The Patience of a Root

One morning in the deep of winter the air turned soft and mild, and the snow began to drip from the eaves. The girl ran to the fence and called back over her shoulder. “Nyra, it has gone warm. Will the roots wake up now? Will the green come back today?”

Nyra came slowly to stand beside her, and looked out at the dripping thaw without any hurry. “Not today,” she said, in her low and even way. “This is a kind day, but it is only one day. The old roots have felt a hundred like it, and they know better than to trust a single warm morning in the middle of the cold.”

The girl frowned up at her. “But how do they know? How can something asleep in the dark tell one mild day from the true spring?” Nyra smiled a little. “They do not count the warm days, child. They count the cold ones. They wait until the long cold has passed and the light has grown, and only then do they believe that winter has truly let go.”

“And if they were fooled?” the girl asked. “If they woke for a day like this?” “Then the frost would come back in the night,” Nyra said gently, “and find their tender shoots unready, and take them. That is why the wise ones wait. They trust the deep change, the slow turning of the whole year, and not the one soft day that passes and is gone.”

The girl was quiet a while, watching the water slide from the roof. Then she said that she thought she would like to be as patient as a root. Nyra laughed softly and rested a hand on her shoulder. “You will be,” she said. “It is a thing that comes with the years. The garden teaches it, if you stay long enough to learn: trust what is deep and slow, and let the bright quick things pass you by.”