The view from my cup looks like infinity. Or reincarnation. I’m not going all Stephen Hawking here or channeling my inner Shirley McClain, but bear with me. While no one can prove or disprove reincarnation, I’m willing to give it more than a passing grade for one simple reason: my garden. Each year it is reincarnated.
This spring as I’ve watched the progression of its blooms and compared their arrival to Facebook pictures of the same flowers in years past, it has struck me just, how precisely they appear in exactly the same order. Hellebores, forsythia, daffodils, lily-of-the-valley, tulips, redbud, irises, peonies, weigela, rhododendron, etc. And it gives me hope that the human life cycle will continue, unabated, season after season, year after year, as well.
Hence, reincarnation. Oak trees, acorns, oak trees. Bulbs, daffodils, bulbs. From our physics classes, we know that matter doesn’t disappear; it simply changes form. Right? Rocks erode into dirt, dirt hardens, solidifies, petrifies, and eventually becomes rock, again. Simplification, I know, but you get the picture.
So, it is with us, I believe. One of my best buddies died recently. He’s gone, but not really gone. He lives on in the smiles and expressions of his children, grandchildren, and in the memories of those who loved him. And, how many times have you read of a birth that soon followed a death in a family? Or seen a smile or a gesture you remember from a dead loved one in the face or gesture of their progeny? Nothing wasted. Nothing really lost. The circle of life. Reincarnation. Infinity.
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Carter Taylor Seaton is the author of two novels, Father’s Troubles, and amo, amas, amat…an unconventional love story, numerous magazine articles, and several essays, short stories, and the non-fiction, Hippie Homesteaders. Her biography of the late Ken Hechler, The Rebel in the Red Jeep, was released by West Virginia University Press in 2017. Her latest book, Me and MaryAnn is a compilation of stories of her renegade childhood and youth.
