Editor’s note: Mary’s inaccuracies and misspellings have not been corrected. We value our young sister’s perspective and have preserved her note as she gave it to us.
Year 43, Early Autumn · Pearl River
Last year I asked every traveller to bring me an interesting seed from somewhere else in the world. I did not think they all would, because if every traveller did it we should need another house for the packets. One came yesterday, which is exactly enough.
A sister who had been following Pearl River handed it to me at the twenty-sixth mile marker. The packet was folded brown paper, tied with blue thread, and there was no picture. It said where the seeds were gathered, but the person who first wrote the name had got rain on the ink. There were only three letters left and one might have been a beetle leg.
I asked what the plant was. She said, “That is for you to find out.” This is a very clever answer when you do not know.
Da told me not to laugh, because not knowing is an honest thing if you say it plain. So I wrote everything we did know on a fresh packet: seeds carried upriver, dry when they arrived, six in all, brown with a pale mark on one side. My sister drew one beside the writing. Her picture looks a little like a bun, but it is a good bun.
I wanted to plant all six at once. Da said three now and three kept safe. He reminded me that Joseph stored grain during the good years instead of using it all. That is at Genesis 41:48, 49. I told him grain is not the same as six seeds. He said no, but planning ahead is still planning ahead. I let him keep three.
We made three small places by the sunny wall. I sang only one verse over them because people still say my singing cannot change how fast a seed grows. We shall see. I gave them water and put three white stones in a row so nobody steps there.
My sister asked what I will call the plant. I said I will call it the Blue-Thread Wonder. She said that is not finding out; that is making up. She is right, which she enjoys very much. Until the first leaves come, the label says only: Packet with no picture.
Before, grown people sometimes spoke as though the world was getting smaller because far places could send things quickly. Here the world feels large in a better way. A seed can travel for weeks in a pocket, reach our bit of Pearl River, and still have a surprise left in it. Nothing is lost because we must wait.
I prayed to Jehovah before bed and thanked him for making so many kinds of growing things that one little girl cannot know them all. In Paradise, not knowing does not feel frightening. It feels like there will be something good to learn in the morning.
If the seeds grow, I will send three back downriver with the right name written very clearly. If they do not grow, I will write that too. It is not a bad story merely because the ending is true.
Mary Bowen, age 13