atop long, leggy stems.
Up close, their demure, down-turned blossoms are a particularly delicate and lovely example of nature's wondrously deft hand at intricacy.
According to legend, the Columbine flower is the symbol for foolishness.
If you Google the word "Columbine" though, you won't get images of happy wildflowers. You'll get a startling barrage of words like massacre, rampage, psychopaths, shootings, murders, killers, monsters, bloodbath, horror, rage and tragedy.
Do an image search and you'll be smacked with an even more disturbing collage of photos depicting all of the above.
Sadly, ever since an April day in 1999, this happy, innocent wildflower that never hurt anyone is forevermore linked with unimaginable darkness.
It's the polarity of life, I suppose, the dramatic through-line of all existence, the tug and pull of opposite ends.
Good and evil.
Darkness and light.
High and low.
Happy and sad.
Love and hate.
Yes and no.
In and out.
Life and death.
Beginning and ending.
Now and never.
Here and gone.
I guess I'm writing this to remind myself (and you if you need reminding) that life's not all bad. Even the worst parts -- even the parts that seem unimaginably dark and hopeless when you're trapped in them -- have a flip-side.
Things get better eventually. Wounds heal, eventually. Even if eventually takes a lifetime.
At least I hope so.
I was reminded of this hope yesterday when I saw that despite the mud and blood spattered all over her good name (people used to name their newborn daughters Columbine. I don't have to do a baby names popularity search to know it's probably scraping the bottom of the barrel these days), my Columbine keeps blooming.
My Columbine keeps dancing in the sunshine.
Those silly little fool's caps keep bobbing in the Spring breeze.
Their heads may be bowed, their delicate faces may be down-turned, but they keep on reaching towards the sky.
