Not Yet, But Soon.

When I was little, my mom germinated plants in the winter.

In Minnesota, winter doesn't mean more drizzle and extra chilly winds. It means snow up to your knees and fingers that fall off. And while the wind blew below zero outside in the dead of winter, the seeds were sheltered inside.

She kept them in our basement. I hated that basement. I tried to never go down there, not even to get ice cream. The shit piling high on the sides of the steps was enough, but it was dark, down there. The concrete floor was missing in places, and sand was all over. There were rats and mice and bugs, oozing mold, and enough sawdust from my dad's workbench to leave you feeling gritty. When I wanted a treat badly enough to go down there, I descended the steps with dread, creaked the door open, reached for the light switch as fast as possible, and snatched whatever I wanted from the freezer, slamming the top shut with vehemence.
I always leaped back up the stairs inhumanely fast and still remember the relief I felt once I was safely on the other side of the back entry door in the kitchen.

But there, among the vermin and the dirt and the cold dark, the seeds were left on shelves, right under a buzzing fluorescent lamp. All winter long.

And when the snow began to thaw into puddles on the sidewalks, and there were buds on the trees, I would put on my jelly shoes and blue striped dress ("It's not warm enough for THAT, Rosie!") and my mom would dig in the dirt and plant what she had kept in the basement, now seedlings.

I was always relieved when it was their time to be out in the sun and green and fresh air, having secretly felt bad for them all winter.

Of course, the ones that had been put under the lamp the longest always did best. They never withered.


I never thought the image of the sole light from the fluorescent in the basement that I saw as a six year old girl would now mean so much to me.



There is a time, coming.

And darkness makes roots grow down deep.

You think you're in a place you don't want to be- but you're probably just germinating.