I thought of you when I saw these Crepe Myrtle Blossoms. Grandma bought me this tree many years ago, because we always admired the Crepe Myrtles on the corner at Riverside Park. Every August they put on a spectacular show of pink and purple. We waited with excitement for this one to bloom the first year it was planted and.....nothing. One year it had one white bloom and all the years following....nothing. Every year I hoped, but didn't have much confidence. I moved it, fertilized it, asked around at nurseries for tips and it still never bloomed. I mostly just gave up on it. Until this year, a miracle happened. It bloomed gloriously!
It reminded me of the dream I told you about, the "House Dream" where I discovered that everything we needed was right there in the house. As you know these are my favorite dreams, the house that starts out small and once inside it gets bigger and bigger with more and more potential. There are always interesting and curious things inside. In this particular dream I discovered that the house was full of antiques, pianos in fact. So many that we could easily sell off many of them and still have an amazing collection. I hadn't even noticed they were there before. In the dream we wanted to build a studio and this was the way to easily afford it. Every thing we needed was right there in front of us!
Ok, I know you are wondering what does a Crepe Myrtle and a "House Dream" have in common? Nothing on the surface but everything underneath. I had given up on the Crepe Myrtle, even thinking of pulling it out and starting over, but the potential of the Crepe Myrtle blooming was always there even though I couldn't see it and could barely imagine it. That's why it reminded me of the "House Dream". So often I have planted the seed of an idea, so full of potential, only to give up on it when it doesn't manifest in the time frame that I assigned it. These blossoms reminded me, like the dream, that all of the things we want and need really are right there, but so often we are blind to them because they aren't showing up in the way we imagined they would. The tree had fabulous blooms inside, I just hadn't yet figured out how to release them.
The Crepe Myrtle Blooms gave me the same sense of excitement and hope that the "House Dreams" do. I realized that even the oldest of dreams and desires are never dead! They can show up anytime or renew when we least expect it. I had the sense of "it's never too late". I also realized that if I had given up on this tree I would have never seen it bloom. I would have never seen it's true potential. I would have planted a new tree with it's own potential and beauty, but it couldn't have taught me this lesson to share with you.
The House and the Tree are the same, they remind me that within the smallest and homeliest of things there is great potential, if we look for it. That the best things don't always show up shiny, and you know how I love "shiny things". They don't always show up fast and fancy or big and bold, but quiet and frustratingly slow, but they do show up! It reminds me too to the tending our hopes and dreams need. Just like the tree, it needed me to check in on it, feed it, water it and believe in it without demanding that it bloom now!
I finally know what the "House Dream" means! It's my love of turning nothing into something. My excitement at witnessing something transform, my ability to SEE the potential.
It reminds me of something Einstein said, that Energy can not be created or destroyed only transformed. What potential do we have waiting to be transformed?
