I love the rain. This story begins with spring rain. Sweet spring, flowers are blooming all over the place and people are generally full of hope and joy and the rain washes away the stagnancy winter has become by its end. The butterflies flit about from flower to flower promising life and I’m out in my garden, always out in my garden. I feel the tiny rocks pressing into my knees, maybe some kind of mulch would help. When I stand again there are little impressions from the rocks in my knees, each rock leaving its tiny mark, they look weird. I’ll come back tonight to check my night bloomers. Sweet spring, I was born in spring and for years I couldn’t figure out why, why was I born at all? Then my daughter was born, also in spring, and I knew. You’d think spring would be my favorite time of year, but it isn’t.
I have heard that spring is a time of new beginnings, birth. Not just the birth of creatures and plants but also ideas and creativity, all these things in their infancy, such great opportunity for hopeful thoughts. What experience has proven to me is that letting go of hope is as liberating as letting go of faith. I try to stay neutral, even indifferent, if something wonderful is birthed I’ll be pleasantly surprised, if not, I won’t be too disappointed. The beauty of spring is so fleeting, almost as if it’s just too beautiful, we aren’t grateful enough. Global warming will show us, I mean, how long do cherry blossoms stay in bloom anymore? Realistically, spring is the beginning all right, the beginning of death and decay. Whatever is born begins to die from the moment of its birth.
Night falls and I go into the garden to check on my night bloomers. I sense the elk; I know they are out tonight, the hair on my arms stands at attention, saluting them. All is quiet, I stand still listening to what the wind has to say, something I can’t make out, I take a step forward. A stick cracks loudly under my foot and the elk are quite suddenly on the move. They rush toward the river at the end of the property, the elk behind me race past. It is not the first time this has happened. I disguise myself as a tree. I’m a small tree; their backs are even with the top of my head, I know I can’t move, they are so close I could stick out my toe and trip one. They are a blur in my peripheral. I stand there thinking about what kind of tree I’d be. A birch perhaps, an aspen maybe, either way a ghost tree. My bark would reflect the moonlight. I’d glow like a nightlight for any being passing through my grove.
Summer is my least favorite season. When I drink water I can actually trace its path to the surface of my skin and watch it drip out running little rivulets down my arms and the sides of my face, seems I don’t pee for weeks during the hottest part of the summer. The river at the end of the property dries up this time of the year. I feel that I’m sweating so much that if it was fresh water and I sat in the riverbed, I could refill it. Of course it isn’t like that all summer long, it just feels like it. It’s so easy to forget, isn’t it? I hear people at work wondering when we will ever get any relief, they lament as though it’s been weeks of the hottest hot and the most humid humidity. For me summer is often a time of impatience. I have no patience for people. They are either lamenting about how hot it is or they are simply more impatient and rude than usual. Of course, I turn to the garden to seek solace.
Everything is dried up. The grass is brown and I can hear it crackle. There is no breeze. I wonder in the summer if everything else is as lethargic as I am. Neighbors come by under the guise of borrowing a cup of sugar to crane their necks trying to get a look into my back yard. I hear them think it when their suspicions are confirmed, yes, my garden is thriving. Few actually have the straight forwardness to just come out and say something, the ones that don’t say a word I have no patience for. I want to tell them that I know what they are thinking, that they are thinking it so loud the nasturtiums can hear it, the yellow and orange ones are all turning red. I don’t know what they want to hear and I’m not one to tell people what they want to hear anyway, I’m more the type to stir shit up by telling the truth so we all get to learn something new.
I get why they want to know how I do it and I really, genuinely, don’t have an answer for them. At the end of the day, I’m not doing it, not directly at any rate. I’ve concluded that it’s the land itself and it probably helps that I have a neighbor who I have caught watering from time to time. After all, he benefits from my herb and vegetable gardens, it’s a good trade. We both like to keep to ourselves, it’s a somewhat unspoken bond. People talk, truths become warped and I’ll be the first to admit, there’s definitely something off about me, especially by regular standards. Around here they’re about one neighborhood barbecue and a couple of 30 packs of Coors Light away from starting to accuse me of busting into churchyards in the dark of night and biting the heads off of bunnies, bats and live chickens. I’m better off just keeping quiet and leaving my neighbor free of the weirdness. I’m happy to share my cucumbers, tomatoes and squash and I’m always making medicine.
