I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!

The Jew in me is finally coming out (and I mean that in the best way possible). For the first time in my life, I made something from nothing. I, Shari Lopatin, who managed to kill Aloe Vera (which is like killing a cactus because you don’t water it), has succeeded in making something green sprout. Just like my people have created a pine-tree-Amazon that’s visible from space in the midst of the desert (a.k.a. Israel), I am on my way to a homegrown oasis.

Maybe it’s in my blood to surround myself with living things that breathe carbon dioxide.

Who knows? But I suddenly have a renewed sense of worth. How do I express the exhuberation that charged through my body when I looked down into a pot of black nothingness, only to discover a tiny green finger pointing up at me, as if to say, “Shari, this one’s for YOU.”

Now I understand what mothers must feel like.

OK, maybe I overstepped my bounds there. But this little green bud IS my baby. I filled the pot with compost; I hand tilled the dirt; I mixed coffee grounds into the soil; and I watered it every day. I might as well have been an asexual fish–you know, the types that fertilize their own eggs.

This baby bud couldn’t wait to pop out of the dirt. The packet said the flowers would take 14-28 days to sprout.

It’s been less than two weeks.

I must be GOOOOOD. I know it’s just a sprout, but nothing grows into a forest from one day to the next. We all start as sprouts: little green buds barely pushing our way through the dirt’s threshold into the sun. And when we arrive, our souls warm with the life we’ve so been craving.

Somewhere, deep inside me, that bud has awoken once again. Somewhere, hidden away, I’m beginning to remember . . . I’m beginning to remember the warmth and the light.