Lovely little story. The last two paragraphs summarize the feeling nicely:
Lovely little story. The last two paragraphs summarize the feeling nicely:
It was just one flower on just one ordinary day in September. Its arrival did nothing to mitigate the drought unfolding in the night outside, and nothing at all to make the floodwaters recede in North Carolina. You could insist that it didn’t matter in any way at all, and I would not think to argue with you.
But it was also not nothing. That night-blooming cereus brought my grandmother back to me in her halo of white hair. It brought back, too, her plum tree, long since cut down, and the feeling of red dirt between my toes. In a time of great cultural dislocation and environmental despair, for an hour it made me remember what it feels like when the world is exactly as it must be, and I am exactly where I belong.
Lovely little story. The last two paragraphs summarize the feeling nicely: