The New Leaves of Spring

I get a text message from my friend Michael who lives in Beijing: "It's nice to see the trees are getting leaves!" I reply: "My English is getting pretty bad, too!"

Despite my joke-making, I wake up this morning (after the first spring rain) and notice that all the trees do have leaves on them, and it brings a sense of relief (yeah!), a burst of joy (yeah!), and hope (yeah!) to my heart.

I wake up and after my cup of tea and bowl of oatmeal, go outside to do my daily set of taiji. People walking in my neighborhood walk by and stare with perplexed looks and they sometimes smile.

Surrounding me is a yard full of trees and I notice their tiny leaves are just beginning to sprout. As I am doing doing taiji, I notice an old man behind me walk into the yard with a plastic bag. The yard is usually messy, filled with trash, and I am happy because it looks like he wants to clean up a little. But as I continue my set, I notice he's not cleaning up at all.

He walks up to a small tree with small greenish-purplish leaves and starts picking them and putting them into his bag. I assume he is just going to pick a few leaves, but he keeps picking.

I am curious and instinctively, want to stop him. I want to "protect" those young leaves. I stop my taiji. I wonder what he wants to do, maybe take the pickings home and grow them in glasses of water or something.

I decide to continue doing my taiji, but then I notice that he keeps picking those leaves. All those new young leaves are almost gone!

I stop my taiji and turn around to him. "Good morning!" I say. He is short, in his 70s, with white hair and thick-rimmed black glasses. He looks over to me. I ask him politely what he is doing and he tells me that you can eat these leaves. "Fried eggs," he tells me. They are good with fried eggs!

I ask him what that name of the plant is. He tells me and I thank him and go back to taiji.

He's finished picking leaves. I turn back again and look at the tree. It's bare and only the top most bunch of small leaves are left.

I guess someone will have some tasty eggs for the next few days.