buy hyacinths

                                                      Buy hyacinths…

                                           If thou of fortune be bereft

                                 but in thy store two loaves are left,

                                 sell one and with the dole

                                buy hyacinths to feed the soul.

  …at last, after so many years I have finally found out who wrote those simple words that in no small way have framed my life…John Greemleaf Whittier.

     I was in my teens, dreamy, romantic, living half in and half out of the everyday, swept by emotions which never seemed to stay the same moment to moment. I loved poetry, particularly the exaggerated flowery writings of the 19^th century poets. I can still quote bits and pieces from “The Wreck of the Hesperus”, “Horatious at the Bridge”, “Invictus” and, of course, that lovely instruction on how to live quoted above. 

     In all the talk and lectures delivered to young people of my generation I had never come across this idea that life and living should be more than being good, listening to smart people, obeying the rules, following the ideas and aspirations of society, being just like everybody else. This little bit of almost doggerel was saying there is another way to be. You could and should explore the special, ephemeral, seemingly meaningless things that enrich your life, that perhaps are not productive, but that in some sweet way make you whole…hyacinths to feed the soul.

     Growing up takes so much time and energy…being someone changes almost every week with barely enough moments to take a picture or choose a favorite color or movie star!

     The seed of becoming unwraps slowly beneath the hectic days fostered by small bright things that touch your heart or bits of wisdom lying on the path. Society says, “don’t stop, you have such big things ahead, forget that little patch of whimsy, that useless treasure, that flower, you have worlds to conquer, money to make, success to achieve!

     For me at 13, finding this tiny poem in the pages of a woman’s magazine in a dentist’s office was a message, heaven-sent. I was off looking under, over, behind the everyday for small treasures to brighten and enlighten my life. I had found a map, a way to stretch, a bit of approval for the way I thought of things that didn’t seem to mesh with everyone elses.

     Still confused, stumbling in my style ordained scuffed saddle                shoes I began to spread a little into that “hyacinth world”, once spending my hard-earned baby-sitting money on a decorated wooden box much too small to hold anything but lovely to look at. I have it now – still useless, still beautiful.  It is my Award for taking a chance on being myself so long ago when that wasn’t the 1940’s norm. 

     Treasures, held-in-the-hand like that tiny box, or loved for the moment and gone, ephemeral, some way in the back of a drawer waiting to be rediscovered, memories of small unplanned turnings in the path, choices perhaps meaningless, foolish to others, but which have kept me true.

     Here now at the tippy end of the adventure, the top of the slide, old, I am still buying hyacinths that feed my soul.