The botanical encyclopedia has pages and pages of illustrations of trees with their branches, bark, leaves, and roots. I stare, fascinated at the variety of them, all the colours, shapes and sizes.
Their root
systems, exposed without soil covering, seem oddly, embarrassingly intimate. The exposed roots reveal how nature accommodates the different
types of soil, the changing seasons, and the push and pull of the hemispheres.
Momentarily, I ponder the generation after generation of my ancestors who
migrated from one country to another, driven on by strife. There were those with
deep, narrow roots whose lives were brutally severed by famines or wars. There
were my parents’ generation who cut their tethers and sought freedom, or adventure,
and, on some rare occasions, wealth.
And here I am, a collection of grafts of all their wanderings. I stand tall with bamboo-like agility with roots that are spread wide but never will grow deep.
(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)
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