Gardening

I usually plant my garden right after my birthday, the end of April.

I was a couple of weeks late this year... it was still too early.

I tilled the soil, the alluvial sand on this end of town is so fertile, it doesn't clump as it rolls over, dark and moist, under the borrowed tiller.

I raked it smooth, decided what was going in this year and where. I made straight furrows at appropriate depths, dropped in seeds at appropriate intervals.

I made a few mistakes. The cucumbers are too near the fence and aren't getting enough light. I shouldn't have put the cantaloupes near the beans and corn, their watering preferences are too different. The biggest mistake was sowing those seeds in mid May.

I waited for those little primary leaves to break through the soil... and waited... and waited. A few brave sunflowers broke through, but the only other green reaching for sunlight were the persistent weeds (I'm just as persistent and they never get a chance to become very visible).

Mid May was too early.

From the end of April through mid May we had unusual weather. Frequent cold rain. The temperature in April and May averaged in the forties (F) and the rain was over three inches each month. Pretty cold for Spring. That chilly rain settled into the soil of my garden, soaking and cooling those seeds I planted in such straight rows, and those seeds rotted.

When I finally understood that much of the garden wasn't going to come up I reseeded.

All Winter that patch of earth lay beneath the decomposing remnants of last year's garden, grass clippings, and sweet gum leaves. Winters aren't bad here, but it isn't a time of growth, a time for progress.

Through early Spring the chilly ground refused to nurture my garden. That was a time when things should have been happening, at least beneath the surface.

Now I have more lettuce, spinach, strawberries, and squash than we can eat.

It seemed to take so long for my garden to arrive. But now that it is here, and though it isn't as productive as previous years, it is a joy. It is beautiful... thousands of shades of green, vibrant yellow flowers, deep red strawberries with deep rich flavor.

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Brenda came over last night. I told her plainly I want a divorce.

It almost makes me feel dizzy, this transformation of my home, my beliefs. I have believed so strongly I would be married to her all of my life I am having trouble accepting this new reality.

When I spoke with her again this morning I told her plainly I want a divorce. I want it under way before I return to teaching in a couple of weeks. I told her I don't want to carry the burden of uncertainty, emotional confusion, the flux of shifting hope and dread, while I take up my responsibilities of teaching the children in my community, while I settle the boys into their new routines. While I put together a team of roboticists for a December competition. While I start a video production club.

This past year has been... extremely sad. I know I'm a little sappy, but all the joys I have had enjoying my children, enjoying God's creation, enjoying my prayer times and worship, have been countered by suspicion, confusion, and depression.

This past year has been a long season of my life when I wrestled with my views of marriage, love, forgiveness, self respect, being a father, being a husband, being a man.

The anxious waiting for resolution over this past year affected my work. The storms that blew through the conversations and actions of my wife and I chilled my home, rotted the seeds of future growth.

Suddenly I feel it's changing. I'm working hard around my home, teaching my children, coming to the end of the relationship I have had with my wife.

Though I still love her, though I wish so much that things could be different, though this admission makes me oh so very sad, I know I cannot, will not, trust her. That isn't a marriage.

The season of marital Winter is ending, and the drawn out chilly Spring of cold rain has been shoved aside for the promise of a new life. The Winter of my personal discontent has given way to a promise of a glorious Summer.

Though it seems to have taken ever so long to get here, it also feels like it is all very sudden. Long dormant, rapid changes are springing up around me. A little dizzying.

Brenda and I will be friends. We will work together to do what is best for our children.

She has kept me wondering if we couldn't somehow work this out, talking of how we might somehow reconcile.

I don't believe she will change, will become someone I trust.

So I weed those hints, those persistent suggestions we can return to our marriage, and I water the green garden of my new life.

I'm sad, but I like working in the garden. I like living the life my Lord gives me.