Part 3 - Drunken Woman Frizzy Lettuce
“By surviving passages of doubt and depression on the vocational journey, I have become clear about at least one thing: self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch. ”
Spring had sprung and I decided it was time to go outside. I didn’t even realize until the brown was beneath my nails that I missed dirt; that dirt is one of my symbols and the garden would be my new sanctuary. Dirt, along with many of Life’s other free donations of joy like naps, breathing, yoga, walks, fellowship, reading, thinking and singing, had taken on the look of frivolous for someone with too much time on their hands. But that is a lie. I felt a longing in my body and Spirit for the dirt. Hope could be in the garden.
I loaded the children into the pickup and we hiked from one side of town to the other in search of life for our garden. Our friend, the sideways minister, BJ was going to help us plant a space of our own. What can I bring to life here, BJ? Your heart's desire he told me.
The bed of the pickup filled with green and red and yellow. Squash, watermelon, tomatoes, jalapenos, strawberries, blueberries, oranges. And Drunken Woman Frizzy Lettuce. This is a real thing and another sign that I was clearly on the right path.
We spent a week and two weekends digging and shoveling. BJ mixed manure and dirt together in his specialty blend. We made a dozen or more trips from his pickup in the driveway to the garden on the far side of the lawn. The wheelbarrow filled with dirt and emptied into the new container was all Hope and Glory. The sun felt so good, it’s warmth kissing my back. The dirt felt right in my hands. I was waking up to another hidden dimension. All of this was part of me and my heritage.
I looked down and saw the veins in my hands bulging, like my Mimi’s and my Mother's as I dug into the ground. I remembered the story of my grandfather, Gordon Davis, whose mother, Linnie Lula ate the dirt. And Mimi’s brother who suffered from depression. They called it “the melancholy.” I have the melancholy too.
But Linnie knew a secret that scientists would come to know as a fact: tiny microbes inside the dirt cause cytokine to go up, which increases our serotonin. When we garden, we inhale it and get it all over our skin. We are talking about something akin to organic prozac but with the possibility to alter our mood for up to three weeks. No wonder she ate it.
I told BJ how the checker at Home Depot looked at me like I was crazy. BJ reminded me I was about to grow my own food, play in the mood altering dirt. This was far from crazy. For a moment, I was so proud of the work. It mattered. Meaningful. Healing. Work.
But whispers were still coming from my foes in the closet. Fear does not give up so easy.
“So indulgent. Those of us with important work at hand don’t have time for such trivial tasks. She just needed a distracting project. She won’t stick with this. She’s still so flimsy. She is not cut out for a real career. She’s not cut of the same cloth as us. Silly little stay at home mom with a garden. How nice. How very precious of you. Let me know how that goes.”
A few days passed. We were watering the garden. I was feeding myself with dirt and outside and sunlight and children; without books. I was Lenting. Silence and Solitude were making themselves known to me; they were becoming familiar, less odd. Fear and Anxiety were not always there with Silence and Solitude. I decided to lay down this word, career, and in its place pick up another word, personhood. All of me.
Josh and I were sitting in the sacred chairs by the fireplace together one evening when a storm rolled up on the cul-de-sac. Out of nowhere and everywhere, a Texas hail storm showed up less than one week after I had planted my first garden. I didn’t want to let this literal act of God take me back down into the dark place. I tried to remember the process is the thing, the hands in the dirt, the sun on the back, the drunken woman lettuce. I could not attach myself to the results of the work, only to the process at hand, the process of becoming, healing, true self.
The next morning I walked the flower beds and the full length of the garden to see the damage. I could not tell what was dead or dying or what just might need time. I realize I’m not the first person to recognize themselves and the story of Life inside the garden. But I was clinging to the metaphor. Fertile soul now with tattered petals and crushed leaves all over the ground. What yesterday looked like Eden on this morning looked like Hell. There would be no hall pass around the pain. No permission slip to skip past the storms that were still coming. There is no way around pain; there is only through. There is only the labor of caring for that which has been planted.