I’m sitting outside at a café, drinking a latte and watching the people walk by. I’m supposed to be working on my manuscript, but instead I am in a daze, much preferring to look at the trees and the flowers and the ski mountain than my computer. In front of me is a little tree with a sign on it that says: RECENTLY PLANTED. Sorry, I can’t hold your bike!, and I think of myself . . . when I first moved here five years ago. Utterly broken. Utterly fragile. Barely able to hold myself up.
Lately, I’ve been upset that it has been five years since I dated anyone. It seems too long. Everyone is telling me it’s time to get “back in the game.” But I look at the sign around this precious, little, brand new tree with its skinny little trunk and its delicate leaves and I think, that tree was me. “Sorry, I can’t hold your bike. I’m recently planted. I will fall over and die. I am not yet strong enough to support your bike . . . you.”
And I realize: if I had entered into a romantic relationship at any stage in the last five years it would have pulled me over. It would have uprooted me. I would have channeled my precious life force energy into the other person, as we women tend to do, instead of using it to grow and dig my roots deep down into the earth, so that I had a solid foundation, so that I could constantly draw from Source for my nourishment and support. And, if the relationship did not work out, if it did pull me over, I would have died. Or, maybe not died, but come undone yet again. I was not strong enough. Not stable enough. Not ready to support anyone or anything. I could barely keep myself upright. I look at this little tree and think, one day soon he will be strong enough to have bikes attached to him. Like me. Now. Grounded and full and stronger than I have ever been. Time heals all wounds. It has certainly healed mine.
