I drove home in a gray afternoon. It’d been a long day at
work, the kind that keeps you so busy that you haven’t a minute to think about
a single thing. Frantic, with deadlines, and people pulling you a million directions.
Needless to say I was drained, and utterly exhausted.
I pulled up to the driveway, and shut the car off. As much
as I wanted warmth, I didn’t hurriedly dash for the front door. Instead, I looked
out of my passenger window and saw my dad gardening in the front yard. It was
his favorite thing to do. And he was so good at it. His green thumb made
everything flourish in effortless beauty. I loved that about him.
I hadn’t noticed how depressing our yard looked. This winter
had been so bitterly cold it had taken hostage most of the plants. But brown
and wilting as they were, my dad kneeled beside them adding fertilizer and
water. He was also attaching pieces of tarp to his beloved rose bushes,
shielding them from the winter frost. I thought it was monotonous, but he kept
on, paying no mind to the bone-chilling wind and the 32 degree weather that
afternoon. After all it was his garden, and if he didn’t do it no one else
would.
I went inside swiftly only yelling out a “hi dad” before
shutting the front door close. I went directly to my room, threw my things on a
chair, sat on the corner of my bed, and laid back head first. I closed my eyes.
Thoughts were swirling in my head. But all I could keep thinking about was how reminiscent
of those rose bushes I felt. Long gone the green of the stem and the blooming
buds. Instead, they lied crippled, brown, and wilted.
A break up and the end of an era had casted a winter filled
with shadows and uncertainty. I couldn’t stop the process much less a rose
could stop winter from rolling through. But though accepted and having had
closure, my inner self couldn’t but help remain lifeless and wilted. I’d lost
my bloom, and at that moment hadn’t the slightest idea of how to recover.
Some things seem menial, as if the task surpasses the ending
result in strength and time, and therefore seems wasteful. But they are
nonetheless necessary. Some things seem so uncertain, that all hope attached to
it seems foolish and imprudent. For the person outside looking in, a brown,
wilted rose bush is just that. Wilted. They’d never experienced its spring… when
the bloom of the flower made a garden luscious, beaming and radiant.
And yet when March crept up from behind the long buried shadows,
and the garden stretched out its arms after its deep slumber, the onlooker
would welcome it with joy. Forgotten was the arduous task of keeping alive its
roots so that it would bloom again in spring. To the gardener the end result of
a tedious winter was worth it. Where someone saw a dead garden, he saw soil, and
seed, and life.
I think we too often forget that. In the, at times,
excruciating task of mending our hearts we burry our heads so deep into our
despair and sorrow that we forget that. Our hearts and our strength seem so
shattered they haze our view. And everything seems yellowing, browning, withered.
But in truth, with a little work, and a
lot of hope, even the bleakest garden can bloom again. After all isn’t the
definition of faith “the evident demonstration of realities that are not seen”?
I lied in bed looking up at my ceiling, 30 minutes had gone
by. I stood up and went to my window, and there was my dad still working in the
garden. I went into the kitchen and poured him a hot cup of coffee and myself a
hot tea. I put on my coat and walked outside to give it to him. I asked him
what he was doing, he looked up at me and smiled and he began explaining to me
the technicalities. And even though I couldn’t begin to grasp the concept, I nodded.
Because truth is… in the dead of winter we all need a little
nurturing, a little warmth, or even just a hot cup of coffee to keep us going.
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