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I received some three dozen tulips for Mother's Day. Within a week they had done all they were going to do. Five or six of them had bent over in the tulip yoga routine of reaching their heads to the table and then opening their petals wide, wider, widest, until a gentle breath would dislodge them, leaving only the pistil, black at one end like a short, spent match.
So there were five or six of these, which had done the right thing. The remainder were simply withering as they stood, stems erect but petals almost transparent, coming to their natural end.
I am a newcomer to picture-taking, but I nonetheless opened my phone to capture the bent-over, yawning blossoms, and I took a dozen quick shots, none of them particularly well framed. And then I shoved the entire vase-ful of tulips (but not the vase) into a plastic bag for composting. Bye-bye tulips. Farewell Mother's Day for another year.
It wasn't until I later read the suggestion that we "see—really see—six things a day" that I realized (I'm always realizing things, have I said?) that taking pictures was no substitute for seeing, quietly and with attention, those tulips in their final disintegration, the stage I love the best.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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