It is one of those days when, on the face of things, it makes no sense that I should be sad. And I am alright, I really am. But my heart is heavy and I am a little teary. I am such a sensitive register, the “Highly Sensitive Person,” and it is not about being on or off medication, it simply is who I have been since I was a very young child. But there are reasons.
To begin with some of these things are simply stage of life things. When you get older, when you are alone, when children have their own families and their own lives, and even though you love each other dearly and are close things are different. This is Easter week, and it always hits me.
When I was young, because I was raised Catholic, Easter was both a holy day, a time of transformation, the darkness followed by the light, and the miracle that was Easter was deeply celebrated both in the church and in our home with Easter baskets full of candy and colored eggs, Easter egg hunts, and all the rest. As an adult when my husband and I were raising our children we were not churchy types but the Easter Bunny surely came and we had so much fun. My husband made wooden Easter baskets with bunnies on the ends with the kids names on them. They still have those Easter baskets today. And in the years when our vegetarian family did not eat eggs we painted wooden eggs that my husband cut out. And most of all, a favorite memory I think, was when we lived on 20 acres in the mountains and our dear friends came over with their children and the 6 of them, theirs and ours, set out running in the field below the house doing “confetti eggs.” Lord those were glorious! You tapped a hole in the end of eggs, drained them and let them dry out and then colored the shells. Then you filled the shells half way with confetti and closed the ends with a glue stick and colored tissue paper. On Easter the kids would chase each other around and bash eggs on one another and as the eggs burst the air was filled with clouds of colored confetti, the kids screaming and laughing and racing around with glee. Oh what happy days those were.
But the years went along, the kids grew up, married, moved hither and yon, and had their own families. And not being churchy folks the little ones get their Easter baskets but it is not what it once was. And families don’t get together as we once did, and I am alone on the day. We get together for many holidays and birthdays and such but Easter isn’t one of them. This is Easter week, and I am feeling it. I am feeling melancholy and wistful, I am remembering the years of children running in the meadow below our mountain home, the air filled with confetti. It makes my heart ache.
And then there is spring itself. Such a beautiful, glorious season. I have always looked so forward to spring because I lived in the garden. This time of year would find me knee deep in mud, planting seeds and bulbs, roses and bushes of all sorts, tucking perennial plants in here and there. There was no time to be sad, I was creating whole new worlds in the garden, wherever I lived the first thing I did was start a garden. And then came the fire 4 years ago, and the garden was decimated. Run over by firemen who had to do what they had to do to put out the fire, then more than 8 months of the garden not being tended, several of those months over a very long hot summer which here goes from late spring into fall, and as they rebuilt the house all of the garden areas around the house were tromped on, building materials were piled up in garden beds, all manner of pots and garden art were smashed, and in the heavy coastal rains weeds ran amok through everything. When I got home finally I was so horrified and heartbroken over the state of the garden I stopped going out there at all.
In the spring of 2016 for a few months the house was on the market. There was still garden art everywhere, little glass houses and life-sized whimsical animals, garden tools leaned against trees, the wheelbarrow stood in the middle of the yard, what had once been magical was now a barren landscape and with all of the garden art it reminded me of an amusement park that had closed down. No happy children rode the rides, no one was having any fun, the rides stood still, it was deathly silent. This is what my garden reminded me of. At one point it looked like the house could sell quickly and in a panic I hired a crew of guys to come remove everything so I wouldn’t have to deal with getting it out if the place sold. The head of the crew asked me, “How much do you want us to take?” I said, “I want it to look like no one ever gardened here.” And they took every single bit of everything down to the tools (Which I later wished I’d saved.), all of the garden art, the wheelbarrow, you name it. And except for the roses that remain in a tangle of weeds and not really blooming hardly at all, and a handful of bulbs that valiantly come up here and there (I had planted bulbs in the thousands in my first years here.), there is nothing but weeds.
Last year I worked for a month cutting back weeds around the roses, pruning them, and feeding them, and they bloomed a little. And I bought quite a number of seed packets with a hopeful heart, but the weeds, which had had a heyday since the fire, quickly took over. It was a losing battle. The ground was too hard, the weeds too thick and deep, and there was no way I could get the ground in planting condition. I gave up. It broke my heart all over again. Once upon a time I would have hired people to come in and help me, to remove all of the weeds and make good beds for planting, but I’ve no money to hire the help, and it is beyond what I can do on my own. And there was so much more that was lost, not the least of which was the majestic Magic Ship that I have written about so often. There once was a magical garden here. It doesn’t exist anymore and I don’t know how to get it back. I don’t know how to do spring without being able to garden, and gardening is beyond my ken at this point.
