"What, he growled, is the real reason that she was able to make those flowers? Some things take living long enough to do, I said. I was speaking from across the line, across the cut. It just took time, I went on to tell him, and it wasn't purposive. It evolved, first from silhouettes, and then from handiwork and collecting shells and designing shell grottoes, and then designing her dresses, and then from drawing and painting and gardening, and from being supported in her enthusiasms by her sister and her husband, and lastly from not being able to paint, from a feeling of the world dimming, and from the energy of the natural world and the way she was supported by her friend.
The whole combination of things amounted to how Charles Bukowski defined age. Of all the sloppy, unboundaried, drunken poets I never thought I'd have a good word to say about, he nailed it. On the radio one day I heard him wisecrack, "Age is the sum of all we do." That's a bit of what happens to a plant, too. It keeps adding up unti it blooms, but even after blooming, after mid-life, so to speak, it keeps going, because it has to start withering. Only in drying does the real fertility begin, the seedcase forming, and only then are the seeds available to be blown apart and travel and settle. The fierce winter of dormancy is part of it all - the biennial approach to life.
The Paper Garden, Molly Peacock
