10 minute read
Garden of gratitude
in the Garden
Garden of gratitude
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Story by JILL MCSHEEHY
NOT A DAY GOES BY that I don’t hear someone joking or lamenting about 2020. No argument here. In some ways, the last nine months have passed like a nightmare from which none of us can awake. In a way, we’ve experienced a months-long collective grief.
As such, giving thanks in November 2020 may prove to be a greater challenge. Yet, I think the exercise of seeking gratitude is needed more now than ever.
The Bible speaks of gratitude as an antidote to anxiety, and secular research backs up this wisdom. Grateful people possess healthier bodies, more whole minds, and more contented hearts.
In a month normally marked by thanksgiving, November 2020 threatens to bring anxiety to all-time highs. What do we do with the mounting pressures to our minds and spirits?
I think it’s fitting to practice the very thing November in America is known for. It may take some mental exercise, but we can do it. I’ll go first.
I recall my first feeling of gratitude in late March. I walked in my yard on an early spring day, searching for a sense of normalcy as life ground to a halt. With my Slogger boots on, I headed to my garden. I don’t remember what work I did exactly, but I
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remember the feeling well. This feels normal. For just a couple of hours, the garden -- nature -- led me to a place of familiarity. In that moment, I gave thanks that COVID for us in the northern hemisphere descended in the spring. It’s a small thing, yes, but I couldn’t let it go.
Nature became the balm that soothed my wound. And as I soon discovered, I wasn’t alone.
As someone who connects with gardeners worldwide, I saw this on an even broader scale. I heard countless stories of people who started gardens because “there was nothing else to do.” The garden brought families together. It gave children and teenagers something to do with their hands. It provided career-focused men and women the opportunity to start this dream hobby they’d been putting off for years.
But gardening provided some people with more than just something to do with extra time at home. One woman emailed me that she was taking care of her son’s teenaged friend who had survived a suicide attempt. Together, she and this young man tended a tiny plot in her backyard. She testified to the progress and healing he experienced through it.
A single woman in her 20s told me that her garden gave her something to cling to as she experienced waves of loneliness and depression during the lockdowns.
Another woman shared that she had been laid off from work and was now growing her own vegetables to put food on the table because money was tight.
Many of these true “victory gardeners” have since embraced gardening as a lifestyle and not simply a stop-gap during shutdowns. As we head into fall, they are excitedly planning their next gardens -- looking toward a brighter future in their own backyards.
Gardening in 2020 nourished a generation of new gardeners in both body and spirit. Seasoned gardeners shared their wisdom and connected with other gardeners. Seeing this on a broad scale wells up gratitude in me because I know that pockets of good exist in the midst of the fear-laden headlines.
Not everyone turned to gardening in 2020, of course, but even without gardening, people opened their doors. I visited my mother-in-law one April day in a Russellville neighborhood and couldn’t count the number of people walking and biking. State parks bustled with activities. Boats and bikes sold out. Backyard building projects soared.
Nature -- in many forms -- drew us outside. And nature soothed our collective souls.
As we head into a month and a season of unknowns, and as darkness encroaches both literally and figuratively, choosing gratitude brings light. It brings hope. This year more than ever, it may be more of an exercise, but we all know exercise is good for us.
So perhaps in 2020, we should take the moniker, “choose gratitude” a little further. Let’s “exercise gratitude.” For the big things, for the little things, and for knowing that nature has a lesson for us all: no matter how dark it gets, spring is coming. l
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!
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Peace in the waters
“I got to thinkin’ how there was the moon an’ the stars an’ the hills an’ there was me lookin’ at em, an’ we wasn’t separate no more. We was one thing. An’ that thing was holy.”
— Preacher Casy in The Grapes of Wrath
I’M JUST OUT OF THE SHOWER AFTER WET-WADE FISHING FOR THE SIXTH “LAST TIME” THIS AUTUMN. The woods are still mostly green and we haven’t had a frost yet. The blooms on my tomato plants still burn with June’s yellow promise. There’s one whitetail doe in my freezer, but the urge to hunt hasn’t pulsed with ferocity. Looking toward the extended forecast, and time permitting, I might be able to squeeze in another wade this week. In autumns past, the mid-80 degree afternoons would have put me in a funk. This year, though, I crave those afternoons.
Really, I crave the creek. Earlier today, as I splashed through shallows toward the briar-covered bank and my truck, the longing for even more time in the water welled upward into some awkward emotions for a middle-aged man. I didn’t want to let go of summer. Amber rays fi ltered through sycamores as I turned toward the channel for a parting glance at the stream. A brace of spotted bass cruised through dappled shadows amid the tangled roots of a partially submerged honey locust tree as the creek beckoned me back with a saccharine scent of nostalgia, the sound of gentle waters, and the swirling of fallen leaves in riffl es. And then, of course, the bass themselves were persuasion aplenty.
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Defi ning that persuasion, that need to connect with these aquatic souls while half immersed in their world, is a puzzling thing. It’s not possession or domination, no utilitarian needs, though, this was precisely the draw for my prehistoric angling ancestors. It is a hunger, but for what? I’ve pondered on that question off and on for most of my life. This year, for many reasons, has brought a renewed and more fervent seeking of answers. It could be the thin separation between life and death. There is a strong analogy here as my yesterdays have grown to outnumber my tomorrows. In fi shing, I’m tethered to a blurring primal force by only a strand. Youth was a blurred primal force as well, and it slipped through my tenuous hold with a mere fl ick of its tail as the currents of time swept it downstream. I know that’s pretty dark, but there is something lighter here, too, that I seek in the waters. It traces back beyond early adulthood and the teen years, back to a time of simplicity. One of the quickest ways to start an argument and possibly end a friendship (or even family relationship) is to bring up the topic of religion. Heck, everybody has an opinion on religion and many are all too happy to shove those opinions down your throat — in the name of love, of course — while you gasp and choke on the bitter cutting edges. Some speak of a paradise beyond this world, something to die for. But let me, instead, offer something to live for, a humble vision of Nirvana attainable now. My heaven is me at 10 years of age, big and strong enough to venture on my own yet naive and innocent enough to accept the magic and wonder that every wiggle of life elicits in my still malleable mind. And while I’m in the creek, as it winds through acres of gentle slope, the years wind back as well. I am that 10-year-old boy again. There’s still the tickle of tiny bubbles as water tumbles over rock onto bare feet and the embrace of mud as it sucks at my toes seeking singularity. My brothers and sisters of the creek, the bass and the crayfi sh, the green heron and the muskrat, are here as they’ve always been. There is no heaven without kindred souls. In the moving water, time transforms from a linear model to a circle of sunrises and seasons in predictable and perfect
rhythm for an unpredictable yet perfect world. Within the circle, edges begin to blur. Within the circle, who I was and who I am become one. That hum of continuity softens roaring winds of uncertainty raging in my brain. The whispered lullaby of perpetual fl ow hushes me to sleep on nights of anxious worry about my children’s and grandchildren’s future. The murmur of something larger than me, yet, that is me, brings me back to the water and its promise of heaven. l
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