Planting Time
Light reflects off my keyboard as the keys whisper in the rhythm of sentences, of paragraphs and scenes. Frames filled with photos of my family lie toppled one on top of the other, dusty and disregarded in the shadows beyond the monitor. An empty coffee cup sits beside my silenced phone, and legal pads full of notes perch on the far corner of my desk. If I try to add one more thing to this writing desk, it will all crash to the floor. My body aches, and my thoughts tangle like a mass of roots.
I leave my desk, grab my hat and my jacket, and go to the garden. Kneeling in the dirt, with the sun on my back and my hands deep in the flowers, serenity seeps into my system like moisture sinking into the soil, to be absorbed through roots and drawn into stems and leaves, giving life.
The earth is real.
At times I have to touch something more concrete than the scenes I create in my head, something green and alive and tangible.
I built this garden in the midst of sage and cactus. Directed by an image in my head, adding stone for structure, and planting—always planting and tending—year after year, watching it grow beyond the vision I had for it when I began. Tulips and daffodils, iris and daisies, gaillardia and cinquefoil, each blossoming in its time. It’s beautiful.
When I worked as an elementary school librarian, some nights I lay in bed while images of my students raced through my mind, and questions thundered. How could I reach my non-readers? How could I make my lessons more engaging? What about the students who struggled at school? At home? Was there a better way to supply the needs of all our students in their areas of interest and reading levels? My mind ached, my heart yearned to know if all my effort was making a difference, and I knew if I continued pushing for ever-more-unattainable goals, I would crash.
Some aspects of writing stories or teaching children are not that different from gardening. Planting ideas that inspire growth and thought are a lot like placing a seed in the ground, and trusting that it will grow. It takes time, and nurturing. It takes faith that the seeds will sprout and hope that they will bloom into something beautiful.
Sometimes the true measure of a work is not tangible.
Did my students see themselves as the hero in the books I read to them? Could they discern the truth that lay within the story? Did the struggles the characters faced in the books I recommended swell their hearts with empathy and determination?
Regardless of the goals I listed in professional growth plans, those were the goals I was reaching for.
The true results of the words and sentences I type today are not reflected in word count, not even in a book filled with pages and bound by a cover, should I ever attain that goal. No. The true measure of my work is much like that of a teacher or a gardener. My words are the seeds, my goal the hope that the ideas planted in the minds of my readers might grow into something beautiful.
Who knows what time will bring?
What are you working towards? What grounds you in reality?