Today Anne is over. Anne always carries a grey cloud over her head, a black cloud over her liver and a martini in her right hand. She keeps the martini in her right hand so she never has to shake hands with anyone she meets or runs into. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the liver cloud is a direct result of the martinis. Anne pretends that her life is great but she hates herself, she wears that on her sleeve. She has a fake smile plastered on her face which looks as poorly applied as the horrible shades of lipstick she frames it with. She thrives on knowing everything that is going on in the neighborhood and even though she peeps into people’s windows at night and noses about in their business all day, she still hasn’t a clue about the neighborhood or any of the people in it.
One day in Summer, I was at the sink in my kitchen, I had just come in from the garden. I always wear a bandana around my neck in the summer and wet it with cold water as often as I can. Splashing the cold water in my face must have distracted me. I felt her coming and I would have darted back out into yard so as to avoid her, anything to be out of earshot of her tight little raps on the door like the barks of an untrained Chihuahua. Alas, she saw me through the window. I let her in, she wants a cup of milk. She is thinking how clever she was not to bring anything to put it in, now she’d have a reason to come back. I thwart her plan by putting it in a paper cup. She walks around while I get the milk, she sniffs the air, trying to find my nonexistent marijuana crop. Won't she be surprised when she gets home to find it's soy milk, I've told her a million times. “I don’t know how you keep your garden going,” she says in her best attempt at a friendly tone, “it’s a shame you don’t seem to have any organization out there. Why, if I was you I wouldn’t just let those plants run amok like that.” I’m relieved to see her take the last sip of her martini, she won’t hang around long without one. I tell her that letting the plants alone is the reason why my garden thrives even in the heat of summer. I tell her the plants know what they are doing and letting them do what they need to do rather than making them do what I want makes all the difference. She doesn’t believe me. I don’t care. I don't have time for this, I have to read for Ms. Ackerson in less than half an hour and I haven't seen a ghost all day.
Autumn, sweet autumn, this is truly my favorite time of year. The only downside to fall is that it is followed by winter. The air is as crisp as the apples on the tree in the back yard. I retire my dirty red bandana and get the winter box out of the root cellar. All the herbs I collected from the surrounding mountains are hanging down here; it smells like heaven to me. I love not feeling trapped by the weather, hot is just hot, there isn’t a thing you can do about it. When it gets chilly however, you can always put on a sweater. It’s been too chilly for Harry though, my quiet neighbor, the one Anne is convinced has a meth lab in his garage. I always know when he’s coming because I can smell him before he arrives, he smells like Tiger Balm.
The real action in Harry’s garage is his business, not just ‘his business’ as in leave him alone, his business, as in his home business. Anne’s suspicions stem entirely from the fact that he doesn’t park his car in there. Instead, he grows bonsai trees and sells them. He works on them in the garage and he sells them out of his garage because there’s more room to display them all and he doesn’t have to let strangers into his house. So while Anne is convinced he’s doing something nefarious he’s just growing and trimming little trees. He’s told me before that the trees help him with stress and anxiety, even when he’s not near them, he knows them all and thinking about them is calming. He pictures one in his mind and he will, ‘Bring the tree out of the tree,’ he’d say. It’s a meditation, a coping mechanism, this was back when people used to cope.
Harry doesn’t even want to set her straight, he never says anything, he’s afraid of her and loathes the idea of her coming to his home for any reason. Not just her really, anyone, I’m one of the few people Harry isn’t afraid of in fact. He’s deathly afraid of his doctors, which is why he visits me every fall. If he had some sort of chronic condition I’d be the only one who would be able to convince him to go to a doctor. Fortunately, he’s pretty healthy. He'll be looking for a treatment and maybe a reading. He'll tell me that he'll pay me with another bonsai plant and eggs from his chickens, I'll accept. The funny part is that Anne is actually intimidated by the big man with a heart of gold, all she sees is the big man and she is afraid.
“My hands are like rubber all summer long but I’ll tell you what, once I stop movin’ em’ as much and the chill sets in they get sore as hell.” I put his usual blend into a paper bag and ask him how much Tiger Balm he has left. “You always know don’t ya?” I get him more Tiger Balm which I bought two days prior, anticipating his visit. I make him another mixture as he stands there looking at my garden while I mix it, when he turns around I hand him the second bag. “What’s this one for?” he asks. I tell him it’s for the headaches. A smile crosses his face, “Damn, yer good!” He says. I remind him that he always gets headaches this time of year. He looks out to the garden again, “Look, your cats are back for the season, they come back every fall, just like my headaches and arthritis.”
