For the joy of others
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“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone
across the water to create many ripples.”
Mother Teresa
This week I put my garden to bed for winter. The trumpet vine has been cut back, the shrubs pruned to prevent breakage, the perennials covered with a fresh layer of compost. On Steve’s birthday, the city even planted a brand-new ruby slipper maple in my front lawn, and I’m thrilled to anticipate watching it grow.
It’s the most labor-intensive time of the gardening season, but the hard work I complete now will mean lovely blooms in the spring, enduring growth in the summer and hopefully a bountiful harvest next autumn.
On Sunday a friend of Steve’s was caulking my windows and his eighteen-year-old daughter tagged along. While trimming back the spirea, she and I talked about all kinds of things. At one point the conversation turned to the state of the world, particularly global warming.
“It’s getting more difficult all the time,” I admitted. “I can’t save the world, but I can take care of my yard, grow my own food, and do what I can to take care of my little corner of the earth.”
“But why bother?” she asked. “It seems like too big of a mess. How can one person make any kind of difference?”
“Do it for yourself,” I told her. “Do it because you can, because you are making a conscious choice. Live from you own integrity...whether anyone sees you or not. You’ll know you’re making a difference.”
She smiled, “I never thought of it like that.”
"I have a garden so I can be a gardener,” I said. “It's my favorite form of stress relief and it’s satisfying to just be in the space and enjoy the nature I’ve been nurturing all these years. I garden for the sheer joy of it.”
When I was a teenager, I stitched a crewel-work wreath of flowers. Amid the bluebells, lily of the valley and vines were the words Smile for the joy of others. I had forgotten all about it until one day years ago when Steve found it in a box in the basement. “I love this,” he said. “Can we hang it in the living room?”
“Sure,” I nodded. “That’s an oldie but a goodie.”
As he hung it near the front door, I suddenly remembered why I had put it in storage. When I was younger, I often pasted a smile on my face to hide my disappointment, anger or irritation with people and circumstances. I felt powerless to change anything and often apologized for things that were out of my control and not my responsibility. Smile for the joy of others in my mind at the time translated to the inevitable reality: Hide your feelings to spite yourself.
But that’s not what it means to me today.
It’s taken a long time to level up to a different way of being, to shed the people I used to be in order to evolve into who I am becoming now. I’ve had to make peace with my people pleasing, co-dependent tendencies so I could recognize the toxic patterns they created in my relationships, my work experiences and the repetitive realities I had a hand in generating. Smiling when I felt like crying was a hard mask to crack, but eventually I learned how to finally undo that lesson and replace it with something better. Now when I am calm and centered and focused on what I’m doing in the moment, I can’t help but feel joy.
I’m reminded of a November years ago when I was raking leaves in the tree lawn. A young woman pulled up to the curb and rolled down her window. "Can I talk to you for a moment?" she asked.
“Sure,” I nodded.
She got out of the car and walked to where I had propped the rake against a lilac bush. “I just wanted to thank you for your garden. I work at the hospital in a difficult department and would walk through the neighborhood on my lunch break.” Tears stood in her eyes. “On really bad days I didn’t want to go home right away so I would drive over to your house and sit here looking at all the beautiful flowers until I felt calm enough to go back to my family.”
My body flooded with emotion – gratitude for her kindness, empathy for the challenges she encountered daily, and admiration for her strength and ability to take care of herself in the midst of her pain. I don’t remember what I said to her beyond something to the effect of “I’m so glad the garden was a blessing to you. Please know you’re welcome here anytime.”
This past Monday in the sixth hour of shoveling compost into a wheelbarrow and hauling it all over my yard, a man pulled up to the huge mountain of dirt in front of my house. He rolled down his window and chuckled, “Where’s your helper?”
I didn’t recognize the man, so I didn’t want to tell him Steve had died. “You mean my husband?” I asked.
“Anyone,” he replied. “That’s a hard job to do all by yourself.”
“It is worth it,” I smiled. “Come by in the spring...the gardens will be gorgeous!”
“I always do,” he smiled back at me. “You have beautiful flowers!”
How incredible to once again know the love and hard work I put into my yard is for the benefit of people I don’t even know, but influence in quiet but powerful ways.
As my neighbor drove up the street I thought about Steve and how we had wanted to top off the gardens every fall for the past few years and now I was finally able to do it. As I sprinkled some compost at the base of his tree I stopped and looked at the front porch where we had spent countless hours talking, laughing and spending time together.
Wherever he is now, I can feel Steve smiling down on me and the joy of that is also quiet, powerful and infinitely indescribable.