So it is Easter week and it is the time of the making of gardens and I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel too young to give up and too old to know how to start over without the resources that I’ve always counted on. I want so much to step outside into nature again but the natural world around me now overwhelms and frightens me. How does one begin again?
This is what I am asking myself today, amidst memories of confetti eggs and gardens that once were. I haven’t even been able to draw today but I will, eventually. I will make it through this week and I will find my way. I’m not sure what to do about Easter, I will have my own private celebration here, and somehow, some way, some day maybe I will be able to make a garden again. I can’t imagine it now, but I hope the day will come.
The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda
Start your garden again. Begin in a very small way with a pot or two on your deck, herbs, sweet-scented flowers… Plant your raised beds, if only in your imagination. Gardening is so healing. Your memories are beautiful, sad and poignant. Sending love and big hugs. x
Oh Jenny, I so long to start a garden again but I am so afraid. I wish you could have seen the garden on my deck before the fire. It was absolutely filled with pots of all sizes, shapes, and colors. Every kind of flower and herb imaginable. I had a 5′ rosemary tree. When I came back to see all of the pots knocked over and broken, the plants all dead, including my beloved rosemary, it broke my heart. I couldn’t begin to afford even the pots and all the soil it would take at this point to recreate what was, and having had such an incredible garden even just there on the deck it just seems not possible to enjoy a pot or two. I know that doesn’t sound right but I have always gardened in a very big way, I planted 60 roses here, thousands of bulbs, so much. And now my deck, which is large, with built in seating all the way around, well, its dirty and in sore need of painting and I don’t even know how to get that done. It’s as though I am so overwhelmed by it all I feel hopeless. I am crying now just writing this. My garden has always been my salvation emotionally. I worked out a lot in terms of my mental health and wellness in the garden. People who came here said my garden looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book and indeed it did. For me having a pot or two sitting here after having created and loved the glorious garden that once was, well, I just can’t seem to do it. I don’t know how. I suppose my work now is to learn but I am at a loss, I don’t know how to begin. I hope one day I will come to a place of knowing. I think it would be life-changing for me.
Thank you for writing, and for listening. I’m sorry to have gone on so, but it is heavy on my heart today…
OK, Maitri — I’m with Jenny.
You CAN do some containers out there on the deck. Just rinse it off, ignore the need of paint, and start. It’s time.
Don’t think about the garden that was there, think about what will make you glad in the growing season to come — whether you sow seeds or have Rachel help you buy a few perennials or annual starts for the pots, etc.
Hugs,
Lisa
Okay Lisa, and Jenny, you are both right, I’ve got to start, and in pots right here on the deck will be the best way because I have a huge yard and it is hopelessly overrun with some kind of weeds that have taken over everything and the ground is now rock hard. I just don’t have it in me to deal with the ground out there, but pots will do.
Thank you both, so much, for the encouragement and the help. It means more than I can say. My love and deepest appreciation to you both…
Poignant memories are the words that also came to my mind Maitri. So lovely.
Now that we have a grandchild our family celebrations have shifted too and it has been an adjustment for me as well. Instead of everyone coming here at some point and me doing the big meal, we travel to them and contribute what they request. I am still very grateful to have these family gatherings in a new format but I understand what you are saying about our adult children planning their own traditions. It’s important for them to do that but it can be a kind of melancholy shift for us.
Yes Joan, poignant memories indeed…
And you know, I know, too, that things are as they should be. Our children have to create their own family traditions and I honor that, I truly do. I was just thinking, as I got the dogs their dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, that it goes even deeper.
When I was young those were the days when only very rarely did anyone move away. People grew up and lived their whole lives, worked, raised their families, retired and eventually died in the town they grew up in. And because this was so one grew up with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, a whole slew of family around and involved in everything. My grandpa died when I was very young and though my grandmother always had her own home up until nearly the end of her life she spent a lot of time staying with us, and she was always a part of things. And my mother’s big Irish Catholic family thought it was a grand idea to get the whole clan together for a big barbecue or picnic or family meal at the drop of a hat. For every occasion the whole family was together. Certainly Easter and the usual big holidays but Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, all of the holidays the whole family got together. No one would have ever spent a holiday alone. Now children live all over God’s green earth and I am so grateful to have Rachel here but she has a very busy work schedule and my grandson is almost 14 and they don’t do the religious aspect of Easter and my grandson isn’t the little tot excited about the Easter bunny anymore. Things change. Mind, Rachel is very good to me, and we are very close, rarely a day goes by we don’t at least text, in fact she will be coming here tomorrow night and I appreciate this more than I can say. We have our own way now, but I think today the children go off and in creating their own families are more like satellites than the huge congregations of families like I and so many in my generation did. It’s just different. Mostly it just is what it is and I accept that, but when these holidays or special times come along that, in my day, would have been huge family celebrations, times when no one would consider not having everyone together, well, it does make me melancholy. It is a shift as you say. It can be very hard.
