Gardening Makes Me Grateful for the Rain

We decided to plant a garden this year. Okay, two and a half gardens.

The idea of gardening has enthralled me since July 22, 2004. I know the exact date because of this journal entry:

I think when I grow old and retire from my regular career I want to be a gardener. There is something peaceful and relaxing about working with plants and trees, even if it seems outwardly tedious, such as cutting off dead or dying branches. There seems something divine in working to preserve life, in working amidst God's creations as opposed to man's creations . . .

I was eighteen then. 14 years later, and I still have the same feelings (although, it's funny reading this now that I work for a development company, since I am responsible over a portfolio of man's creations).

The idea of the garden this year was propelled by our desire for our kids to understand where food comes from. So we got the community garden plot, and planted it with green beans, parsley, peas, and marigolds on the left side. On the right side, my wife poured the entire seed packets of squash and zucchini. This was the typical weekly harvest of it:

We are still harvesting it today.

If that wasn't enough, I built a garden box out of old heat treated pallets in our back yard. We planted strawberries, more peas, and three types of tomatoes. In my craze, I decided to build a third garden box, but it was too late in the year to plant anything new:

My idea has come a long way in 14 years. But even though my experience in gardening at 18 was minimal, I was right about several things. It does require work, some of it tedious. I made sure that the kids chipped in on the watering and picking (I did the weeding) - activities that had to happen a few times per week, regardless of how many mosquitoes accosted us. After all, cherry tomatoes don't pick themselves - at least while they're still fresh.

There hasn't been much watering lately, though, for one main reason. The weather. Ever since I started gardening, I've been grateful for rainy days. This mentality is a sound departure from many of us who consider the best weather to be sunny, warm, not too humid, with a slight breeze.

The truth of the matter is gardens need both the sunny days and the rainy days. Tomatoes love the heat, but they also require lots of water. Without one or the other, there will be no fruit. 

We all have what we consider sunny days and rainy days in our lives. The trick is to be grateful for their different benefits. While the rain may feel cold and uncomfortable as it drips off our hair and down our face, while we may run from the car to the house to get out of it, that same rain is revitalizing the landscape, allowing flowers to bloom and fruit to grow. Without the work, and/or the rain, we do not get to enjoy moments like this, wherein a four-year-old boy son creates his own bouquet from clippings in the garden:

Falling Asleep, Waking Up

My kids hate going to bed. Even now, as I'm writing at 9:03 pm, shuffling feet on the hardwood interrupt me. Harsh words from a tired parent pops out, and when the little feet finally comply, the regret starts flowing. After all, I'm not too old to forget how lame bedtime was. It interrupted Legos, sword fights, and fort building. It killed the imaginary worlds we created and left us vulnerable to the dreams, and sometimes nightmares, that reigned over us. In talking to other adults, this hatred of sleep is the norm rather than the exception.

The hope for naps is laughable, or, in the case below, picture worthy. Jack, who I think was mocking his brother's fate, took this picture:

I think this childhood modus operandi is hard for us adults to understand, since we almost universally value bedtime and sleep. 

So why the switch? Why does American adulthood value unconsciousness so much? Why does our society have issues with opioid addiction and alcoholism? Why don't we jump out of bed at dawn and run into the hallway as if it were Christmas, exclaiming to everyone in the house, "It's time to wake up! The sun's out. Look! The sun's out!"

I don't know the answer to this. The switch for me came in middle school, when being cool was all of a sudden the most important thing. Coolness sucked the life out of everything. It was cool to be tired, unimpressed, stone-faced. Anything other than that implied naivety, the most cardinal of all sins.

But I lost something in all that that I am now working hard to regain. After all, we can die at any moment. Go to sleep and never wake up again, at least not here. All of these opportunities, here at our fingertips, will be gone.

There is a 30-ish hour relay race I have done twice now, called the Ragnar Relay. They have them all over the country, and they have become fairly popular. A team of twelve adults runs all day, night, and day, switching out every three to nine miles, until they have covered 200 miles. Below is my wife, running one of her legs at dawn alongside Lake Michigan:

Had we not done the race, I would have missed the most stunning sunrise I have ever seen.

So if you dread waking up, do yourself a favor (or two, or twenty). Take a cold shower; suck on a lemon; turn up the volume and rock out; kiss your lover; run your guts out; laugh until your guts hurt; eat a slice of chocolate cake; eat a jalapeno; smell the roses; stick your head out the car window; splash in the puddles; climb a mountain; have a screaming contest. I guarantee you'll feel better.

