Garden

June 3, 2010

My dad has been traveling a lot this year and was jetting off to Guam for three weeks, yet again, and so B and I went over to help them plant their garden.

This was Anna’s first year ever planting the garden with my parents and so she had yet to experience what has become a sort of disjointed Tango for them. My dad lays out his garden by digging rows in his freshly tilled earth with his grubbin’ hoe. He isn’t very precise and simply says ‘Keep me in line’ and off he goes with mom keeping him in line from her perch on the bench against the fence. This bench, by the way, has seen more talks between husband and wife, parent and child and gossiping sibling than any other location in our yard. Mom eyeing his row course corrects along the way. You may think that being an avid gardener my dad would plant the seeds as directed, concentrating on placing each one in it’s place. This would be an incorrect assumption on your part; rather he seems to delight in scattering them just so. Planting not only seeds but the hopes and dreams that accompany them of a fruitful harvest and the memories to be built around the table of their bounty. As he plants, the world around him seems to rejoice in the ritual. The quail coo from their perches in the trees, my dad’s “friend” as he calls him, the robin, alights near his feet in hopes that a worm has been uncovered. God himself seems to let out a sigh rustling the quakies in a light breeze. Amidst this idyllic setting so perfect, so serene the joyful noise of bickering begins. My mom will start with ‘The tomatoes seem really far apart’ to which my dad will replay ‘Last year you said they were too close so I moved them further apart’ or ‘I don’t think we have enough pumpkins’ to ‘are you kidding me with the tomato cages’. The Tango begins. You can almost picture it taking place in some seedy ally in Argentina. My mom raises her hands to the sky, my dad stomping his feet with ties in his mouth instead of a rose. Both grunting and sighing…not of old age as you would think but from the emotion of the dance. Suddenly without notice the Tango is over as quickly as it began. The garden planted we have only to look forward to next year’s dance.

B sensing the ritual stayed out of the way on the bench…I will admit some of this had to do with the fact that she remains exhausted from the lima bean in her belly. Although they bicker my parents have been together for over 40 years and have a deep seeded love for each other that you can see in the way my mom touches my dad’s arm or in how his eves will tear up as he discusses his love of her. I can only hope that B and I will be able to emulate their relationship and the way in which they raised us in our own lives.