The Garden at 45

Turns out, impending 45 matters to me. It matters that I look in the mirror and see my mother, who was this age when I was 6 and headed to school. It matters that my hands have the deeply wrinkled and crooked look I associate with charming old men who handled machinery outdoors their entire lives and earned every soil-stained crevice. (These are not, it turns out, the hands I associate with manicures, though I want to with every fiber in my fingernails).  Forty-five matters because I know well enough to know it should matter. I should act like a grown up. Unless, as seems far more likely, I skip the sophistication of maligned middle age entirely and catapult myself into "When I am an old Woman I Shall Wear Purple.." (see below) territory. This appeals, except. Except that  I bought a red dress the other day and put it on in the store and felt young and sexy and confident and lucky.

Then I put it on for a date, and my 11 year old took a photo and  I saw a square faced nondescript middle aged lady with flabby arms and a weak smile. I didn't even like her.  I spent the first part of the drive to the restaurant lamenting my lack of structure, my failure to exercise, my bland face, my awkward smile, and the second part slapping myself into good sense to enjoy the date - we were - after all -  going out to dinner - and John said his date looked hot.

They say that writers hate themselves and love the world. Maybe that's true. And maybe I'll embrace that. In some ways, I have. At  a week shy of 45, I find myself dedicated to a cause the size of a blemish on the soft underside of a baby’s ear, because of love. Here it is:

This is Diane’s garden. I’ve written about it before, because she was sick, because she died, and it became one of the handful of things we knew about her, that we could add together to build a sense of who she had been and had become. Now it’s one of the things that we have left. When Diane died, my daughter offered to help garden, and Ann said she had received many similar offers, and she would accept them all. But then, she didn't need to. Diane's garden grew itself this spring. A fish even appeared - miraculously - in Diane's tiny pond. So good. 

But then, the street got torn up for new gas lines.  And now, Diane's garden is threatened by this: 

(And yes, the fine young gentleman digging up the gas lines is... smoking. Ah, sweet logic). They will attach these new lines to our houses, one house at a time, by digging up the lawns. They will destroy and then "put back...but we aren't gardeners... and bear in mind, the City owns up to about a foot from your house...." I have spoken to Ann about it only once. She shook her head slowly, as if that might rattle the tears back into submission. Side side side side no. 

One by one we neighbors have protested, not on behalf of our lawns, but on behalf of Ann's. "Don't do this. Find an alternative. Use the driveway. You can avoid this." Steve argues as an engineer, I argue as an advocate, John argues as a pragmatist. There are options. They will do everything they can. They promise. They hear us.

This morning, as I walked past the garden again, I scrutinized the bits of tree that have been allowed to linger on the stones, and saw that some of the stones have split and worn away.  They must have looked like that last year, but I didn't notice. The entire garden then wore a shroud of love and energy and passion that obscured flaws and delicately drew our attention inward, to the Buddha statue, the face rock, the frog, the light, the carefully selected stones. On good days, we do not so much scrutinize that things we appreciate and love as try to hold them, and let them be. Or we see that something/someone, better. Here's John's image of the garden:

(It's perfect). We'll save the garden. And I'll keep the red dress. And where I see blotches and wrinkles, and a smattering of imperfections either born of years or highlighted by their passing,  I'll hope that others find those things obscured by something more meaningful than a number like 45. And maybe someday I will, too.  In the meantime, we will all continue to build out our gardens - even if somebody else owns the land underneath.