Untitled

My grandpa loves to see things grow. Fruit trees in particular, nice and tall and thick. Oranges, peaches, figs, persimmons, loquats. Cacti too, of the tall and taller variety. Big straight limbs that tower over human height. Notice I didn't say my grandpa loves to 'garden.' He doesn't care much for the overall layout or beauty of the garden. Empty milk cartons line the walkway, loyal soldiers recruiting and collecting rainwater. An empty box that once held a dozen asian pears is turned upside down and used as a stool. He sits hunched over a big metal bowl holding scissors and snipping avocado skins, eggshells, moldy orange peels, into small fragment to deposit into the compost bin. In the spring, he carefully mixes Miracle grow powder with water into plastic cups, and the liquid glows Koolaid blue. Other times he is crouched over, pulling pesky overgrown weeds, and occasionally the momentum of pulling up a difficult weed sends his ninety-four year old body teetering backwards, almost falling. "Stop doing things in the yard," they say. "You could get hurt. You could get hurt."

When my mom went to visit last month, she made it her personal project to eliminate the weeds once and for all. She bought forty bags of mulch to cover the weed laden ground and she and my aunt went to work. Grandpa protested. "Don't do that! If you kill the weeds then I won't have weeds to take out when I go into the garden." The garden is his playground. He picks out the weeds because he doesn't want them, but at the same time they are part of the scene, consistent and reliably there. If the weeds aren't there, it leaves precious little else to do that his body can handle. So I wish they had let his weeds be, and let his playground remain a place of his control. To every one else the garden looks untame and maybe a little sad, but Grandpa is happy with the way it is. He knows its ins and outs, from the glass greenhouse transformed into a storage for mismatched garden gloves and cobwebs, to the tomato plant held upright against a stick with a shoelace. Stop doing things in the yard," they say. "You could get hurt." Is the alternative better? Is it not better to have felt free in a world you understand rather than looking out a window into a garden you love but being afraid that a crack in the pavement will betray you?

My grandpa loves to see things grow, because he is a farmer, not a gardener. He loves to cultivate and sustain life, even as Christ sustains his.