The Moonflower Monologue

Purpose, your purpose, is something you can’t deny. Planted in your heart, it will beg for water and light until you learn how to nurture it.

Though I must admit, I don’t think that we are limited to one purpose. There are probably lots of seeds planted, but what we choose to cultivate is ultimately what grows.

Because one of my most commonly used catchphrases is “words matter,” I tend to look up definitions, sometimes in mid-conversation. “Purpose” is defined as “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.”

After reading the definition, I was reminded of a poem written by Pulitzer Prize-winning Mary Oliver:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean —

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

The last two lines get me every time. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The answer has to be your purpose.

Last Christmas, my mom gifted me a packet of moonflower seeds. It was a very meaningful gift. And I was so excited to plant them come spring.

Once spring arrives and when it comes to planting seeds, I generally run into a pretty big problem. I don’t like dirt.

Oh, and also, I’m afraid of messing up. Otherwise known as having a fear of failure. Between the dirt and fear of killing the seedlings or plants as they grow, I tend to get stuck. I second-guess myself, my abilities, and, sometimes, even my purpose. Which leads me to question a lot of things.

But, beyond those insecurities, I do get…, well, curious.

I wonder what the vines would look like climbing up the back of my house. The seed packet came with instructions printed in simple text on the back. It says they are fragrant and smell of citrus. What kind of citrus, though?

Curiosity beat insecurity this time around.

I shook up the packet and listened to the seeds jump and bump into each other and the walls of their container. I pressed on them and felt them from underneath the stiff, plastic-y paper and read, “To get started indoors, sow in biodegradable grow pots, 6 to 8 weeks prior to the last frost.”

I sighed, hung my chin to my chest, and muttered, “Oh, fabulous.”

I’d read the instructions about four weeks prior to the last frost. Typical, I’m already behind and messed up before I even tore open the packet.

And insecurity takes a point this round.

For those keeping track, the score is tied with Curiosity: 1. Insecurity: 1.

So instead of planting, I ruminate for a week. Will they be any good if I plant them? Will they have as many blooms if I plant them now? I poured a few seeds out into my hand and reflected on them as being perfect just how they are. And perched a few on the wainscoting ledge in my laundry room.

But they weren’t meant to stay this way. Their cyclical purpose can’t end in a laundry room just because I am afraid of not growing them perfectly.

It took me another week to convince myself that it was still worth planting the moonflower seeds. And so they were sowed in biodegradable grow pots later than they should have been. So what? As if nature follows a rigid set of instructions. As if moonflowers are only prosperous because humans sowed them. I’m not as powerful as the seed packet would lead me to believe. What if the instructions are wrong? And there is 1 more point for curiosity.

Six were planted. Four sprouted from the humus. Under grow lights, I watched as the tiny plants pushed into the light and developed their first heart-shaped leaves. Once touched by light, they grew in a hurry.

Back to the instructions on the packet, I read that moonflowers will enjoy an area that receives full sunlight.

“Great, I’ve got just the place by the stairs, I think.”

The plants grow to a length of 8-10 feet long and produce flowers with a diameter of six inches.

“Alright, well, I gotta get a trellis to put up between the stair posts.”

But my confidence wanes. I pace back and forth a few steps after I read “transplant after the last threat of frost.”

How do I know when the last threat of frost will be? Who knows what nature has in store this season?

“Whatever, I’ll plant them when it feels right.”

Their roots took to their permanent home in early May, just a couple of days after a late frost. At least I had spared them that.

I watched and watered. Watered and watched. Overwatered and underwatered, but also sometimes watered just right.

Whenever I saw the yellowing leaves and some stalling in their growth, I felt a twinge of failure but kept watering and fertilizing anyway.

By late August, I was nearly certain that I had planted them too late or messed up their watering. The original four seeds had grown into an a tangle of monstrous heart-shaped leaves. There were small buds that did not look like they could produce a six-inch flower and nothing was blooming.

Pretty leaves to admire? Definitely.

What I had envisioned? Definitely not.

And if I zoom out even more, was I missing the purpose of the moonflower? Most certainly so.

And then the weather suddenly was excessively hot. The buds began to grow at a rapid pace, stretching out into cones, with spiraling ridges, seemingly desperate to unravel. The moonflower vine thrived in the heat.

I could smell them before I ever saw a blossom.

Oranges and soap.

The moonflower is a striking night-blooming flower. It needs the night to grow and blossom. When the sun sets, the moonflower unfurls into a radiant, pearly petal that resembles the full moon. Only the darkness and the stars witness its full unveiling.

Aside from a sunflower, this first moonflower was the largest blossom I have ever seen. Its bud twists open and unravels one delicate petal before smoothing out. It’s center spirals out to form a five-point star. Their fragrance calls to the bees. And the moon signals me to sleep.

I find moonflowers are not unlike people.

We each have likely grown and transformed as a result of dark times. Times when we had difficulty seeing the light. Times when we feel like we can’t navigate the path ahead because night has fallen. And then we remember that we can make a whole journey with just the headlights.

And like the moonflower, we dare to bloom in the dark, growing in the shadows of the moon. We have all been planted just like seeds, to grow, breathe and move through shadows. And, we, too, bloom in the light we find.

I learned a lot from the moonflowers this summer as I waited for them to appear.

During their season, I joined them for their birth at the moonrise and their death at sunrise. With the climbing sun, the blooms curled back into themselves to slumber once more.

Each evening I welcomed them and observed their entrance. I don’t have a lot of nighttime photos for two reasons. One, because of not having a lot of light. And two, because I lost the need to be attached to a camera or a phone. I just wanted it to be the moonflowers and me. No distractions, just connecting with what I had grown.

One morning before the sun opened up like the yolk of an egg on the crack of the horizon, I stood before the stark white blossoms, enjoying a cup of cold brew coffee when a late summer wind carried a whisper. “You don’t have as much power as you think.”

And I heard the whisper as truth. Maybe I thought I had a lot of power in planting, watering, nurturing. But I really didn’t. Nature did its thing. I helped out when needed, and sometimes my “help” probably hurt, and I didn’t know enough to know the difference. Still, the plant prevailed.

In my camaraderie with the moonflowers, I found my purpose here can be as simple as to watch, see, learn, and just be.

Maybe some people would say I messed it up. Maybe they would say there weren’t enough blooms or they weren’t trellised high enough. And maybe all of those people are right. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I planted them with the knowledge that the growth would be bumpy and the result imperfect. And what I learned is that I don’t have all that much say in how it turns out.

I’d rather have had imperfect moonflowers than no moonflowers at all.

The trumpet of the moonflower called to me each day they bloomed. They uplifted me while I pondered big cosmic questions, like “what’s their purpose?” And even “what’s my purpose?” I grew content with knowing that the answer evolves and is as impermanent as the starry blossoms before me.

And now, they are gone, leaving me here to ponder the questions they left. Their questions are nestled in new seeds waiting to join us next season. And I wonder what next summer’s moonflowers will teach me.

They might look dead. Their job might look like it’s over as their oxygen-creating cells have crumpled. But these vines and blossoms simply aren’t dead. They have only changed form once again, this time back into a seed. The cycle continues just as it was made with the moonflower’s infinite, simple purpose.

And your purpose? Well, that might always be changing forms, too. Maybe you describe it differently from day to day or season to season. I encourage you to take some time this week to ponder Mary Oliver’s request—what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

In connection,

Ellie