8 Planting Gardens

Day 8 - Jan. 27

This Sunday we make our way through the day, father restless, I uncertain. We talk, we read, we remember.

I kept a second set of Clinique products along with a tooth brush and travel size hair rollers in one of his closets. The fourth week of every month, for the last two years, I walked down the gangway to my seat on the Chicago to Rochester flight. Often, this last week turned into several weeks, overtaking the next month.

After a year of this routine it occurred to me to have duplicates so I didn't have to pack as much each time, and, I could leave on a moment's notice in an emergency. Browsing the aisles of Target, I was very pleased to find the travel roller set--its clips for each roller identical to the ones in my regular set. I'd been improvising, having misplaced several of my clips. Now I thought, "Great, I'll have the extra clips I need." One morning in Chicago as I reached for the next roller, I realized the new clips were, of course, in New York--not doing me any good here after all.

At the end of May we planted a garden. Father loved to watch things grow. Usually quite frugal with money, preferring to go out of his way to save pennies on groceries, and convinced that Walmart shirts and trousers are perfectly adequate, father did not hold back when it came to buying flowers for the garden. For all his baking projects it was mandatory to purchase Aldi's discount butter, sugar and flour, but the finest, top-of-the-line nurseries drew him in with every possible exotic shade of pink Geranium or giant Dahlia. He wasn't looking for generic flowers!

Neighbors helped with tilling and we hoed diligently. Strings were secured around small posts, carefully measured to create our work of art. Every flower was planted in correct line underneath the appropriate string. One year I counted nearly four hundred plants. A good friend trucked in the mulch.

Then we moved on to the vegetable section. Father chatted with the young men at the country nursery, asking how their lacrosse team had done that year, always mentioning their college by name and keeping up with their plans for after school. Each spring, they marveled that he remembered these details of their lives.

We drove away with tomato, cucumber, pepper, squash and onion plants. Father detested onions and everything about them. However, he always planted a row, "...to give away." I teased him that the real reason he planted them was because they stood up so straight in that row, adding drama to his garden.

The lettuce, beans and beets we planted from seeds underneath the measured rows of string. He insisted I use a ruler to count out exactly one or two inches for each seed as directed on the packages. In the end, his garden not only produced many bushels of vegetables to give away, but was a sight to behold--worthy of hours of meditation from his lawn chair under the blue skies of the open field.

Knowing lighthouses hold a fascination for him, last spring Steven gave father a solar powered lighthouse. I designed his flower garden with the lighthouse as a centerpiece, then added two dozen more solar lights throughout the garden. At night it resembled a landing strip.

Every month I walked the gangway to my seat for the flight from Rochester back to Chicago. Father said for days after each visit he awakened from his naps calling my name. He forgot I wasn't in the next room.

Three years ago I helped father plant his garden. Two years ago he helped me plant it. Last May I planted the garden in western New York's sunny farmland myself, basking in the sun for days from early morning till dusk.

It was my prayer. It was my hope. It was my gift.

All summer long and deep into the fall, as darkness approached, he watched. If he was too weak, he watched from his upstairs window. If he was able, he made his way out to the garden, pulled up his lawn chair where he watched and waited till the light on top of the lighthouse blinked on, and then in the black of night, till, one at a time, all twenty-four lights shined in his garden.

He had eighty-three years to ponder, to appreciate, to let go in the glow.