The garden is beginning to look spectacular...if you look in the right places. Sharon and I have spent the last couple days adding color and depth to the "walls". Yesterday, we added some gardenias and some tropical type bushes that have added a breathtaking splash of yellow to the area around the brush cherries. Today, we added lavender and a couple types of salvia, and I completed the flagstone path leading from the house to the back corner of the yard, replete with cedar pilings flanking it. If you look at it from the right angle, it's amazing. But honestly, sometimes it's hard not to focus on all the work that has yet to be done.
Once, in happier times, I watched Sharon's mother idly brush dog hair off of a spot on a Persian rug as she talked to us. Before long, that spot stood in stark relief to the rest of the rug, a patch of vibrant color that seemed to make the rest of the rug look dirty, ugly even. Understandably, she began to expand the area of her brushing; the colorful spot just made the rest of it look so bad. Before long, she was trapped, unable to focus on anything but the huge expanse of rug that did not match the brilliance of the spot she'd started with. Sharon and I often joked about that experience over the years. But now, I can relate.
There are splashes of color here and there so magnificent it almost makes my heart stop. They are constant reminders of how beautiful things can be when you focus andtake advantage of the plot of land you've been given. There are moments when I am lost in that brilliance, unable to look away, unable to think of anything but the explosion of yellow against green, blue and purple shining in spaces so long empty, life springing from wreckage. Then, there are times like now, when all I can see is the empty dirt, unturned and belligerent, stubbornly clinging to emptiness and neglect. The extravagance of the back corner of the yard only emphasizes the barrenness, reminding me that I am on the hook: finish what you started, even if you have no idea how long it will take.
I live in my guest room. I am organizing it with the expectation that it will be a long stay. My wife lives across the hall in a room that used to be ours. She is redecorating, and I am helping her pick the colors; and some days, like today, it feels like I am happily choosing the design of my gallows, defiance made complicity by how loving my executioner is.
And she is loving...Lord knows, she doesn't have to be. I am drowning in honey, every drop of kindness accenting the oceans of unworthiness I am adrift on. I am locked in, praying I have enough fresh water to sustain me until rescue comes. And what if it does? Will I come home to a love that has moved on without me, so resigned to my death that the only option seemed to be to move on?
These days, my garden is my refuge and my tormentor. I suppose I deserve both.
How's the creek coming along? OOps, cat's out of the bag...now you gotta show us it!
Posted by: Jetlagbarbie | 06/02/2009 at 10:22 AM