Orange Rose - An Allegory (Part 2)

Here's the link to Part 1 in case you missed it last week. 

You should probably check it out, because otherwise this post will make no sense.

One day, the girl noticed a new smell. The wind had died down several days before and the garden smelled less burnt. But this smell, it couldn’t be, it was! The girl recognized the scent of her orange rose. She searched for its source and found, under a thick tangle of the strange, wilted plants, a tiny rose shoot. She was surprised how much scent it gave even before it had any blooms. She thought of her father’s bright rose garden far away. She remembered that he had promised to return. She surveyed the garden he taught her to care for. All the plants were bent and browning, but most of them were still alive.

The girl set out to heal the garden before her father returned. She watered diligently and buried her father’s plant food in the rows of the garden. Soon the plants began to straighten, and some even put out new flowers!

Most of all, the girl took care of her tiny rose bush. She cleared away the stems and branches near it so it could receive as much cloudy light as possible. After she watered and fed her plants, she would sit by her rose bush and sing songs her father had taught her long before their journey. Each night she would lay down by the bush and smell it, and each morning it had grown bigger and healthier. 

Eventually, she found it had a bud! The girl was very excited and spent hours every day singing by her bush. She was so happy that she would soon have another rose to remind her of her father.

One morning, the girl woke early to an overpowering smell. She jumped up and looked at her bush. Not one, but three new blooms had opened! There had only been one bud growing, she knew it. How could the three have grown so quickly? Nervous and excited, she scanned the horizon. Far away she made out a tiny figure walking toward the garden with a deliberate, steady pace. She ran toward him, faster and faster until she thought she would trip over her feet. Her father ran, too, and when they met, he scooped her up and held her while she cried and laughed. When he finally set her down and she saw his face through her drying tears, she noticed wet lines in the wrinkles of his smile.

“Well done, my daughter,” he said, “I can see and smell that you have taken care of my garden and my gift.”

The girl looked down at her feet. “But I didn’t. I crushed the orange rose you gave me.”

“I knew you would.”

“What? Then why did you give it to me?”

“Because I knew when you crushed it, it would grow. And because I wanted you to know that I always take your failures and use them to make my plants more beautiful than before. Now this garden has an orange rose bush!”

The girl and her father smiled at each other. They walked through the garden and the father thanked his daughter for taking such good care of the plants. The girl picked the biggest of the three blooms from her bush and gave it to her father. Then they journeyed, hand in hand, back to the father’s bright rose garden.