Voom! And the world is green again.

"There are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil has covered nearly all the gray"

- Francis Burnett, The Secret Garden

Summer days are here, or something like them. I had forgotten how close the air is, how near it clings. Spring must be a very unreserved creature, for it embraces you without even asking your permission.  And it brings with it its own peculiar kind of snow too. Pink snow. Though this is only a carpet of petals, it still makes me think of eating cake in a hot tub, and other extravagant pleasures.

I've been getting on in Daughter of the Samurai, but the chrysanthemum book has been sadly neglected.  A story of another's life is more inviting to me than the guessed at essence of a whole nation. It is more personal. Individualism, I suppose, has a great hold on me. And I think it has finally managed to plant seeds in little Estu-bo. Well, she is not so little now. The timeline is a little hard to construct, but I gather she is around fourteen

 at this point in the story. And, of course, she is engaged to a friend of her brothers. Lets forget the fact that she has never seen him; that he lives on the opposite side of the world. She was not surprised, not overly alarmed, not crushed by raging emotions. So why should we feel for her? I wonder if it doesn't stem from our own individualism. 'Cause don't we sometimes feel we were born with the reigns of life in our hands? And, though every now and then someone comes and gives them such a jerk, so that our life goes completely off course, we believe that we can chart our destiny. The American dream, you know? 

                The question is, do we really think we're competent enough to plan our lives? Estu-bo grew up knowing that she would marry and "die" to her family. She was used to the idea of it being her duty, but I wonder if she gave anymore thought to how it could be her duty than we give to how it can be our right. Insisting a thing is so does not mean one knows why that thing it is so. Of course, as Sigimoto tells us, tradition stated that there were marriage gods in charge of placing the right people together. Makes you think of Fiddler on the Roof.

"Have I got a match for you, he's handsome, he's young. All right, he's sixty-two."

             Secretly though, I rather like the idea of someone older and wiser helping young people along. And even more beautiful is the true, and oft repeated verse. Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." God, infinitely wiser, and with a better knowledge of our destination, will take the reigns if we will only let Him.