Thoughts While Driving

Driving with my husband along a country road in Pennsylvania, I see a surreal sight.

There, in a meadow, is what looks like a grove of cigarettes, the white tubing reaching toward the sun.

I ask him what these can be, and he tells me that they are barriers put around seedlings to protect them from deer and other predators.

I, a city girl, with little knowledge of growing things say, “That can’t possibly be right.

How can plants grow with only a little bit of sunshine reaching them when the sun is directly overhead?

Surely photosynthesis needs more.”

But several years later I drive on this same road and see green leaves spilling out of their prison.

They’re almost a comical sight: cigarettes with leaves and branches coming out of them instead of smoke.

They remind me of children who have made a long trip and have finally received the hoped-for answer to “Are we almost there?”

Or perhaps they are like children being released from school and rushing out to meet the world, thinking the days of summer will last forever.

This autumn, I again drive by the meadow and notice the leaves, dry and sere as winter approaches.

This, too, is almost comical since the protective tubes now guard decay. The birth canal has become the sarcophagus.

But next spring the cycle will start again and more child-leaves will be born.

Surely, there is meaning and promise for all of us in that.