Easter will come and go and this, too, shall pass of course. I am just feeling very tender today, and somehow it all got tangled up with spring and the garden too. I don’t know how to work that out. But I don’t have to figure everything out today. I will draw a little now and listen to my audiobook. I’m listening to Anne Lamott’s “Small Victories” which I’ve listened to a few times and love. Night is falling, the day will soon be over. Tomorrow is another day.
I am sending love and a gentle warm hug. I hope you have a lovely Easter if this is something you celebrate. Enjoy your grandbaby…
draw a garden, paint one, an extravagant garden of every flower and butterfly
and gnome or goddess figure. gees maitri. you are a painter. paint your garden!
life imitates art. one day the garden you paint today will manifest in its own way
in your landscape .
of course i sense how overwhelming it is to care for such a yard in the state it’s in. but look how you have been caring for yourself since the blog began. maitri, you do it one day at a time, one weed at a time, one seed at a time. start small, and let things grow.
many hugs, xo xo ka
Thank you so much darling Ka, yes, I hadn’t thought of that, I love what you wrote, “…paint your garden! life imitates art. one day the garden you paint today will manifest in its own way…” What a beautiful thought. I will carry that with me in my heart and into the sketchbook. “Start small and watch things grow…” Okay sister, you’re on!
And I’ll take those hugs, and I’m sending some back to you… 🙂
M. xoxox
Dear Maitri, Oh I wish I could have seen your beautiful garden. It sounds so lovely. Like Katya says maybe draw a resemblance of it? Or like others have said, start small with what you can afford both with energy and time.
I remember Easter as a child, the new clothes, the cousins coming up to find Easter Baskets with me. Eating the delicious coconut cream eggs and jelly beans. I would get sugar overload. I loved the Easter music in church. It was glorious. I loved the spring and knowing it was almost my birthday, coming the next month.
It’s all right to feel melancholy and sad as these fond memories come up. It’s good that you feel safe to express how you feel, get it out and let us support you.
Much Love, Jean
Oh Jean, it was a beautiful garden indeed, and I shared some pictures over time on this blog. Now it exists in memory and I don’t want to search out the photos to share as some have asked because it would just make me too sad.
And yes, those Easters in our youth, things were different then, weren’t they? And my grandmother would have spent the night before and would go to church with us and my father, who was a lapsed Presbyterian who never went to church would go with us on Easter and got my mother, grandmother and I beautiful corsages to wear. The Easter Bunny would have come first thing of course and after church we went to a lovely brunch and a big Easter egg hunt outdoors, and then later the whole family would gather for a meal. And of course I had a new Easter dress and shoes and an Easter bonnet. It seems like yesterday but all of those people are long passed now. There are so many holidays and times that are no longer like my youth and I don’t know why but Easter is always especially hard for me.
Thank you for providing loving support, the safe space that you mention is created by all of you who come here to share this with me, and I cannot thank you all enough. I am sending so much love dearheart. Happy Easter…
Maitri
Do you have photos of your old garden? I would like to see them if you have any. And I’m in agreement with the other gals who say to start a new garden. You are blessed, Maitri, I have a black thumb. No matter how much I try, I can’t keep a garden. I have even killed a small terrarium! Who does that? Anyway, remember! The journey to a new garden begins with the first step! Hugs, Memarge. 🙂
Hello Dear Marge,
As I said to Jean just above I had pictures here on the blog through the years but I just can’t go searching for them to share them again now, it’s just too hard to go back through all of that. I will have to begin again with little pots here on the deck. One way or another I will have to find a new way. Green growing things heal the soul, it’s important that I start, somehow. And yes, you and Jenny and Lisa and Katya are all so right, just begin with the first step. It will be interesting to see where it leads.
Bless you Marge, I hope you have a lovely Easter…