Hey Natalie Jean by Natalie Holbrook

Author:Natalie Holbrook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2015-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

ON PEONIES

* * *

It was the summer of 2008, and I’d accompanied my husband to every nursery in the great panhandle of northern Idaho. His mission was to landscape the vast and barren stretch of earth extending southward from our fence to the curb, and mine was to procure for myself the perfect flowering shrub—a shrub that would turn me into a true woman. A shrub that I could plant in the ground, thus establishing my own flowering roots in the soft earth of Idaho.

Under a sun-drenched sky I pored over peony bushes, contemplating colors and sizes before finally selecting my peonies: three in pale pink, one in deep fuchsia. I planted them by the fence in the soft, rich dirt under a gentle June sun. And then I waited.

But nothing happened. My peonies went in and stared at the sun and drank up the water, but nothing. They just sat there. I suppose their stems grew tall and their leaves grew bushy, but those little pink buds remained small and shut tight, unwilling to open or blossom or do anything spectacular. I was so puzzled. Down the street, lazy bushes of peonies would droop heavily to their sidewalks, burdened with their blossoms, sagging with the weight of their easy fabulousness. I just couldn’t understand it.

And then I realized that my peonies were taking after me.

Because in those four years we lived in Idaho I was struggling with my own blossoming. I was a small, tight, frustrated knot, full of potential but lacking release. I was a slow little peony, watching the others bend and open and bloom, unable to unlock the secret for myself, lonely and confused and incredibly sad.

But this is what I will remember about my Moscow. Each and every August, months after the other peonies in town had blossomed and faded, my own little peonies would finally burst open.

Three in pale pink, and one in deep fuchsia.

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