The Beauty in Leaf Miners: Writing and Creating Through Vulnerability

Saturday morning me and E headed out to work the garden. I’ve been entertaining the idea of a small Autumn and Winter garden this year, which means our pre-frost prep begins now in the dry heat of August. Usually, as summer starts to bend towards fall we sort of take a break, allow the garden to move through another life cycle and bed down for winter. Partially because the heat takes its toll on us. E is so fair and burns easy, causing him to cover up from neck to ankles. And while I only caramelize and concentrate, as my hair gets longer and thicker it feels more and more like a mat of wool over my neck, shoulders, arms, and back. But I long for sweet, homegrown carrots, plump and earthy beets, and dark green kale for juicing, soups, and sautéed winter salads. Autumn and winter eating is enough to pull me to the garden, pulling weeds and turning soil beneath the sun.

I wasn’t prepared for a few things when we headed out, early, trying to beat the sun. The weeds and the speed they manage to crowd spaces always overwhelms me. But this time, I told myself to prepare for green. Even thought to myself, smile at the weeds, see them for the misguided plants that they are and keep working. If I am honest, I am that garden girl, that odd person, who enjoys the hard work of gardening. I feel restless if my knees are not caked with wet soil and there isn’t mud clinging to my boots. I welcome the blisters and sore muscles. Reminders of hard work and promises of food to come.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the large growth spurt our dwarf Meyer lemon went through. A good four to five years old, it has grown slowly, expanding out in an open lacy structure that has never felt visually filling to me. When I planted it I had romantic ideas of large green orbs of leaves atop a stubby trunk. Lemons, I daydreamed, would be plentiful amongst the ball of leaves.

As I got closer I was even less prepared for the labyrinth of white lines on all the new leaves, still darkening with sun. Lines that remind me of the kids’ early attempts to write, messy and beautiful with crisp edges.

Some people think the scribbled leaves signaling leaf miners is unsightly, but I think them beautiful, though arresting. As if nature has a white crayon and while we sleep, practices penmanship on the lemon and lime leaves. Young lemon leaves glow yellow beneath green creating a fluorescent, Day-Glo hue. And the miners, drunk beneath photosynthesis, make trails white like cumulus clouds—chalky, crisp, and sharp. I found myself studying the patterns, eye tracing them, getting dizzy and wishing I could paint my own leaf paths. Amused, I bent over the leaves, do you know you’re little artists, I asked the invisible miners.

I know that the pest won’t damage the tree, but I still found myself pruning. Not because I thought it ugly, the reason most folks prune, but because I became afraid. What if’s flooded my mind. It wasn’t until I noticed the mature, darker leaves, flat and perfectly shaped that I was able to stop and remind myself that it is only the new growth the miners want.

Growth. They want tender, new growth. Vulnerable and delicate.

And I can’t help but think there is this one thing about growing. Vulnerability. When we are most fragile, most defenseless and expanding, it hurts. We stretch and pull ourselves out in crooks and crannies we knew nothing about before. Some areas balloon out faster than we are prepared, making stretch marks on our spirit. And it all can hurt.

Life is no different from citrus trees. Especially the writing and creative life. We grow and just as we are day-glowing in all our fragile expanded places, something comes along, tunneling and mining through our yellow-green leaves freshly unfurled.

Like my initial reaction, we tend to prune, get defensive, ache, cut as the offender(s) curl us into ourselves. Growth can appear ugly and damaged sometimes. But, if we step back, step out of context and look at things fresh we often see that we are most beautiful when we are growing, creating stretch marks, scars, and tunnels. I know it never seems that way when it hurts, when it is confusing, when it is scary, but you believe me, it’s beautiful.

What if you allowed the scars? What if, instead of grabbing pruning shears or ripping things out, you allowed them to stay. To change. Grow. What if you grabbed a paintbrush and started painting the stretch marks, or pen and started naming the scars—telling their stories. We all speak vulnerability. We all have thought ourselves unwise, unbeautiful, incapable. And I’ll bet you a basket of yellow lemons that most times, we’ve felt those ways when we are growing.

Leaf miners, no matter how busy they appear at first glance, last only a few weeks. They don’t alter the quantity or quality of fruit a mature tree bears, and never attack mature leaves. Even while the leaves are scribbled with chalk white lines, there is still green, and photosynthesis is happening, feeding and nurturing the tree. The real, naturing work still gets done.

Fruit grows even when a tree is fragile.

When you are vulnerable, scarring and stretching, with new growth, you are still living, beautiful and worthy of feeding and nurturing.

Just as it doesn’t make sense to prune healthy leaves, though scarred, for cosmetic reasons, it doesn’t make sense to starve yourself of the nurturing you need while growing, even through ugly pain.

It is why we must be gentle and kind to ourselves. Patient and allowing.

I am always most disastrous to myself when I am expanding, ripping at the seams and vulnerable to my own success. My own possibilities that I cover with perfectionism, self doubt, and fear. Soon as I grow new leaves, I catch glimpses of success and coward. Self-doubt, fear, perfectionism tunnel through me.

But what if I thought those fears beautiful. Embrace them and paint them, write them and give them names, love them and accept them? I believe I can be beautiful and vulnerable at once. Mature and still needing to grow. You have to believe this too. I think it is how we grow best. Allowing room for the tunnels, exposing our new leaves and depending on our mature ones to do the heavy work, but most importantly accepting and honoring ourselves, scars and all.

Last week I promised to share my aspirations, priorities and investments. As promised:

Five Goals:

1. Raise a healthy (physically, mentally, spiritually) family.
2. Write books (not just novels, but lifestyle books too—food, gardening, homemaking). And write often—poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, write it all.
3. Live a healthy, creative, plant-based, simple life that includes exercise, a healthy diet, creative work, and focuses on real connections and experiences over material or superficial experiences.
4. Teach or edit, or both professionally.
5. Hike and get out into nature more, possibly regularly.

Five Investments:

1. Schooling the kids and schooling myself.
2. Writing and reading.
3. Cooking, preparing to cook, researching things to cook, etc.
4. Being available for extended family, friends, social networking.
5. Watching T.V./Internet searching
6. Working in the garden.

Thoughts:

In some ways I feel like my lists match, but I know they do not align the way they need to. Honestly, I feel like I could and should do more of the things I love to do creatively, and less watching T.V. and Internet searching.

I don’t exercise as much as I’d like to. Ideally, I would consistently workout every other day, but some days I’m overwhelmed with schoolwork and there just isn’t enough hours. I also feel like I am not teaching and editing enough, if at all. I am a co-editor at my university’s literary magazine, but I’d like more editing work. I have also secured some beginning teaching work, but it has been slow to take off. Finally, I am not out in nature enough for me. I know that this is largely because of the weather, it is just too hot to hike, but there is a small part of me that thinks this is just an excuse.

Actions:

1. Create a shorter exercise routine that I can fit into my schedule.
2. Offer my writing/editing services for free if need be, or create opportunities.
3. Limit T.V. (already done, I don’t watch T.V. till the last couple of hours of my day to unwind.)
4. Create a Hiking/Nature Trails to-do list and start planning day hikes.
5. Start small quilting and painting projects that I can pick up and do when I have time.

Taking time to list my goals, investments, and actions was very helpful in seeing where I’m at and where I want/need to still go. It has been so helpful that I am going to have the kids and E do the same, and we’ll also do it as a family. Knowing where you’re at, where you want to go, and what you’ll need to do to get there is the first step in conquering fear and self-doubt.

We only fear what we don’t know.

Peace and Love,

Kiandra