Gardening in the Post 9/11 World

Yesterday, we spent most of the day outside, removing the old box beds and tilling up the garden and planting broccoli and cauliflower and lettuce and spinach and soybeans and cabbage for the Fall and Winter.  (Yes, I know I'm not supposed to capitalize those words.  Bite me, Grammar Police.  Fall and Winter NEED to be capitalized after this summer.  See what I did there?)

Occasionally, during breaks, I would check on Facebook, where I read (over and over again) about tears and prayers and mourning.  I also read a few posts about how religion caused the attacks on September 11, 2001, and one, inexplicably, about how if you didn't like that America was "one nation under God," you should leave. Sigh.

Let me go ahead and say that you should follow your bliss (or sadness, as it were) and mourn or reflect or remember any way you want to and that these next few paragraphs are not in any way telling you that you are wrong for feeling or expressing your feelings any way you want to.  Unless you do something crazy and, like, make a bonfire with a pile of Girl Scout Thin Mints.  I mean, that's just wrong.

That said, it seems to me that if the best that Americans can do is think of 9/11 as a day when it all went wrong, or focus on all of the dead people, or even focus only on the actions of the heroic men and women who died that day being heroes...well...that sort of seems wrong, to me.  (ONLY TO ME.  IF YOU DO ANY OF THE ABOVE, ROCK ON.)  Here's why:

America didn't end that day.   It didn't really even change that much.  I got up the next day and went to work.  Millions of other Americans did, too.  The markets rebounded, the crops came in, the language stayed the same.  We have religious freedom.  We have Facebook and iPods and clean water.  The one thing that did change, maybe, was that for a week or two, we were a united nation.  We understood, for a ridiculously short time, that we were all Americans and--on a global scale--all humans and for Pete's sake, life is damn precious, no matter what nationality or religion you claim.

NOW we've changed drastically.  We are such a changed country right now that I'll admit I'm much more fearful than I ever was on September 11.  But I'm afraid not of foreign men in hijacked airplanes.  I'm afraid of men in snazzy suits who hold gigantic prayer fests while fire fighters in his state buy their own fuel and gear.  I'm afraid of women who want to lower minimum wage to that of our "competition" in third world countries.  I'm afraid of my fellow citizens who go on and on about how repressed they are by our president even as they want to remove anybody who isn't Christian from public office--or, you know, from the country.  Those folks scare the shit out of me, y'all.

So, yesterday, I wasn't watching any memorials or changing my FB picture to an American flag, or scanning in the pictures I took of the Manhattan skyline from the Statue of Liberty while on a show choir trip in high school.  I wasn't finding quotes about freedom or heroism or liberty or justice.  I wasn't crying and/or reminiscing.  I was planting.

Crouched over the dirt, tugging River away from the delicate seedlings or whatever roly poly she was stalking, I made preparations for the winter.  I pulled weeds and tucked seeds into the dry soil, adding a little prayer to every wish.  That's what seeds are, you know.  Wishes for the future.  And as I sweated under the late afternoon sun, I started thinking about the seeds I scattered and the young plants I stuffed into rows.

Autumn crops are all the same here in the south:  strong smelling greens and vibrant roots.  Their seeds are similar:  tiny little spears or earth-colored balls, impossible to find if you lose track over the rows.  They grow in adverse conditions, fighting through the last gasping days of summer to flourish in the cool, wind-tossed Autumn.  They'll keep going, some of them, even in the frigid days of late January and early February, before giving way to sweet peas and potatoes.

It wasn't a difficult metaphor to find, really.  And on a cosmic scale, I'm not sure it IS a metaphor.  We're all little seeds.  We contain within our bodies the capability to grow and change and produce.  We are planted where we are planted for a purpose.  Each of us has a place and responsibility.  We are Something's hope for the future.

But we're more than that.  We aren't just mindless collards squatting in the garden.  We have hearts and minds and souls that we all too often use for hurting our fellow collards people instead of helping the others around us grow to their full potential.

This morning, two woman pretty much attacked my mother on FB for having the audacity to point out that the president read a Bible verse at a memorial service and that perhaps we ought to come together as Americans.  One woman pointed out that Satan quoted Bible verses, too.  ("Satan's in Washington."  Give yourself a high five if you remember Marlena writhing around in her silky pajamas and panty hose.)  The other called my mother "repressive," and unloaded a wad of nastiness on her that brought out the North Georgia hill girl in me.  I was HET UP, y'all.

Because my mama, she is a planter of seeds.  She is Little Mary Sunshine.  She is a laugher and dancer and smiler.  In the face of a year that would CRUSH most folks, she still smiles and encourages and tries, every day, to believe that things are going to be okay.  To be honest, it drives me nuts sometimes.  But in a garden full of pricklies and bitter herbs, she just keeps flourishing and providing sustenance.

And it occurred to me, with dirt under my fingernails and anger in my heart at that stupid woman who was mean to my mama, that we need more folks like my mother.  We need more hope and less bitterness.  More strength and less despair.  More sunshine and less tears.

I'm working in my garden again today:  carrots and beets and turnips and radishes.  I'll be planting things that are less showy, that hide their goodness until it's most needed.  They have their place in the garden, too.

What will YOU plant today?  And, maybe more importantly, how will you grow?