as we walk ; geto suguru

Melody

If there was one person that had been hit the most when you had confessed that you were pregnant, it was your grandmother.

You remember her pausing for what could've been a ten minute silence that was only occasionally broken through your sniffs and muffled hiccups that you tried desperately to keep in while you were on the phone with her, slumped on your now-single spaced old apartment devoid of your ex-husband's belongings while surrounded by clumps of crumpled tissues and pillars and pillars of half-empty plastic water bottles. It was such a tense moment and the feeling of what could be possible betrayal and the guilt of it had pressured itself on your stomach. Every time you had reflected upon that moment, you'd feel the same weight pressing against your entire body.

She had all the reason to stay silent, and it was because she had hit the realization that her beloved and only granddaughter was now going to suffer the same fate she had when she was also twenty-two.

Everyone around you had seen your bizarre state of mind when you had told them the news through monotone eyes and a sickly face and they all suggested the exact same thing: get an abortion. Quick and simple.

The only exception was your grandmother. While she did not pressure you to keep your pregnancy but instead offered out both her aging hands that have seen and been through so much and gave you two choices that you would spend the next nine months thinking about. These weren't two choices that could be made with a casual flip of two-faced coin, nor could it be decided upon randomly choosing right or left and be left with the choice fate has made. They were two choices that if you had thought about everything incorrectly, that if you didn't properly think everything through, a heavy burden would follow you everywhere if you chose wrong.

You were convinced that your grandmother had been Buddha several past lives ago because her mind and soul had aged like wine. Supple, yet extravagant all at the same time while still being critical in the most tender way.

"There are flowers that are self-sufficient and flowers that need someone else to take care of them," your grandmother had said to you after she rushed over to central Tokyo to comfort your winding mind. "You, my flower, could've been the former, but it's been proven that you need someone to help you stand up and blossom. And while that is not a bad thing, you must learn to give yourself light, ground yourself by using plentiful soil, and lather in the water you have been given before it's too late."

When she had said these words, all you could really do with your scattered state of consciousness was stare at her in confusion with puffy eyelids above the steaming hot cup of tea she had made you.

"My flower, look at yourself. Have you given yourself everything that you need to bloom as beautifully as one can?" she had asked, to which you silently answered through the shake of your head. "But if you were given the chance to be the one taking care of a flower, would you repeat the same process as you did with yourself?" Your head nodded when she inquired this before moving on to the final question. "You have your own flower growing inside of you right now. Would you like to nurture it and see how it grows right now or would you rather save it for another time?"

It was in that moment, you finally understood what she meant. You figured life had been so fed up with how you treated yourself, it decided to show you what it would be like to take care of something else the way it wanted you to treat your own body and soul.

In this case, it had taken a part of your body and soul and created it to craft a small apple blossom with it before offering it to you with a gentle, open-faced palm.

And take that apple blossom you did - you would later nurture it the same way you so desperately wanted to nurture yourself and in those moments of watching you take care of something you never figured would be so precious to you, you slowly unraveled the garden that you wouldn't have never discovered if it weren't for life's shy offering.