Two of a Kind, Time Flies Quietly

We are two of a kind, my daughter and I, yet as time flies quietly I discover how different we are. We are like a rose bush growing alongside a grapevine. The rose, blooming all year round in this South African favorable weather, is always giving, sharing joy and quiet smiles. The grapevine takes full advantage of spring, encouraged, a miracle boosting with life from one day to the next. Take your eyes off and you miss its rarity. Time flies quietly.

Our rosebush is the climbing kind, stretching over the vineyard in an attempt to protect it. And the grape shoots reach back towards the rose’s strong branches, garbing it with their green tendrils for support. And they both stretch together towards the sun. And the stars.

I often try to separate them, these two of a kind, the rose and the grapevine, thinking they will suffocate one another. And yet, who am I to stop their friendship? Each one fragile, but stronger together.

We are beautiful through this, through our fragility.

We are live stories that cannot be categorized, a blend of beautiful threads that come from everything that made us bloom and everything that opposed to us in life, difficulties and obstacles. Threads of gentleness and kindness that sprouted from us through the gentleness and kindness we have been shown.

We are stories with chapters telling other’s life tales, those people who have shared theirs with us, taking us by the hand and into their stories, without fear that the light or the darkness in them will drive us away. Because the fragility behind it was what mattered. A fragility that taught us to walk gracefully, to thread softly.

I cannot pinpoint the moment when the rose branch and the grape shoot make contact and hold tight. It happens through sun and wind, rainy afternoons and moonlit nights. Just like the fragility that others choose to share with us, that teaches us to thread softly around a human soul. While educating us about its strength too, through light or darkness, as time flies quietly.

We are two of a kind, my daughter and I, I thought to myself this morning while we drove to school as we did for twelve years, today once more, on her last formal day of high-school.

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Two of a Kind, Time Flies Quietly is my contribution to Becky’s October Squares #KindaSquare