When the plants creep up on you

Haven't posted anything in a looooong while, and partly this is because there hasn't been anything truly blog-worthy to write about, and also because I've been busy catching up on other things and creating Food Magnet for more aunty exploits.

However, these few days are defining days of my life. Been in a meditative state of living these days, and I've realised something about the way we grow up. We don't grow in a steady line that can be plotted like a learning curve. We grow in leaps and bounds, in stops and starts, in growth spurts, organically. This is true about plants and animals, about human life - emotional, physical, mental and everything else.

Strangely enough, I came by this stunning revelation through staring at a rosemary plant. Now this rosemary plant is close to my heart. I got a shoot from aZhang's at Joo Chiat (who closed down recently). He uses it for his lovely rosemary focaccia, and spared me some (with tips) to plant at home. I followed his instructions, and for days, weeks, months (!) been watching this young shoot grow into a full fledged plant of its own right. This took a long, long time.

But you know, there is a joy of revelation when you look upon a beloved plant and suddenly, one day you wake up, and you realise that it's a cm taller than before. And you never quite know whether this growth happened over the night while you were sleeping, or it sprung before your eyes when you looked at it, or how it's come about. Somehow growth never happens like animation. It sneaks up on you, it's always a surprise when it happens.

I had lunch with my parents and godparents yesterday and there was that same look in my godfather's eyes when he realised, out of a sudden, out of a small little action that I did, that I was maturing - that I had matured - without him knowing it. He's watched me grow since I was a baby, and suddenly, without him knowing when or why, he realised that I knew what Life was. And he told me so.

I realised then that Maturity is something that comes to you. It is neither trained, nor learnt, nor experienced through any one series of things. It is a moment of realisation, when suddenly you realised, having crossed that line, that you're a step up, and that you're never going back, like it or not. Life is like that. Death is like that. Maturity is exactly that.

Things are happening around me that I'm not going to articulate here, and a close close friend of mine recently commented, "Of course I'm worried about you. I don't know what you're thinking - but you're a bit too calm (for what I'm going through)." I blinked. And blinked again.

To be honest, I don't know what there is to not be calm about. In the eye of the storm, after weeks of worrying, and waiting, now I have never felt more at peace with the world, with myself, with God. All's right with the world. And so this calm, I hope, will never be shaken and taken from me.