Dad’s Garden
My father was recently in the hospital. I stayed with him for a bit to help while he recovered. Meals, Windexing, finding matching socks, walking the cutie-pie Angle, his dog, and with his garden.
I was also working from home, from my childhood home — using the kitchen table as my desk. In the same spot where I used to struggle with my homework. My mother encouraged me to finish, with a cigarette in one hand and a yellow pencil in the other. The coffee cup lukewarm.
The days at my father’s house felt dreamlike, strange, and also good and comforting.
My father kept mentioning with frustration that the mulch had been sitting in the driveway for weeks now. He was supposed to get his spring garden work in, but the three-week stint in the hospital got in the way.
“I love this type of outdoor work. I’ll do it!” He kept saying the bags were too heavy, and I kept saying, “Dad, I’m strong, doing a funny muscle arm thing! And if I can be outside in the garden all day, I would.” Maybe he forgot my love of gardening began right here, in his garden, when I was Dad’s little helper.
He finally accepted my offer. He felt bad and kept saying, “Sorry, I can’t help.” That was really hard to hear.
Pulling each weed before laying the mulch “very evenly,” as I was instructed, I thought about my days as a kid on the block—running around in the summer heat, making mud soup with my sister Maria, fingernails black with dirt, and the famous Long Island Cicada Hospital founded by my oldest sis, Natalie. Those summer days felt like we had all the time in the world.
Every weed I pulled spurred another family memory. My brain was flooded with flashbacks and the emotions that were rooted with them.
The next day, with the front finished, I started mulching in the backyard. Time rolled. It’s 1989. My father walks into the yard with his green, sweat-stained DSNY uniform on and his leather black bag, heavy on his shoulder. He must have seen the stream of water running down the blacktop driveway as he pulled in from his exhausting day behind the truck.
His face turned red. My sister and I stopped, turned around, and stared at him. What will happen?
His prized, once perfectly green lawn, was decimated. At this moment, I swear I saw steam coming out of his fire-red ears like Yosemite Sam, the scariest cartoon character my 8-year-old brain associated a bad situation with.
“You run, you slide, you hit the bump, and take a dive!” My father was very against Crocodile Mile from the start. This toy was a spin-off of the better-known Slip ‘N Slide backyard summer water contraption we begged my parents for. He loved us so much he caved. Dad rarely got mad, but when you mess with an Italian man’s lawn, all hell breaks loose.
I got to the evergreens, I was tucked in, on my knees, spreading the damp mulch out with my bare hand. I remembered all of our beloved pets we buried around here. We always had beautiful ceremonies with holy water when they passed away. The small ones, like my hamsters, fish, and birds, always went in the round, blue Royal Dansk butter cookie tins. My dad’s favorite, so we always had plenty of “coffins” around.
Behind the bushes, hidden beneath the evergreens, surrounded by memories of all I had loved and lost, I finally burst into tears. I cried like a child.
So much time has passed. I never pictured this stage of life, the one where the roles begin to reverse. My parents, who once seemed invincible, now need help. Some days I feel guilty that I’m not doing enough. All of this is real and is my present.
If my father came outside, he wouldn’t see me hidden behind the bushes. The release felt good. A weight that had been building – busy workdays, my father’s care, my mother’s illness, talking with Dad, and remembering that he is a person and not just my father.
With all this, I am so grateful to have this precious time with my parents. I can still ask about old family stories and laugh and learn from them. A few of my friends recently lost a parent, and their passing happened suddenly. I wonder why God calls some people so abruptly, and others endure the long process of passing to the next.
Later that night, Dad inspected my work. The weeds were gone, and the garden looked sharp. He was happy and impressed with me. For a moment, I wasn’t caring for my father. I was just his kid again, helping him in the garden.
