I was four years old when the house I now live in was built.
I bought it in 1985 when it was 30 years old. The inside had been completely remodelled by the carpenter who had owned it but the outside of the house and the entire lot it sat on was in terrible shape.
I didn’t live there very long before realizing water was seeping into the unfinished basement at a rapid rate. So, all the weeping tiles had to be replaced. I hired a guy with a backhoe to expose the walls and foundation so I could put down the new black plastic drain pipe.
The backhoe operator was very skilled and did a great job. And when he moved to the front of the house, he shut off his tractor and asked me if I wanted to save a rosebush in a flowerbed there.
I don’t know whether or not I had paid much attention to the bush, and I was tempted to say I didn’t want it, but I asked him to hang on. I ran and got my wheelbarrow and he carefully fished the rosebush out of the ground where I think it probably had been since the house was built in 1955.
We got the bush into the wheelbarrow and I took it behind the house and tossed it onto the mounds of soil that had been dumped there.
At least a day and maybe more went by before I realized that I should cover up the roots of the bush to protect them from the hot sun. So I grabbed a shovel and threw a bit of soil on them.
I don’t know how long the bush stayed on the pile of soil but it might have been there a few days at least. Finally, I decided to plant it along the back fence. I dug a deep hole and shoved it in.
The bush didn’t fare too well and it eventually died. But the following spring, a single shaky shoot pushed through the ground. Someone told me these single shoots that came from the original plant would never produce any flowers so I didn’t pay it a lot of attention.
In fact, every summer I would cut the darned thing down and every spring it would come back.
About 15 years ago, I had had enough. I got a shovel and dug the entire thing out of the ground and that was that.
Except that wasn’t that and it came back the next spring. Spindly and small, with no roses.
A few more years passed and the crazy rosebush was really getting to me. So I dug it out again, this time, it seemed, overturning half the soil on my lot just to get rid of it. That would fix it.
Except it didn’t fix it. Back the stupid, flowerless thing came the next spring and every spring after that. At some point during the summer, I would cut it down.
Then I got lazy and just let it go. I noticed it getting bigger and bigger every year when it would snag my shirt as I was cutting the lawn and came close to it. But the truce had been drawn up and I decided to let bygones be bygones.
Last summer, about this time of year, I went behind the shed to see a beautiful, eight-foot tall rosebush in full bloom. This year, it is 15 feet high and is the nicest plant on our property. Full of small pink roses. It is now more tree than bush.
So there is no point in my telling you all this without tacking on a good old-fashioned moral.
Here goes.
You feel you’ve been neglected and unappreciated for years until somebody comes along and saves you. And even though he’s your saviour, he doesn’t much act like it as he keeps trying to toss you aside.
But you persist and never give up until one day, you reach for the sky and your true beauty shines for all to see and enjoy, even the one who thought you had no value.
So if you are tossed aside, dirt is thrown on you, you’re cut down, dug up, thrown away and even despised by someone who can’t see your true worth, always remember there is a magnificent flower inside of you, waiting to bloom.
And one day, you will.
Maybe, probably, you already are.
©2020 Jim Hagarty
