Midsummer

lost and found

by Jeneen R Garcia

Published on 29 August 2009

 

From the large window of my room, I see the garden blooming with roses, hibiscus and petunias, magnificent red-black butterflies alighting to sip the nectar from the heart of them. A box of cherry tomatoes grows outside on the balcony, the stalks bent, heavy with fruit. It is August again. As typhoons sweep through the Philippines, summer shines its lovely face upon the usually chilly northern hemisphere.

Two years ago on a humid August night, I was sitting by the sea on Dumaguete’s boulevard, dreaming of Germany as a newfound friend asked if I would want to come and visit. Summer had already passed in my part of the world, yet freedom and possibility tasted just as fresh. One year later, I found myself standing at the wharf of San Francisco in California upon the invitation of another unlikely friend. The newfound friend had become a distant dream, but now Europe was a reality. I had just received a scholarship to study in the UK, Spain and Portugal for the next 18 months. This August I write not from any of those three countries, but from Germany, where I have been unexpectedly sent to do my thesis.

It is the constancy of the seasons bringing us from year to year that allows us to measure how far we have come. Each midsummer of my life has brought me to a different city, to different meaningful friendships. Even more essential, the passing of each summer has been a progressive unfolding of self, every year revealing a little more the person I am meant to be.

It is a person that knows that the more I let go of what I desire, the closer it comes within my reach. Patience is the key. Everything happens in its time, in its proper order. It is not for me to question why some flowers bloom overnight and die just as soon, or why some take years and years before the first bright blossom appears. All I need is the certainty that the time of blossoming will come. And come it will when it will, not one moment sooner or later.

To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the sun, said the wise King Solomon. Knowing this, I do not worry about having to get to where I want to be. I simply do what I need to get there, slowly but surely. I take as long as I need to do what I must--no more, no less. Everything else falls naturally into place. I have learned not to run after that which is fleeting, whether it be bus, train, fame or wealth. I walk with a steady pace and a steady faith that I will reach my destination at the right time. Neither need I race against time for love, nor wisdom, for all that I need will be given when it is due.

It has taken two years since that August night in Dumaguete, yet here I am at last, in perfect timing. Moonlight streams through glass onto the floor of my room. Soon it will be dawn, but I am in no rush for the coming day. There is time enough.