A Messy Garden

on being home

The weather hasn’t changed much since I first got here. It rains, briefly, most days. The sun comes out enough to warm your bones again, to go outside, to call it home. A few days of the week I drive into the Mt. Baker area school district and teach kids about gardening. They pour mounds of seeds, despite my instructions, no matter their age, everywhere. There are no calculations in the garden, no straight lines. Most of it doesn’t come up. I go to the gardens infrequently enough that any change is a miracle. And often there are big changes. There are a few radishes that survived the journey from the packet to the ground—in sweaty palms, either drowning in water or no water at all, even surviving the leaf blowers coming in minutes after they were hastily and harshly shoved into the ground. Who knows where they’ve gone now, the seeds. But there are still miracles—mysteries on the ground. There is no place that a seed won’t be dropped. I enjoy it, even the mess.

It is a long drive back from the east county, but it drops me off right before the ocean, the place I live. It is blue no matter the day: shades like turquoise and cobalt, the mountain islands forming layers of colors. Yesterday I called it home on accident but then realized that it is home. The islands sparkled in cyan and midnight and celestial, like walking through a paint store. Someone or something picked out those colors, I have nothing to convince me otherwise. I have nothing to convince me that this isn’t home right now: letters come and go, the cat hisses, scones are made, the tea is hot. 

Over two years ago, when I made the decision to move my things out west, I called it home. I came rumbling through the nights, on my own, in that old 2003 Honda accord. It would never make it back to Michigan but everything was home, even the car with my things packed in tight. I fully trusted and expected the world to drop me off somewhere good. It did, though I am lucky, though I miss the days of full expectation. There wasn’t much to lose back then; I am re-learning how to let go, to keep going after loss, to let things be home no matter how short or long. 

Sometimes people say to me, Wow, Jo, you have gone through so much in your life. And I think it’s funny because sometimes, at this point, everything just feels like everything else. When you’re a child of a hoarder (or other trauma), it throws your expectations off. It’s hard to trust; it’s hard to call anything home. I have learned how to lose but the terrible thing about life is that there is always more. We are always learning and rarely call ourselves exhausted or ask for help. It makes sense, if you think about it, the way we grow up—the media, the sorting, the pressure, the expectation of Life. Sometimes we’re too scared to move that we can only wait for things to come. There is the new expectation of terrible loss.

I have a friend who is more optimistic than I am or probably ever will be. We all learn slowly, taking things one at a time. I carry my human child. Yesterday he drove back with me, from the east county, and we reveled in those islands, the blue in all directions. We agreed: Isn’t this nice, this home? This messy garden? An accident of home: timing and fate, the disasters that have come before and will come again, the chance of things, the human bravery to keep on, the seed of something in my heart that knows what it wants, wherever that may be. 

…

The skies are beautiful here. I can’t stop looking. The other night, during the full moon, we lit candles and opened the door. At night here, you can hear the frogs croaking. They escaped the predators of the day; triumph fills the neighborhood during the bruised hours, the black-blue sky.

I have been thinking a lot about the color of the sky, but also work and home and who I am. Those things come up when moving. But there is an ease lately, a welcomed one—allowing my body to run the course of its exploration without judgement. Instead of moving, I am traveling. Nothing is ever permanent; there are new hours, alway. The sky one brilliant color of fate—changing without permission. We can extend ourselves the privilege and brilliance of earth if we like: just being.

Love,

Jo