What to do when every time you think things couldn’t sink any lower politically, they do? What to do when the pandemic continues to ravage unabated, yet we’ve collectively reached the end of our patience with the restrictions that might make it go away? What to do when it appears that bringing racism into the light has only sped its growth?

Today, I chose to plant bulbs.

Digging into the soil in the fleeting warmth of an ever-shortening autumn day, I thought about when the crocus flowers would emerge next Spring. There is so much about that springtime world that I cannot yet know. Who will be president? Will the election and attendant transfer (or retention) of power have gone smoothly? Will the grip of COVID on our world have begun to loosen? Will there be a vaccine readily available, and will people be willing to take it? Will the racism that parades so publicly in our streets in these days have scurried back into the depths from which it came by the time the crocus blooms?

I don’t know the answers, and so I plant bulbs. During the chill of the looming winter, these bulbs will be gathering themselves, allowing dormancy to create the first blossoms of springtime.

I remember the words of a poet who described watching his terminally ill wife plant bulbs one autumn, bulbs that both of them knew she would not live to see bloom. He described her as “quietly plotting the resurrection,” although the invisibility of that phrase on Google makes me think that my memory has altered the precise wording. No matter the imprecision of my memory, the promise of those words echoed in my heart as I planted my bulbs this afternoon.

The nature of the world that these crocus will be born into is unknown. Yet the purple flowers themselves will sing to me of the gift of new life that weathers the coldest nights. This one hope will be unchanged no matter what will come. 

And so, today I plant bulbs.