This is a bit of a sequel to last week’s blog, “Love Day.” The day after the valentine celebration at school (celebrated on the 12th because school was closed for conferences on the 14th), my great-granddaughter dumped out her personally decorated box of kindergarten valentines on our bathroom floor. It was an assortment of commercially made cards along with a few handmade ones. Many of the cards had a piece of chocolate or candy, which she immediately consumed. Others had a small gift attached. There were a few pencils in the mix and several plastic toys that were played with once and then set aside. One plastic toy was thrown at our mirrored door to see if it would stick. She briefly looked at the cards, reading each classmate’s name, then moved on to the next one.
As she explored her valentines, one small brown packet surfaced from the pile of paper and plastic. It was an envelope with SEEDS written on the front, with a window to view the black and white marigold seeds inside. I was delighted to find this sweet gift. Later in the day, we went out to our garden, cleared a spot of soil in a bed that already had flowers, sprinkled the seeds on the earth, covered them with dirt, watered them, then waited for the seeds to grow.
So far, they are still doing most of their growing underground, and I’m not sure how long it will be before they break through and reach toward the sun. I like to think of the Seed as being like this little hidden packet full of potential. We nurture our students for the time we have them, anticipating their eventual venturing into the world. We’re a small community within the greater world, yet over time and space it all adds up…planting love seeds. In true Seed fashion, just today I received this message from a former Seed who is now in their 20s:
“Being at the Seed felt like being everywhere in the world all at once with its particular magic: I find that magic is finding me again now that I’ve left the desert…I wouldn’t be able to experience the world, in all of its shades of joy and heartbreak and everything in-between or beyond, if I hadn’t been raised to so unabashedly and fervently love the world around me, near and far. That was due, in large part, to my time at the Seed.”