Lately my high-schooler who has been working until late into the evening has been coming home, eating some left-over dinner and before I realize it has simply gone to bed. This should seem very uneventful I realize, but actually it is really another one of those first/last things that have seemed to come upon me at a rapid-fire pace recently. It brings up all sorts of ambivalence and melancholy. I want nothing more than for my children to become well-adjusted, contributing, thoughtful, (brave, clean, and reverent...if you've ever been a cub-scout or a parent of one..) adults. But of course we all know that in becoming an adult you must shed the childish parts of you.
This last week-end we warmed up to a toasty Spring-time 70-something degrees. Watching the weather report almost hourly has become almost sport, since temperature fluctuations here in the Salt Lake valley can sometimes change thirty degrees in just mere minutes. The itch to get out into the yard and clean up the garden-beds and trim dead limbs from gangly trees and shrubs is real after a long, strange, and in many ways, life-changing winter. For some, working in the yard is just that. Work. But for me it is better than any gym work-out or therapists office. It is where I find my center. Where my thoughts flow freely and I can make things tidy and also un-tidy. Stir the compost pile full of kitchen scraps from meals prepared and leaves and pine needles fallen, and watch the steam rise and the earth-worms do their work. There is nothing like the good ache of little muscles that have been dormant for long cold months, to make you feel alive and that good sort of sore.
Many parts of our yard frustrate me. The slope isn't quite right. The back-yard has never been level. 2008 we barely had enough money to spread some topsoil and most of the sod was from neighbors leftover landscape jobs. "Do you folks have plans for that sod that's just sitting out in front of your house turning brown?" I'd brazenly ask out of sheer desperation. "Nah...we're just waiting for the landscaper to come haul it away to the dump." "Oh! I'd be happy to take it away and save him a trip!" Slowly but surely the yard was patched together. I like to think of it as almost a friendship quilt. A square here from this neighbor, a square there from that one....I'm not prideful. I'm grateful.
Much of the side-yard grass was donated by our neighbor down the street. Mike. He even helped me install it one afternoon. Didn't take too long. As we lay the pieces one at a time, I would look down to the end of the rows of green and envision what this space could be someday. Mike also helped us move some massive rocks for our front walkway. The only splurge we made on the landscape since it was front and center. Mike is the the sort that sees a need and steps right in to help. Like speaking at my mother's funeral. But that's a story for another time.
That was the year that I'd read to my two youngest little boys, seven and five years old, each night before they'd fall asleep. They had bunk beds, the sort that had a single mattress on the top bunk and a full size on the bottom. The three of us would lie on the bottom bunk, me between the two boys, and I would read "The Secret Garden" to them. They were still just young enough that they didn't care about whether is was a "girl" book or "boy" book, and I knew I'd better sneak it in that precious window of time where it was just a "good" book.
I had purchased the annotated version, mostly for me since I had already read it a few times and wanted to dig in a bit more on the historical nature of the writing. The little boys would eventually feel heavy and warm against my arms and their breathing would slow to that of that first slumber of children that is often the deepest.
I remember the night that we got to the last chapter. I asked them to pick a different book. Probably a Junie B. Jones or Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle book. Any thing other than The Secret Garden. I just didn't want the magic to end. I didn't want to think about it being another last. As if, if I didn't read it then it wouldn't happen. Like remembering the last time I nursed my last baby. On that same bottom bunk bed. I just couldn't do it. I think a couple of times they asked me about how the book ended and I gave them the cliff-notes, figuring if they were really interested in the details, someday they could read it themselves or they may find themselves reading it to their own children.
Bronson loves our yard, and has lots of ideas for it. Most of them being to plant lots of pine trees and let them just take over. (Sounds just like his grandma) But he really loves the side-yard. I watch him hand-watering the plants (still no drip-system) and wonder if he feels some of the same magic I do when I work in it. My own secret garden. He has lived most of his life in this house. From Kindergarten to almost graduation now. He and many of the once tiny trees that we planted have, in a way, grown up together. He towers over me now, is making plans for his future and apparently manages to take himself to bed now with nary a bed-time story and hardly a "Good-night Mama".
I've been looking for a little table for the side yard. Just the little iron cafe' variety. Easy to move around as the sun and shade change but sturdy enough to hold my laptop so I can write. Maybe I'll need three chairs. And maybe. Just maybe....I'll have my boys come out to my secret garden one warm Summer evening.
And we'll finish that last chapter.
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