transplanting

This is a precious, fleeting season in Maryland. The days have grown long and warm enough to accommodate a post-kid-bedtime visit to the garden, yet the nasty biting bugs have not arrived (when they do, they will make bare-limbed evening rambles the kind of thing only a crazy person would attempt. Or, I suppose, a person drenched in Deet.) 

Do you see the curling pea tendrils, the arugula, the tomato plants preparing themselves for the grand, risky move from the safety of their plastic pots to the wilds of the garden? I missed those plants. I thought about them while we were in Lancaster over the weekend. I wondered how they were faring in my absence.

My goodness, that's a first for this novice gardener! Now that I'm in charge, I've grown attached. I never thought my heart could open for a mere plant, but this spring I've learned different. Maybe something about being ultimately responsible for another living thing inevitably stirs up affection.

It was a lovely, short visit, the highlight of which was a spin through the long-awaited fair in the park at the end of my mother's block. There were countless run-ins with old friends and their much-taller children, bumper cars, a fun house, snow cones, and an unfortunate episode after riding the swings with Gabriel: I was quite literally brought to my knees in the grass a few feet from the ride's blinking lights, a gesture inspired by sheer gratitude that the endless spinning was indeed finally over and a feeble attempt to control my nausea and dizziness. Lesson learned: Mama doesn't do the swing ride.


Mike couldn't come with us, which was a real drag (in case you were wondering, my thoughts turned to him more far more frequently than they did to the peas). We missed him while visiting with old friends and neighbors, and especially this morning.

The kids and I walked from my mother's house to visit with some dear friends in their warm, inviting living room before they headed off to church. The adults talked and listened to the children play and navigate conflicts (rather adorably) with varying degrees of success. Then it was time to go, so we walked out together towards the Unitarian Church where my dad had been minister and in whose bosom my sister and I had spent critical growing up years.

It has changed enormously since my dad died. I heard Frances telling Henry that her grandfather used to be the minister at his church.

"Well, he isn't now," said Henry.

"That's because he had cancer and died when my mom was only eighteen years old, Henry."

Like, duh.

The two of them looked so grown up walking together and talking matter-of-factly, figuring out that Frances was "negative 10" years old when her grandfather died. We soon arrived and said goodbye to our friends, watching them greet people we don't know and walk into the building. We walked down the street a few paces and without warning tears were in my eyes. I missed Mike. I squeezed the kids' hands. And then a nice man, a kind of cheerful fixture in downtown Lancaster, bicycled up behind us and said hello. I felt grateful.

Certain geographies are layered with memory and experience so densely that you never know how turning a corner or walking a well-worn flight of steps might feel. Saying goodbye at the church doors this morning was a strange combination of saying goodbye to my dad, to my family as it was before he was sick, to the church community we used to know, and also to the life Mike and I had there as new parents when we first befriended Michael and Amelia and baby Henry.

But you know, despite Frances' tears as we drove away from Gramma's house, and despite Gabriel's pleas that we stay for 100 nights instead of 1, we three were genuinely thrilled to come home. Mike was there to greet us, and I am certain the tomato plants grew another inch while we were gone. Time to put those babies in the ground.