Cracking Branches, Singing Leaves, and the Advent of Spring
A while back, as winter was still slowly whithering in spring’s wild embrace, I contracted Otitis Media for the first time in years. Hearing the muffled melody of cherry branches cracking in my hands and other leaves sliding between my fingers through my diseased left ear brought two thoughts to light.
I first remembered the horrid chlorine stench of that pool, where my fellow swimmer Mirko broke my eardrum during practice nearly sixteen years ago. Although he ran into me by mistake, I never found it in my heart to completely forgive him for the damage he wrought. Nor could I ever forget the sharpness of the pain that followed.
But strangely, the more I practiced my Kakubana and the worse my Otitis Media became, the less resentment I felt toward Mirko. This forgiving spirit surprised me a great deal, given the similarity of the pains invoked by my otitis and that old incident. By all accounts, I should have been hating the man even more fiercely.
Instead, I realized I had let this accident go in that moment of calm bewilderment at my thoughts. With every new crack in their twisted wood and every fallen petal from their flowers, the cherry branches I was bending seemed to whisper an approvingly kind melody to my near-deaf ear.
I kept delicately torturing them with my flower arrangement scissors in the spring air, lost in my craft. Then, when my kakubana finally stood in its vase, I could hear myself whisper to the petals:
“Mirko, I forgive you.”
Sometimes, even the oldest of wounds heal, after all.
