Sunday, February 21, 2016

Garden Wisdom

I had a bad week at work. The kind that ends with the principal calling you at home on the weekend and catapults you into the next week with a rock in your stomach. There were several reasons, but fundamentally, my ideas of planting seeds and helping teens grow up do not always mesh with everyone.


But even in the dark moments, I do love my job. Most students get it:  We are always more than we imagine, and we can work harder than we ever dream. Reading and writing matter in the present and for their future.  I cultivate magic in my classroom and my life, and most times the rabbit really does get pulled out of the hat.


I  had a beautiful moment with a student poet the other day. One of her lines read “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” It fit perfectly in her writing, and I told her my dad had the phrase hanging in his office, although it sounded a little sweeter written in Latin on his poster.   My student had had a hard week too. Her grandma died and I had taken some time  to grieve with her. I was surprised to see her in class with a grief so raw, but the poetry flew from her fingers that morning. Magic. Words can always heal, and she was so proud of her creation.


I couldn’t find that healing today. I tried everything  to forget the impending Monday meeting and the anger directed at me and the inadequacies such events always stir up in my heart. I’ll wear my boots of course, which give me a feeling of power, and my Choose Happiness bracelet, but the rock has been in my stomach all day. For a woman who always brings her “A game”, who works for hours at home to innovate for her students,  who gives up time with my own children to help other people’s children grow up, these moments of conflict always bring me down.


I ran through my go-to happiness list. Certain places always heal me. But today, the beach didn’t help. Took my boys to throw rocks and find driftwood and watch the barely frozen lake move with the tide. But no luck for my heart. Cooking didn’t help either. The mindless chopping of veggies for potato soup and the buffalo chicken dip my daughter requested didn’t make a dent in my mood.


But I finally found my balm in the garden. My eight year old and I have had an action packed weekend. We’ve played hours of lacrosse in the front yard,  And we hand-washed the car yesterday like my dad and I used to do. Today, we hit the garden. He’s such a hard worker, and was turning the soil and chopping the lumps with a spade when he taught me the very best thing.   


“Mom, since we have two gardens, could we grow food in this one for us, and grow food for the poor people in the other one?”  He had all sorts of ideas on what to grow and how we could get the vegetables to the poor people. Not bad for an eight year old. We worked in comfortable silence for a while until he said, “I bet it would bring us closer to Jesus.”


And in a few minutes’ time, dirt under my fingernails and cold tingling my nose, I finally got the message, delivered through my father and my son. Get closer to Jesus.  Don’t let the bastards grind me down. Share with the poor.... the poor in money and the poor in spirit. The seeds I plant will germinate...at their own rate and in His time. Sometimes the seeds stay in the dark a very long time, but all good works will bloom eventually.

So,  I’ll keep on showing up and cultivating magic, with the poet in my fourth period who is mourning,  with my literature students who deserve my high expectations and creative ideas,  and especially with my little boy who never fails to teach me.