When I told someone around here (won’t mention any names) I was thinking of writing this week’s column about the glorious cherry blossoms and their power to unite people in a celebration of nature, I was met with a sardonic guffaw. In fact, it was suggested that such a reverie might have readers “spitting out their muesli.”
Well, what does a cynical Scot know – he, from the land of the thistle.
So here goes, my ode to the cherry blossom.
I consider myself a bit of a 40-year-old cherry blossom virgin. I was 40 when I moved to Richmond and until then had never really experienced the full glory of trees heavily laden with pink and white blossoms, or the wonder of being caught in a blossom blizzard as the wind blew the pretty petals off the branches or picked them up off the ground.
And then there were the newly-claimed bragging rights. I recall seeing a cartoon. In the first panel, a guy with a snow blower is clearing snow from his walkway. In the next panel, a guy with a snow blower is clearing cherry blossoms from his walkway. That’s the kind of thing you just have to clip out and sent back to friends in Ontario.
But, of course, the real magic of cherry blossoms is their combined grandeur and fragility. They explode onto the scene, but only for a couple of weeks, or maybe just days. It’s their glorious, yet fleeting nature that makes them such a poignant symbol of the precious, yet transient, nature of life.
I talked about this column idea to my sister, who, I’ll have you know, did not so much as smirk at its cheesiness. She lived in Japan for a number of years and said you can’t imagine how big a deal it is there. And it goes well beyond looking at pretty flowers, or even revering nature. It’s about connecting. Employee groups, interest clubs, friends, family, even the “incense smelling group” she was part of (no kidding — I come by this honestly) would gather under the cherry blossoms to do their thing, elevating the moment by being in the presence of such riotous fragility.
This is only the second year of Richmond’s Cherry Blossom Festival, and organizers say they’ve chosen the theme of harmony for this year’s event. They’ve chosen harmony because they’re seeing too little of it in our community of late.
They have a point. There has been plenty of discord, contentious issues and hostile outbursts. But there have also been some inspiring moments. In fact, last night, proponents and detractors of the housing project for the homeless, a project that has ignited a furious debate, came together at a “roundtable.” What’s more, this was an entirely grassroots initiative, the product of caring people reaching out.
As British author and journalist Johann Hari, who was in Richmond recently for a housing conference, said: “The opposite of addiction, isn’t sobriety — it’s connection.”
It may be a stretch to say the opposite to disharmony is celebrating cherry blossoms, but maybe not if that celebration is about creating connections and appreciating the wonder of nature.
So, how’s that muesli going down?
