What the God of Weeds Taught Me

That afternoon, the air was perfectly still under a cloudy sky.
It was an uncertain sky, leaving one to wonder if it would rain or not.

My mother decided she wanted to cut a few wild rose branches to take home for grafting, so we headed toward the edge of the mountain near our house.

The wild roses visible over the fence carried a faint, gentle fragrance.

At that moment, I suddenly felt an irresistible urge to go to the other side of the fence.

My mother stretched out her arm and cut about 30 cm of branches. Suddenly, she cried out, "Ouch!" She was wincing in pain. It seemed a thorn had pricked her fingertip, and it had turned red.

When I asked, "Are you okay?" she laughed and said, "It's nothing."
No matter how old she gets, my mother is strong.

Since both my mother and I love wildflowers, we used our smartphones to take pictures of the flowers blooming at our feet.

They were blooming small and bravely at our feet. They were so small you wouldn't notice them unless you looked closely. It was as if they were blooming to say, "I am right here."

I know you are right here.
I'm glad I was able to find you.

Watching them, faint memories from my childhood began to surface.

I want to find so many more wildflowers. On the other side of the fence, there must be the wildflowers I found when I was little. I wonder how the insects move through what must look like a forest of flowers to them.

And so, though I am no longer a small child, I suddenly wanted to go to the other side of the fence.

I remembered how, when I was little, my older brother used to fish by the riverbank before it was paved with concrete. I would sit beside him, finding and observing all sorts of wildflowers. Like a treasure hunt, I would find the tiny flowers blooming in the field and gaze at them with sparkling eyes.

There were many insects and frogs, too. Encounters with insects made my heart race, but seeing those tiny lives living so earnestly made me want to gently protect them.

But, being a young child, it wasn't all so pretty. There were times I would pick flowers and pluck their petals, saying, "I love you, I love you not..." I also once turned over stones in the river and took home the pond snails that were living happily in the water, thinking it was a pity, only to later forget about their existence.

Come to think of it, for my elementary school summer research project, I made a collection of "Garden Plants" that spanned about 20 sheets of drawing paper. I pressed the weeds from our garden to paste onto the paper and researched which weeds were edible with my mother's help.

I also wrote down my impressions after my mother cooked those weeds for me to eat. In today's terms, that would be a review or feedback. I thought, "Oh, these are surprisingly edible," and ate a lot of them.

Thinking about it now, perhaps when I ate those garden weeds, the God of Weeds entered me. Maybe that is why I have been so drawn to weeds ever since. That is what I think.

The roots of my fascination with wildflowers likely lie in the sense of adventure and curiosity I had as a child.

The triggers for those sudden impulses must surely always be right beside me in my daily life.

I want to cherish the feeling of those exciting impulses. I believe that when you open an invisible door, a new perspective awaits you on the other side.

The impulse I felt to 'go to the other side of the fence' never actually came to fruition, but I am glad that I was able to remain the kind of person who can still feel such impulses.

It feels as though the child sleeping deep within my heart has smiled at me.