MindSpinner

I discovered this spring when I neglected to mulch, that if I’d just leave matters up to the garden, my favorite flowers would reseed along with the weeds, so that now when I weed (admittedly, there’s a lot of that to do), I’m finding their seedling children, all ready to be moved to wherever I’d like to see them grow. I think of these as the fruits of benign neglect - or gifts the garden gives back as if to say, “You don’t have to work quite so hard, you know; it’s not as if you’re doing this by yourself.” That’s a good notion for an independent-minded woman to consider.

I put too large a stake, I suspect, in being able to do things by myself. When I was married and my spouse was ever busy, I did lots of things by myself. I put together the crib and then the toddler bed, built the sandbox and the rabbit’s pen, assembled bicycles and basketball goals, planted trees until I hurt my hands so that they were numb when I woke each morning. My tendency to haul off and get something done rather than waiting for help or asking for help was only reinforced as I divorced. Before, when we’d moved, we’d had lots of help. But when I was defecting, that I had to do on my own, and hire movers for the big stuff I couldn’t load into the car. The only people who showed up on moving day were the people bent on convincing me to stay, to uphold my appointed role in the kingdom of God. (I mean no disrespect to them here; they were sincere, but I knew my own spiritual truth as they could not. They were people I cared about, both the ones who will greet me warmly now, and the ones who pretend I do not exist.)

Mostly, I managed.

Then came the day when I had to have a most minor outpatient surgical procedure, and I had to have a ride home because of the anesthesia. I inventoried whom I could ask. Teacher friend was out of town (this was summer); neighbors had small children to take care of, those who weren’t off at work. The idea that I had to impose on someone, depend on someone, even for so simple a thing, upset me. I have this notion that when one accepts favors, one ought to be in the position to return those favors, and my life tends to work like a treadmill that can’t be turned off, so those opportunities do not come as frequently as I’d like.

It would be an OR nurse I’d known from church, a soft-spoken, kind-hearted woman calling to do the pre-op interview, who ascertained that I was searching for the necessary ride home and volunteered to have her husband drop me off. She and her husband brought my car back home after she got off work that day. I was so grateful for their kindness, I was teary-eyed.

Those new flowers filling the bare places in the garden remind me that we do not live and work independently of each other. We are never really all on our own. So today, though I’ve once again got a to-do list longer than I can accomplish, I think I’ll call a friend or two I haven’t talked to for a while :->.