Moving musings: on magnolia, wonder, and coming all over again

Ready to elope?

There’s a lofty tree right outside my bedroom window. This window belongs to the new apartment I moved into about a month ago. This tree has taken root in my 88-year-old neighbor’s garden, who recently told me I have the face of a judge—a compliment, of course, of the highest ‘order’ (pun intended).

Shortly after I moved in, I started to see hundreds of eager little buds nestling along the dark brown, formerly bald tree twigs. A lover of (w)horticulture but not well-versed in the taxonomy of trees, I did not know exactly which flowers to expect come bloom. And even if I had known, I think no prior knowledge could have prepared me for the sight of the majestic event that followed. Spring had sprung in the form of big, fragrant, leathery pink, purple, and white magnolia flowers.

And just as quickly as they were to flower, they reached their fullest blooming point without a proper warning. Then soon began to shed all of their beautiful petals all over my neighbor’s garden, leaving in their wake only curled-up young green leaves, ready to unfold.

Why this wholesome harlot talk, you ask? Well, for one, I felt like sharing a little sense of small wonder from my daily life because, you know, I’m not always sipping fancy cocktails in some airport lounge, or locking eyes with a lover over a way-too-many-course dinner.

The motif of the magnolia tree can actually say a thing or two about yours truly at this point in time. While this gorgeous tree herself is rooted in her place in the old lady’s garden, what she can tell you by example is what moves me: phenomena with long build-ups that reach their peak and, once past their zenith, come all over again. ;-)

Did you know that Magnolia trees are sometimes called “faux tulips,” because of the shape of their flowers?

Ahem. What Lady Magnolia also knows, while firmly planted, is that I have had to move in order to find her here. And God knows I have—moved houses, that is. I hope neither you, nor I, will ever have to go through this experience again. I think I may have moved, on average, once every two or three years ever since moving out of my parental house. And you’d think it would get easier. You’d think, perhaps, that one would get the hang of it. That it would become less existentially destabilising, less of a ‘becoming undone’ situation. That it’d be, by now, an ‘easy does it’ kind of thing.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth. It seems so trivial a fact about someone’s life, doesn’t it—a move. But a part of us, the part that is a little bit like trees, just feels unmistakably harassed—figuratively and literally uprooted—by the process.

So I guess what I’m also trying to say is: help that loved one who is moving. Give them pep-talks, food that needs neither fridge nor stove, lots of love in the form of practical stuff such as moving boxes, tools, and felt pads to keep their floors from scratching. Help them to literally carry that load of items they’ve collected throughout the years—all those things that have latched onto them and now, indeed, present quite the challenge. Channel your inner lead singer of The Band; help Annie take a load off. Or, should you have somehow missed the move itself, why not get her a nice housewarming gift instead?

Unedited peek into my life in between boxes ;-)

Oh sweet Magnolias, some of the oldest flowering plants in the world (dating back to the Cretaceous period!), with your robust and leathery petals made to evolve with the beetles (not bees!) that pollinate you—always blooming and withering, blooming and withering, and beginning anew.