Parenting is a Return to Childhood - Sort of

I can't tell you the last time I made a sand castle before this. I can tell you one thing, though, it didn't have a hurricane dike made of seaweed and sticks, driftwood reinforced walls, or a lagoon. Yes, I understood the effects of erosion much better than the last time I built one of these, as well as a few ways to mitigate it. One thing that hadn't changed, however, was the fascination of building it.

Both of my sons took a keen interest in it, and wanted to participate in any way they could. My feelings on that oscillated between anxiety over their lack of seaside engineering skills, and the desire for them to cultivate that same lifelong fascination that still lived within me. I found things for them to do, like put shells and feathers (flags) on top of the structure.

The greatest thing was that there was no shame or embarrassment in doing such a thing, because my kids were around. Having kids gives you a free pass to do the things that you loved as a child, and still love, but which are not normally socially acceptable for adults.

Like playing on playgrounds:

Or going sledding:

Or going to the zoo:

Jack was 16 days old here on his first trip to the zoo. One lady came up to my wife and me when we were in line for the little train, and asked, "How old is your baby?" When I told her, she said, "That's awesome!" I believe she was referring not to him as much as the fact that we, as parents, brought him there when there was no chance he'd get anything out of it. Indeed, the zoo was for us, and the kid was a shallow excuse to relive the fascination we experienced as kids.

Social norms may not allow adults to take a plastic disk to the top of the city sledding hill, but they certainly cannot destroy the fun of it. I haven't had this much fun since before middle school, when everything was about being cool. One thing about being cool is that there is no joyous passion in it. I have enthusiastically welcomed this new phase of life, where I can be the goofy dad.

Of course, parenthood also brings responsibilities, and knowledge of how injuries occur, and the incessant demands of schedules. At the end of the day, we have to work and worry and shop and clean. We have to teach our kids how to one day become boring adults. There are a few moments though, when we don't have to do anything like that. We must seize those moments, not only to allow our kids to express their wonder at life, but to allow ourselves to do the same.

Belief Needs to be Tasted

I recently finished reading a memoir called Educated about a woman whose parents did not believe in traditional education, so she had to self teach in order to get into college. She later went on to earn a Ph.D from Cambridge. Her family happened to also claim my same religious beliefs, but certainly did not live them. Their version of my faith was so perverse and manipulative, in fact, I understand why the author had to leave it entirely as part of her journey.

The story was inspiring, but it also bothered me. It wasn't necessarily the fact that her parents left a horrible impression of the religion - the author was very direct in her Author's Note about how the book is not a portrayal of Mormonism. I suppose what really bothered me was the author's personal experience with the faith, which the parents used as a means of instilling fear, compliance, and subjugation.

Any belief, whether it be religion, philosophy, politics, or lifestyle cannot truly be forced on someone. In this case, it was exactly this strategy which drove the author away, once she had escaped the invisible bonds under which ignorance had placed her. The human mind seems hard wired to resist tyranny, though it often takes a hero's journey to overcome it.

My experience with my beliefs sits in sharp contrast. My parents planted the seeds of the beliefs in me when I was young, but encouraged me to cultivate that belief myself. They understood that if I was the one putting forth the effort to explore, challenge, ponder, and apply those beliefs, it would gain a deeper root within my soul. They also had to mitigate that fear that I would also never put out the effort to do so.

Living any sort of belief takes a great amount of sacrifice. The essence of a belief is that you are giving up one choice to latch onto another. You are giving up meat to live as a vegan. You are renouncing the agenda of the Democrats to be a staunch Republican, you are rejecting any sort of mysticism to adhere to empiricism. You are choosing faith over skepticism if you choose to believe in God.

Such sacrifice can only be attained and maintained if you taste the belief. This is not an original metaphor. When I read it, though, it made instant sense. Unlike seeing, hearing, or smelling, tasting and feeling are concrete, proximate, definite. There is no convoluting media through which they must travel. They cannot be manipulated or distorted with smoke and mirrors. When we taste or feel the results of our beliefs, we have an intimate witness of that belief that no amount of outside argument can destroy.

Could one convince my son that gelato in Rome doesn't taste heavenly?

Similarly, can one argue that I have not tasted of the goodness of God? The notion defies reason. That is my experience. I know that I have had it not once, but hundreds of times. No amount of opposition or attempted logic can convince me otherwise.

At the risk of erring too much on religious belief, since I argue it applies to any sort of belief and helping another come to that belief, here is a video that has stuck with me:

Music of the Gospel

If we wish others to join our belief in the goodness of that Roman Gelato, or the positive effects of herbal remedies, or the beauty of scientific experimentation as a means to knowledge, we first need to get the word out, but then we must encourage them to try it for themselves. Only then can they internalize and share in our belief.