Turning Toward the Light
Pepper Scott
There is something particular about reading the story of a woman who did the preserving, the tending, the championing, and received almost none of the credit. That was my thought while reading The Secret Life of Sunflowers. It was one of the books I read without Terry beside me to share the experience, without his observations arriving a chapter ahead of mine, without the familiar exchange of, "What do you think of this part?"
Instead, I carried my thoughts of him through the pages.
Terry admired Vincent van Gogh. For a season of his life, he studied the technique, fascinated by the movement of paint and the way light seemed to live inside color. He even attempted a self-portrait using the dabbing style. It hangs quietly now, a conversation between effort and curiosity.
Looking at it, I am reminded that admiration is often an act of participation. We love something, and then we try it. We reach toward it with whatever tools we have. Sometimes the result is a masterpiece. Sometimes it is paint on a canvas and a good story. Both have their place.
What stayed with me most in the novel was Johanna.
I recognized something familiar in her.
Not because she was extraordinary in the loud, headline-making sense. Quite the opposite. She kept going because she believed the work mattered. She protected what she valued because she could not imagine doing otherwise. There was a steadiness to her, like a sunflower following the sun across the sky without ever announcing the effort.
That kind of devotion rarely receives applause.
Yet it changes everything.
One line from the book continues to linger with me: "Fear no storms, turn in gratitude toward the light."
At first glance, it sounds simple enough to embroider onto a pillow.
But then life hands you a storm.
A real one.
The kind that rearranges the furniture of your heart.
And suddenly those words are no longer decorative. They become practical. They become instructions.
Turn toward the light.
Not because darkness does not exist.
Because light does.
That distinction matters.
The book reminded me that presence matters, too. That showing up, even in small rooms, even when no one is keeping score, shapes what survives. Gardens survive that way. Families survive that way. Art survives that way.
People do, too.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the quiet caretakers of the world. The people who keep records, save letters, preserve paintings, remember birthdays, water plants, and insist that meaningful things should not simply drift away like autumn leaves in a strong wind.
That is not a small thing.
In some strange, not extraordinary way, I felt both understood by Johanna and understanding of her. We seemed to be standing on opposite sides of a garden path, nodding at one another over the flowers.
No grand declarations.
Just recognition.
Sometimes that is enough.
More than enough, actually. It is a little like turning toward the light and discovering someone else has been facing the same direction all along.
