During the first weekend after everything ugly had come to light, I wrote/text/e-mailed Sharon often. I was living out of a suitcase, sleeping on couches and air mattresses, but I wanted her to know she was always on my mind, the last thing I thought of before sleeping, the first thing on my mind when I woke. It was the only thing I thought I could do to help, but it was too much. On that Saturday night, she texted to say I was only making it worse. "I need more time, I need more space," she wrote.
Today, as I sit on the back porch looking at what I've accomplished in the past few days, I can't get those words out of my head.
I have completed the outer boundaries, a colorful mix of jasminium floridum and euonymus japonica. The tags on the plants say they will be five to six feet tall, filling out to form hedges that will create the space I've envisioned. Looking at them now, however, they don't seem like boundaries at all, just shrubs standing just over a foot tall. Walls like that will keep nothing out, hold nothing in.
They are there, though, a day's worth of sweat and toil, carefully planted in soil that has been vigorously tilled. But it will be months before they achieve the purpose for which they were selected. "I need more time. I need more space."
I have given them space. Though my instinct was to plant them close together, stacking them one after another in a forced embrace, they have been set in the ground a foot and a half apart, with the quiet hope they will someday grow together. For now, they look confused. I have taken them from the lives they've known till now, and placed them in one that holds no guarantee of being better. Even the vining jasmine I have planted near the arches looks forlorn, stray tendrils waving in the late afternoon, desperately seeking something solid to cling to. I have given them space, too, unable to plant them too close to the arches for fear that their roots would be impeded by the concrete bases of my posts. I have no idea how long it will take them to grow long enough to reach the posts, or how hard it will be to convince them to wrap themselves around structures I pray will be solid.
Against my urges, I have given everything space. I have done so carefully but quickly, with focus and determination, because it had to be done. Because it was the right thing to do. But only time will tell if any of it even matters, and time can only be given slowly. It moves at a set pace. It refuses to be rushed and no matter how hard I pray, it cannot be turned back.
Soon, this first part of my project will be completed. What had begun as a promise to change the landscape, will be rooted in the ground. As hard as I've toiled, as much as I ache, I fear the end of my labor. For then, I will have nothing left to do but wait and pray I have given enough space, and that time will be enough.
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