The Seed's Long Wait

I am small. Smaller than your pinky fingernail. Smaller than a raisin. Smaller than the tiniest button on your smallest shirt.

And right now, I am buried in the dark.

If you were walking above me — maybe on your way to school, maybe pulling your wagon, maybe stomping in your boots just because stomping is fun — you wouldn't know I was here. Nobody would. I'm tucked under the soil, surrounded by cold, heavy earth on every side, and it is so dark down here that dark doesn't even begin to describe it.

It's the kind of dark where you can't see yourself.

It's the kind of dark where you forget what seeing even is.

And it's cold. Oh, it's cold. The frost crept down through the dirt weeks ago and wrapped around me like an icy blanket that nobody asked for. Above me, I know there's snow. I can feel it pressing down, heavy and hushed, like the whole world is holding its breath.

So I wait.

That's mostly what I do. Wait, wait, wait. You might think waiting is boring, and honestly? Sometimes it is. There's no one to talk to down here except a very sleepy earthworm named Eleanor, and she only mumbles in her sleep.

"Mmrrph," says Eleanor, curling tighter. "Five more months..."

I don't have a mouth to answer her. I don't have arms. I don't have eyes. I'm just a seed — a tiny, brown, round-ish little thing — and all I have is a feeling.

The feeling says: Not yet.

So I wait some more.

Days pass. Or maybe weeks. It's hard to tell when you can't see the sun. Sometimes I hear things, muffled and faraway. A snowplow rumbling down the street. A dog barking. Once, I heard a little kid laugh — this big, bright, hiccupy laugh — and even though the sound had to travel through snow and soil and stones to reach me, it made something inside me feel warm.

Just a tiny bit warm. Just for a second.

Then the cold came back, and the feeling said: Not yet. Keep waiting.

I'll be honest with you. Sometimes I get scared down here. What if the world forgot about me? What if spring isn't coming this year? What if I'm just a little seed in the dark and nothing ever, ever changes?

Those are my nighttime thoughts. Well — it's always nighttime down here, so I guess they're my all-the-time thoughts. But I try not to listen to them too hard, because deep inside me, past my hard little shell, there's something else. Something that feels like a promise, even though nobody made it out loud.

The promise says: You were made for something.

I don't know what. But I hold on to it.

Then one morning — or maybe one afternoon, who can tell — something happens.

A drip.

One single drop of water slides down through the soil and touches me. And it's not icy. It's not frozen. It's cool and soft and alive somehow, the way water feels when it's been melting off something.

The snow. The snow is melting.

"Eleanor!" I want to shout. "Eleanor, wake up! Did you feel that?"

Eleanor mumbles, "Mmrrph... carrots..." and rolls over.

But I felt it. I definitely felt it. And now there's another drip. And another. The soil around me is getting softer, looser, like it's finally letting out a long breath. And the cold — the cold is backing away, just a little, just a step, like it knows something bigger is coming.

Inside me, something shifts.

It's not the feeling that says not yet anymore.

It's a new feeling. A ready feeling. Like when you're at the top of a slide and your hands let go before your brain says it's okay.

A tiny crack opens in my shell.

Oh. Oh. This is strange. This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, and I say that as someone who got swallowed by a bird once and then — well, that's how I ended up in the ground in the first place. Long story.

But THIS. Something is growing out of me. A pale, white, tender little thread, reaching down into the soil. It wiggles between crumbs of earth, finding water, finding minerals, finding things I didn't even know I was hungry for.

A root. I'm growing a root!

"Eleanor! ELEANOR! Look at me!"

Eleanor opens one sleepy eye. She stretches her long, pink body and blinks.

"Oh my," she says slowly. "Well, well, well. Look at you."

"What's happening to me?"

"You're waking up, dear," says Eleanor. And she smiles — or does the earthworm version of smiling, which is basically just wiggling in a happy way. "I told you spring would come."

"You told me carrots."

"Same thing," says Eleanor.

Now I can't stop. The root pushes deeper, and then something else starts happening — something going the other direction. Up. A little green shoot, pale as a whisper, rises from what's left of my shell and pushes into the soil above me. It has to work hard. The dirt is heavy, full of pebbles and old leaves and a bottle cap that has absolutely no business being there.

But the shoot keeps going. It pushes and stretches and reaches, and I can feel the soil getting warmer the higher it climbs. There's something up there. Something bright. Something I've never felt before but somehow already know, the way you know your favorite song even the very first time you hear it.

Up, up, up.

The soil gets thinner. Lighter. I can feel the warmth now, real warmth, the kind that hums.

And then —

Pop.

The tip of my shoot breaks through the surface of the earth, and the whole world rushes in.

Light. So much light! It floods over me like a golden wave, and I want to gasp but I'm a plant so I just — I just soak it in. I drink the sunlight the way you drink cold water on a hot day, in big, grateful gulps. The sky is blue — did you know the sky was blue? I didn't know! Nobody told me! It's the most beautiful blue I've ever seen, and it's the only blue I've ever seen, and I love it.

The air moves. That's wind, I think. It brushes against my tiny shoot, and I sway, just a little. It tickles. I like it.

A robin lands nearby and tilts her head at me.

"You're new," she says.

"I am," I say. "I'm very new."

"You're small."

"I know."

"You'll grow."

And she flies away, just like that. Up into the blue, blue sky.

I stand in the sunlight, two tiny green leaves unfurling like little hands opening up to catch the warmth. Below me, my roots stretch deeper. Above me, my leaves stretch wider. I am reaching in both directions at once, and the feeling inside me — that old, patient, quiet feeling — has changed into something new.

Not not yet.

Not even ready.

Just: yes.

Down below, deep in the earth, I hear Eleanor munching on something.

"Told you," she calls up.

And I grow.

I grow and grow and grow.