Eden, Untended

 My parents gardened. My mother's realm was the front yard: hostas and nicotiana, impatiens and pansies in pots. My father's realm was the side yard: zucchini and tomatoes and cucumbers. As a child and a teen, I had scant interest in any of it, except the fact that when the hostas that lined our front walk bloomed, if you squeezed the flowers before they fully opened, they popped like bubble tape. Except for the tomatoes and cucumbers I would eat doused in garlic salt, still sun-warmed. 

Then I got married the first time, and planted a garden in the shady spot between driveways: snakeweed and astilbe and things I can no longer remember; echinacea and black eyed susans in the one sunny spot in front of the herbie curbies (Michigan-ese for garbage/recycling bins). Then the garden on Gross Pointe street, the first house I bought on my own (allium, black eyed susans, morning glory curling up the downspout)--garden the neighbors wrote me anonymous notes about those are weeds! John would never have grown such things, this is against neighborhood rules.  I built raised beds in the back yard (which caused me to have a run-in with Lowe's staff who, when I asked about a particular drill bit, asked to speak to my husband and I said do you think my brain falls out my vagina?) and grew kale, chard, tomatoes. (But the deer  that wandered up from the reservoir woods that separated our neighborhood from Lowes ate almost everything, but the time that I washed and sauteed some chard and STILL ATE AN EARWIG).

When we bought this house--far bigger than anything we thought we could afford (though it still cost what a goddamned strip mall would cost in Kalamazoo)--it smelled of cat piss, age. The steep front yard was only juniper and a giant deodar cedar; the back yard was a hill held by a janky chain link fence and populated by trees of heaven, invasive clematis, english ivy), and the side yard was covered in landscape fabric and wood chips and dog shit. We replaced the stove (where the previous owner's cat had apparently pissed in the BROILER HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN). I had manic episodes where I cut down half  the juniper but couldn't get their roots so had to hire a tree crew to winch them all out, planted a shade garden not knowing the deodar's roots were shallow and would steal all moisture from the soil. In another manic moment, I tried bagging up al the woodchips and filled twenty yard waste bags before R. hired a crew to come and bag the rest, lay sod.

We got chickens. They ate the lawn. We built an enclosure. In another manic episode--when R. was undergoing radiation or the years right afterward, I have very little short term memory--I pulled out the chain link fence. The pandemic happened. I could barely do anything. Then last winter, I reseeded the side yard with clover; then I hired a crew to pull all of the weeds in the back hill, build a retaining wall of juniper beams; then i planted tomatoes, zucchini, dozens upon dozens of volunteer cherry tomato plants from last year, echinacea and jasmine and geeum and  poppy and rhododendron and hostas and huckleberry and a rose bush I found in the front yard, buried in shade, planted before, I suspect the deodar, planted when the house was less than a hundred years old.

I am having a hard time focusing. I spent half of today at a tattoo consult, then panicking quietly in my office, then lifting and distributing 1,000 pounds of mulch onto the parking strip, carrying stone pavers dow 30 steps to build a walkway to the street. I walked the dog. I ran. I poured myself the last of the wine, I sat with Not Bagel, the neighbor's big orange tabby, and watched rats burrow into our crawlspace. I ran and it rained for the first time in almost 2 months.

I have started singing again with an all-vaccinated opera troupe, but worry endlessly about all of us. Each rehearsal, I can barely keep from sobbing. The only time I felt in my body today were running and when I was in the garden. I felt like an old woman at the tattoo parlor and could barely articulate what I wanted: I want the garden of eden on my body. Echinacea and ferns. Whatever is supposed to grow here. When I run I either listen to theological discourse about the nature of apotheosis in Mormonism (though I was raised Catholic) or discourse about patriarchy. I dream about singing, about teaching, about quitting my job and doing--what? I don't know. Teaching again. I often dream about teaching students about voice.

Most afternoons, I sing. Verdi and Mozart and Debussy and Gilbert and Sullivan and last night I dreamed I was a finalist for a competition for singers of Samuel Barber. 

I avoid writing, approach my manuscript (is it poetry? is it prose? is it autobiography? is it fiction?) slant, with a long stick.  

My aunt died this week. She was three or four years older than R. It was--is-- with her family I felelmost able to be my true self. Her children feel like my siblings. I cannot stop crying.

Today it rained while I ran. Today I held the neighbor's cat to my chest, handed him to his mother who was worried as his collar was found blocks from here, broken. My own cats curl on my body while I sleep. My husband puts his hand on my hip, though often I can barely bear being touched by anything. I wake sweating, my heart racing. I am middle aged, I tell myself. I am fourty-four. I dream over and over again than I am pregnant. 

In two weeks, I bring my boy home.  

What this means is, I want nothing more than to be in my garden. To move my body until it is so sore I an no longer move at all.

Sometimes, I think I have forgotten how to tell a story. How to make sense.

When I woke this morning, the sun was red. Fires somewhere.

Who planted the Garden of Eden? Gardens only flourish when tended. Gardens are not natural. What is natural is what is wild, invasive, whatever thrives.

I water everything. I pull weeds. I watch rats run beneath the house. The sky marls itself with birds.