How Does Your Garden Grow?

I have a lot more blooming in my garden this year than ever before, and fewer weeds too!   It’s a sign.  I’ve been digging around out in the yard a lot more this year because it’s therapeutic.  It’s where I go when I need to work things out, and lately there’s been a lot to work on.  First of all, spring is graduation season, so I’m automatically nostalgic to begin with. It happens every year, I can easily be brought to tears just by seeing grads in their cap and gown, even when I don’t know them, because I know if I blink there will be faces I do know under there. But, this year, I have the added incentive to of also seeing my own first-born say so long to Middle School.  He’s all set to stroll into the new world of High School next fall to begin his own adventures and the count down to his own cap and gown wearing moment. So those final weeks of Middle School were especially bittersweet.  Each day that his promotion got closer, I dug deeper into the soil that would hold transplanted Hostas and daffodil bulbs, planters that I moved time and again to find just the right home, and flower beds that haven’t been weeded like this in years.  

But, even though I like the finished product, that’s not really all that I’m after out here in the garden.  I’m really here for the digging.  It doesn’t even matter if it’s with a shovel or rake or no tools at all. Just give me the dirt, because, at the end of the day, while my back may ache, my head will feel so much better.  There’s a whole lot more than anybody realizes buried out there with those roots.  Every worry, every nightmare, every silly angry frustration is covered up right next to every big dream, and excited plan and every little thing I needed time to accept a little more gracefully.  All buried in my garden.

That’s why it’s my favorite place.

But also because, not that many years ago quite a bit of our digging happened in this very same spot with much smaller shovels and much smaller worries.  I didn’t do quite as much actual gardening back then, but we got in a lot of digging.  When the kids were little we spent way too many hours to count filling pails to the top, digging deep holes, building castles and elaborate cities and big dreams, here in the sand box.  Many a day we were much too busy to quit our digging to take time for a snack so we would picnic on apples and cheerios right here next to the tools.  And, how many times did the adventure outgrow the sand box and take over the entire swing set, swings, slide and all?

Jake was just a baby when we first got it and from his little swing he witnessed thousands of pretend pirate ship sword fights, super hero rescues, and wild adventures that all stemmed from the imagination of his older brother.

And later, he would march out to sit on these swings every single day, sometimes even in the snow, just to lean back and then lean forward, pulling himself into that rhythm that helped him silently navigate all sorts of childhood moods both happy and not.

That’s why, it’s almost like an old friend has gone away, now that our old swing set has found a new home.  I hear echoes of “Higher!”  in the empty dirt ruts where they dragged their feet when we pushed them on their swings. “Weeee!” where the slide landing spot used to be. I couldn’t be more delighted to see our old pal, power washed and good as new, sitting there in that new yard, and two tiny bobbing blond heads racing toward it, pig tails flying as they run to dig into fresh sand, and swing from those same swings and dream big dreams.  I’m thrilled about that new beginning. But it sure has given me a great big spot in my own yard to get busy digging again.

Bee-Beep!

It really should come as no surprise that I’m writhing in pain on the floor, in the dark while everyone else sleeps peacefully around me.  I’m sure I looked a little like Wile E. Coyote caught, once again, the gullible fool by the crafty Road Runner… Bee-Beep. 

No matter how many times I ask that this not be the case, these huge sports shoes that weigh as much as a frozen chicken and cost more than both my prom dresses put together, are constantly in the middle of the floor where I am trying to do almost anything other than trip over them.  And now, as I sit cradling my foot after walking full steam down the hall in the dark and, of course, ramming right into the roadrunner’s cleverly placed anvil, I swear, again, I will make these children listen next time.

If it’s not one son’s shoes in the middle of the floor, it’s the other son’s four water glasses beside his bed, each filled with the water he thought he needed the night before, and the night before that, and the night before that.  “Please!” I repeat again and again, “Every time I come into your room I should not need to leave with an armload of dishes!”  It really does seem to be a reasonable request.  But there are others too.  There are the inside out socks in the laundry followed by the inside out pants, complete with the inside out boxers still attached…a talent really when you think about it, but annoying none the less. There’s the popular notion that we apparently live in a place where it’s acceptable to leave plates, food, wrappers, Gatorade bottles or all of the above, strewn about wherever we were last enjoying what was once inside.  Again, I lecture, I plead, I reason, I lay down the law; I make them return and retrieve the litter.  But, alas, nothing has worked so far to remedy the problem.

I know that I really should have consequences for these broken rules.  But in the grand scheme of our lives, the shoes on the floor, the socks in the laundry and the extra dish to wash all seem so small compared to life’s real problems.  Plus, there is the nagging irony in all my talking.  Ironic since I’m the only one who seems to be doing it.  

It wasn’t all that long ago that my children produced a virtual fire hose of conversation, we could barely keep up or get a word in.  Now, their words drip out from a leaky faucet.  Led by the oldest child, who can manage an entire conversation in which his answers consist of one-syllable responses, some of which aren’t even actual words, just sounds.

And just as I’ve started to resign myself to the fact that the long conversations are gone, I get an unexpected one here and there just to throw me off.  The catch is, the timing won’t be mine to decide.

For instance, at the end of another busy day when I am about to drag my self off to fall into bed, at my weakest moment, my teenager perks up, suddenly full of information, and happy to share.  Or during church, when all is quiet, he is suddenly ready to whisper to me an entire week’s worth of information that mysteriously comes pouring out, with colorful detail, wit and humor and full-blown genuine candor.  Yet, when I have waited all day to ask, “How was your day?” I receive the monosyllabic “fine” and “good”.

What I’ve come to realize is this.  It is not mine to determine when these golden moments will arise, but how I react is.  So, no matter how tired, or busy, or interrupted I feel, I am trying to clamp my lips shut tight and open my ears.  Because sometimes life’s most important lessons don’t come from a lecture they come from complete silence. And life’s most important battles are usually not the little ones at all.  A good reminder on a night when my smallest toe is barking the loudest.