Ostara '09

The last few weeks have been a blur of shock and sorrow which I can scarce describe. The turning of this year's tide has been bloody and terrible, more than any before it in my life. So turns the wheel.

To celebrate the holiday, we planted a garden. My husband, my roommate and I, us city kids, community college bound... we know very little about plants. We tilled and enriched, planted and prayed. We play the Beatles out my bedroom window to our little side yard. We wonder aloud, we who can build computers and carburetors, how these things will grow. Do artichokes thrust suddenly up though the dirt, fully formed? Will we see tiny, thimble-sized watermelons that grow like puppies with the days? When the sweet peas died, I was so perplexed. There was sunlight and water, food and air. Where did we go wrong?

We started with cuttings and seedlings, hoping that they would take root and most did. We planted rows of lettuce and carrot seeds and the day they first peeped their tiny green shoots above the ground, I whooped and danced and carried on like a fool. It was pure miracle, I realized, to plant seeds all unseen and witness their coming to light. Miracle.

We pamper our herbs. I writhe on the ground before pineapple sage and spicy cilantro, primping their tiny culinary genius leaves. Out on the block, the orange groves are in bloom and the smell is pervasive and incredible. I can eat and drink that smell, I can smoke it and take it into my veins. Our own plants flower, sultry, sticky stamens thrusting obscenely into the happy faces of bees. The potato bush blooms, all purple and gold like an emperor, abuzz with concubines who prance on pollinating feet.

Our garden is a victory co-op, after the fashion of home vegetable gardens of the depression and WWII. We figured with the economic downturn we would do well to provide our own bell peppers and tomatoes this summer. It is also my celebration of the renewal of life all around us.

A last word, on tragedy and triumph; of death and new life. After the death of John's grandparents last week, we respectfully removed from the house those things that we would treasure in remembrance of them. John and I searched and searched outside for a horseshoe; an Irishman's good luck charm. My vision tripling, I stopped again to weep on the porch. I put my hand to a stuffed dove and received the shock of my life when she took to startled flight. Where she had sat was a warm and lustrous egg. She anxiously returned to the nest as soon as I backed away. In the search for a good luck charm of the dead, I found life.

And so it goes. Blessed be.