The Wild Aster – A Tribute

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
 
                                                            Matthew 6: 28-29
 
 
It is their time.  On my walks now in the tree park I notice the wild asters abundantly fringing the lower shrubs like lace collars, poised and fragile as Alencon, and everywhere ringing small trees as if arraying themselves for autumn’s grand finale.

There is a poignance to asters — along with goldenrod, fall’s final bloom.  Indigenous and profuse, they are a humble offering compared to their flashy summer cousins.   These adornments to a sea of late-season green are more like an exquisitely tuned accompaniment than the prima act.  Closer to daily bread, than to mile high ice cream desserts.

As I enter the path of the later years with greater awareness of each passing moment, with my share of pain and a handful of wisdom, I feel an inexplicable kinship with them.  What have they to teach, about the care with which I ought to approach every relationship and challenge?

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I knew little of asters as a young woman.  But this was to change, exactly one month into my marriage.  This was when my in-laws drove from New Hampshire to Boston for their first visit.  I would later learn that was the old-fashioned way.  The practice was to give the new couple a month to settle, and then to “pay call,” to make the transition from the honeymoon’s pas de deus to re-engagement in the larger family circle.

At the door, my mother-in-law presented me with a lush cone of purple flowers.  At first, I thought they were daisies.  Wrapped in newspaper and fulsome, they filled the kitchen counter while I, a classically discombobulated new wife, ransacked cupboards for some way to keep them alive.  Eventually I discovered a pewter pitcher (a wedding gift) and arranged the sprays thus, having by then learned their name.  The pairing of violet and silver graced the piano for weeks afterwards.

Only with the years did I come to see the significance of my mother-in-law’s gesture.  She was giving me the gift of age, a foreshadowing of the woman I would one day become.  Embedded in it was a peace offering, for having taken her beloved son from her.  Also, a wish for happiness, I am sure of this.  They were an attempt to build a bridge of understanding between us.

But more than anything, I see now, the asters were a prophecy that it would take many years for me to understand.

Asters are an ancient symbol of patience.  Theirs is the beauty that blooms after the showy high summer flowers have had their day. They seem to just appear  —   but in fact, they have been lying dormant, preparing for the moment when they can offer the border garden its most precious asset – depth and strength of color, continuing form when the ballerinas of summer have long since left the stage.

Quietly they appear, these flower of the mature season, and humbly they sing their song.  If one is careless, or in too much of a hurry, or too focused on one’s destination, you will miss them entirely.  Like poems.  Like an old woman’s smile.  Like the simple comfort of a well-loved home.

Coming as they did from this woman I would know much more deeply as time went by, they were also, I believe, a prayer: that I’d chosen in her son a companion who would stay the journey, and love the wild aster phase of life with as much enthusiasm as he did the youthful one we were living then — value and love the fragile petals, the less demonstrative expression, the preference for staying close to home.

Today, on my walk, they are asking me to consider my own capacity to honor this season in my own life — not only what I once was, in a brighter time, but what I am now.

Asters are shade-loving and drought tolerant, attributes that surely behoove anyone who sets herself the goal of meeting whatever life throws her way.  It is a mighty thing to bloom without sun or water, but there are times when life demands this.   We are taught by all wisdom traditions that we are to scatter our seed, flourish as best we can, with no thought of notice or reward.

Perhaps this is the essence of patience.  Not a highly sanctioned value in these times.

But the longer I consider the existential nature of the aster, the more I see.   Not what the world sees, certainly.  But never mind the clumsy, careless world.

Look closely.  There is always and ever the hidden life of humble things.  In this case, there are the tiny creatures, voiceless and mostly invisible, who secure for the aster, as for each of us, an abiding purpose even when life’s grander schemes have faded or passed on.

Birds and small rodents feast on their seeds, and find essential shelter beneath their dried stalks.  While only the botanists are looking, the lowly aster is also performing the essential service of nourishing the vanishing varieties of butterflies and moths, without whom we would have no pollination, no flashy spring flowers, no honey or corn – or dare we say it, joy?

Say, then, that asters are like the old women with their bread crumbs who feed the birds in the public squares.  So common, one could pass them by without a second glance.  So essential that we should all aspire to their grace and capacity to show up, without fanfare or even the right conditions, when life tells us that it is our time.