The rain streak just ended. No more excuses.
The grass is bushy now and as tangled as my thoughts; I can think straighter when the lawn is cut. Other people have already planted their splashy annuals and lovely perennials, but not me. Yet.
I break free of my eternal captors—the calendar and the clock, the deadlines and the doing—and head out to the back yard. With hands on my hips, I survey what winter concealed. New green things poke up from the flower beds—some desirable, others not so much.
I imagine how it used to be when The Gardener planted the garden in the east, in Eden, and in the cool of the day strolled through its lushness with the world’s first people. They were all friends back then—back before weeds and pesticides, suicide and depressed kids, CT scans and chemo. Before the dirt in our jeans and the stains in our souls.
I sigh now because of The Incident in that ancient garden. It happened too soon, and the rift between The Gardener and humanity has left a mark. The cosmic divorce was as messy as they come. And along with all the other groanings, we sweat and dig harder into the earth to make pretty things emerge. Not like before The Break-Up when beauty came easy.
A pool of light warms my dog Lala, slabbed out on the pavement, her nose twitching for information about her surroundings even as she dozes. And the scene reminds me all is not lost. The Son shone on the ancient garden too—even after The Split—promising us a future garden, if we want it.
On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
It started in a garden, and it ends in a garden. But for now, I work the soil while I wait.
*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the stories from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.