In the purest sense, a seed should only produce one outcome; a single pathway to fully formed fruit. The job of the gardener or orchardist is to protect and care for the young life, get out of the way, and give that life every chance of growing into maturity.
But what happens when young growth has some kind of trauma forced upon it?
That’s how I feel about my teenage years, like my maturation veered off course a tad, and my life from then on, for a long time, was anchored to the experience I had as an eleven year old when a school excursion ended in the worst possible way.
Since then I have grown up with an image burned into my brain of my little brother Juddy floating face down in the water, extremely still.