Held Aloft

A bunch of young green coconuts crowns a tall grey column, against a wall the pale blue of a tropical sky. Around them the bare branches of the flower stalk reach out in every direction, thin and dark, like lines drawn in ink.

It looks light, almost festive — a bouquet held up for someone to see. But a coconut is heavy. Even young, each one is full of water, far heavier than it looks.

And it is heavy for a reason. A coconut is a seed made for travel. It can fall into the sea, float for months, and wash up on a shore far from the tree it came from — carrying inside it the water and the food it will need to begin again.

We carry things like this too: the language we grew up in, the way our mother washed the rice, a few words someone once said to us. They weigh something. We seldom notice them until we find ourselves on another shore, starting over, and discover we had brought exactly what we needed.

Perhaps what we carry is what lets us begin again.