Buckets of Roots

Yesterday was spent in the garden, digging up strawberry plants, separating the mother from the babies, trimming their leaves until there is only one for each small plant, discovering new roots and clearing the old.

Heather said it felt like spring in winter, a sort of new birth as we dug, separated, and replanted. Rosella commented on how nature is very generous, taking one small plant and having it grow into a family of plants in the time of one year. I was happy to have my hands in the dirt, sitting on the earth, wearing a tank top on the first of December. Happy to have hands and soul engaged in an activity that was peaceful and satisfying, for a myriad of reasons I may never be able to articulate.

This morning I received a phone call from the mechanic who is working on my broken-down Volkswagen. He explained the estimate of repairs, the majority of which is labor costs, and the total expense being more than I could make in one month. For the first time, I wished I knew how to replace a water pump and thermostat. For the first time, I started crying at the end of a phone conversation with a car mechanic.

Immediately after I got off the phone with the mechanic, I got an email from one of my closest lifelong friends, sharing about a hard moment she is finding herself in. At the end of every paragraph was a reminder to herself: to breathe, to be gracious, to feel the choices she’s made that are also remarkable gifts. She expressed feeling those choices and gifts, in the moment, as points of no return, having made commitments to people, places, and possibilities. She shared this moment of both happiness and fear. I cried harder, in my deep love and appreciation for this friend’s inspiration, life, and ever-opening heart to the world around her. I cried harder, knowing that I too have made choices to have the life I am having; that for the time being, means a certain level of financial strain, but in no other way an experience of poverty.

I walked out of my room, circling the brass door knob with my fingers, stepping into another unseasonably warm December morning. I looked at the Ventana Mountains to the east, golden and green hillsides coupled with silvered granite peaks, well-worn and well-praised. I took a few deep breaths, let my fingers twirl my hair, and remembered the soft and strong roots of the strawberry plants, that I will cradle and work again this afternoon. Everything can build up all of sudden. We can start with one small plant, and before we know it, we have eight or nine new ones growing out of the original. They may all bear fruit, may all produce, but not forever. We have to dig them up after just a little while, separate them out, find our way to each singular plant, and clean it up. We have to spend our fingertips, spend our whole day, over and over, to discard the roots that have gone black from use. With each pull we are saying, “Thank You.” With each drop in the bucket, we send them to the compost so the new roots, full of color, can breathe and sink into well-turned soil.

Today it seems I am feeling what it truly means to make choices. How sometimes, maybe always, we have to choose one thing so fiercely, that it means mourning the loss of what has been or the infinity of possibilities. That we have to tend to its growth and in doing so, discard what might keep it from maturing.

I want my life to bear fruit. I want to pluck it from the vine in mid-summer and taste its divinity on my lips. I want to rejoice in its becoming, want to share it with the neighbors. I want to bake pies with it and make preserves to last through the winter. I want to can it and give it as Christmas presents.

Maybe that means I can’t always let it grow wild, let it get unruly or overgrown with too much greenery that will suffocate it. Yes, I think Rosella is right that nature is generous; and that sometimes being grateful means digging it up, breaking it apart, and starting over.