“Where do stories come from?”
Recently I have taken to calling them story-origins, or as a portmanteau: ‘storygins’.
Here is one I’ll share with you, that I have yet to take ‘from the page to the stage’.
I penned it this morning as a tribute to the rhodi out back.
A Mike Perry ‘storigin’
On the coldest day, evergreen.
On the first day of winter, the weather being cold, the impending darkness can place a pall upon my soul. Sometimes even coffee, black as the morning falls short of surrendering warmth. Yet. when looking out of the windowed view of the world from my kitchen, there appears a circular shadow showing evergreen. Its color is an attitude, a consistent reminder of what is important. When all appears gray, on the coldest of days it calmly remains, green and growing. Evergreen is the mountain laurel. Here in December, remaining independent it is ever-green long after the perennials have retreated and the annuals died. Deer have not trimmed it back, choosing instead nearly all else. Its leaves conceal the stage upon which songbirds perform as they queue nearby feeders. And squirrels scamper in its gnarled branches clicking and clacking their claws and nails as they short cut into the nearby woods.
This giant of a rhododendron has a silhouette that blocks a clear view of my yard. More than once it has attempted to behead me as I cut the grass in the summer. I have cleared its woody limbs, thinning the old and encouraging the new. Each autumn, it lets its leather leaf litter fall. Its gnarly limbs cannot be manicured like a hedge. It will not grow tall as a tree and its blooms are too bombastic to compete with the garden’s crop of cut flowers, as big as firework displays they shout ‘look at me’ each July. And the bees come to celebrate and pollinate.
On the coldest of days I have mourned the loss of this old backyard friend. The leaves hung shriveled, and puckered in the frigid temperatures. On frosty days deep in January’s clutches, I was saddened to think of cutting it down come spring, yet grateful for its years of service homing songbirds and feeding bees. Killed by the cold, ‘laurel’ I thought, ‘you were both a noun and a verb’. The loneliness of the season was magnified by the loss of the old girl. Evergreen no more I lamented. Yet she warmed with the weather gaining energy, confidence, color. Leaves which hung lifeless and strangled grew vibrant and verdant and again reached for the sun. The little tree time-lapsed with temperature. Its gifts gave pause and pleasure,
The mountain laurel is nature’s thermometer. Since this discovery, I have begun to converse with my old friend each wintery day. What is the temperature? I ask. When the big green leaves are full and reach for the sky I know the day will be warm and as they droop and desiccate, pulling life back into the laurel's woody soul, I think It is a good day to protect my extremities too as I grab my hat and gloves. Here is nature telling me how to survive. What else it is trying to teach me? Keep learning it says. “Stay evergreen” even on the coldest day, so when things warm, you are again ready to embrace the songs that land in your heart or the squirrel scampering through you looking to find freedom in the forest.
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