Yesterday my sister and I transplanted a Rosa Rugosa from a rose bed to the end of a grape arbor.  She says that it is a traditional, auspicious place for a rose.  Plus, she wanted it out of her rose bed.  It was big and hardy, sending runners everywhere.  It had to go.

We dug a deep hole in the new location in the rich Wisconsin earth and then labored over an hour to unseat the rose.  It was a taproot problem,  We couldn’t find it, and when we did it was as thick as my wrist.  We sawed and clipped.

By now, I was talking to the rose.  “Rosa,” I said.  “You are going to love your new home.  You’ll have more space.  You will have an important job protecting the grapes.”  My sister, sweating, cursed the rose.  “No, no,” I said. “You have to be kind.  Persuade her. Gentle her.”

Finally, she came free and we planted her deep with cow manure and more rich dirt.  We watered her.  The next day she looked good, leaves still firm and green, despite her amputated taproot.

That, I think, is the problem with planting oneself deep.  You send down a taproot to the waters below and runners to connect out into your community.  There is belief there:  “I am here, I will be here.”  Moving, transplanting means disruption, severing.

So now, I must find a way to speak to the rose that is me.  To persuade, to comfort, to reassure myself that I will find a new place to root, to grow, to flower.  A place that will hold me, hold us. And that in the coming cut is also the opportunity for new growth, new vistas, beauty and happiness.

Nineteen years ago we put my father’s ashes into his beloved Mississippi River.  Yesterday my sister and I walked along the river, and came across these cottonwood trees, their roots revealed and honed by the river.

Can you allow the river of your life

to shape and polish you?

Will you stand in the slipstream,

the eddy, the boil and wash of your life

and reach for the sun?

The tree is not afraid

nor should you be

even when the current

is carrying you,

faster than imagination,

to another shore.