Every fall a black cat and a white cat show up and hang out in my garden as though they are watching over it for me. I named the black one Yin and the white one Yang. They never stay longer than March 20th or so and always arrive about a week or two before Halloween. We have a mutual understanding, they help out with the garden and I feed them. On Halloween night Yang leaves a dead barn owl on the back porch, I wonder who died. The next day I find out it was Anne. Her husband came home from hunting and found her. He is always either hunting or fishing and only going home to sleep. Perhaps Anne was as annoying to him as she was to everyone else, an investigation ensues, neighbors, including myself are questioned. Suicide is ruled out but I have my doubts about that. Oddly, I have yet to see her.
I go to bring John, Anne’s husband, condolences and tea that I know will calm him. He lets me in to his home and my nostrils are raped by the smell of pipe tobacco and cleaning products. His prowess as a mighty hunter is in vivid display all about the house. From deer heads mounted on walls to a wolverine stuffed into a menacing pose over in a corner. There’s a snarling jungle cat and a bear skin rug with the head still intact to round out the room, and that’s just his home office. There are dead animals everywhere. There’s a beast in another corner, also set up in a fearsome pose, but I know what really happened. In my minds eye I picture the beast more cartoonish with a clear set of tire treads across its body. I store this thought for a laugh later well before the impish grin even thinks about hitting my lips, and that imp that holds my soul hostage from time to time, flits about in my head like one of those damnable Cornish Pixies that vexes Professor Narcissist in that Harry Potter book, it just trips and zips the fantastic all through my Brain Palace, knocking over bookcases and tearing up zafus.
John keeps walking right past the living room and into his kitchen to pour himself a drink. There are pictures scattered all over the counter and table. Some have hit the floor like leaves under the trees outside and I want to rake them up. It’s all John and Anne in happier days, they look nothing like they look now. Is that what happens when you and your spouse take turns sucking the life out of one another? The house is almost like a bad relationship on display, on one side of the house there are things of Johns that pissed off Anne and on the other, things of Anne’s that pissed off John. It was like they were having some kind of hate contest or something, so lost in what they hated about the other person they entirely forgot they were ever in love to begin with and forgot who they were outside of the hate. “Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” -Khalil Gibran
I loathe the winter. However, living in the southwestern United States, there is still life in my garden. I like to go out there in the evenings and watch the sun go down. I bring a glass of wine and sit between the Rosemary and the Lavender and wait until the sun is just about down. I put on the Doors song, “The End,” I’ve learned how to time it just right so the sun sinks below the horizon just as Jim Morrison drawls out the words, “this is the end,” drawing out the word “end.” Right before that sun sinks completely out of sight I tell it to protect me while I sleep. I have this memory every winter, nearly every night, all winter long, it haunts my dreams. Sometimes it sets with the sun and there are just images in a fitful sleep, but mostly I remember every detail vividly. Does the blessing always follow the curse? Is it the curse that follows the blessing? I can’t answer that, but I do know that one man’s curse is another man’s blessing and people define those differently.
I’m six years old and I’m running off as I’m wont to do. No one will notice I’m gone until something needs to be done, laundry, dishes, whatever. I had gotten into the habit of tidying up before running off as a way to buy myself more time. At home I’m the help, literally. While my brother and Mother enjoy comfort in their beds, in their cozy bedrooms, I sleep on a cot next to the front door, across from the coat closet. My mother, being from a “certain generation,” figured it is a woman’s work to keep a tight house and she made sure I did. I don’t know to this day if she was just preparing me for the world out of love, knowing she didn’t have a lot of time left on this Earth, or if it was just convenient as she was a nurse and single mother in the 1970’s working 12 to 16 hour days and needed all the help she could get.
One way or another, I was responsible for an awful lot at a young age and there were adults that lived in our building that took notice, not all with good intentions. With my mother working so much, my sibling and I were left on our own most of the time, back then kids were just more competent, it wasn’t a big deal like it is these days. Still, from time to time, mum would have to be at the hospital for an overnight shift and she didn’t like us being alone overnight. To that end, Don took care of us from time to time, at first I thought it would be cool, he seemed nice. His apartment had a fish tank. I don’t know if mum found him or if he volunteered but he didn’t end up making a good sitter.
Usually I take things in stride, it's just what you learn to do, but I guess I was having a moment of weakness. I could still smell him on me, he’d finished right in my face. I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t anything. I went right to the end of the dock and without stopping to think, went straight off the end and made out across the lake. In a Minnesota winter, that’s not a tall order, the ice can get over a foot thick. Just as I was closing in on the other side, the ice gave way and I fell in. If you ever get the chance to feel what it’s like to have the ground fall out from under your feet, take it, safely, of course. The feeling of weightlessness is outstanding, I’ve always liked that feeling, the best rides at the fair feature that feeling.
From there the nightmare is just a whole lot of being trapped under the ice, of flailing, of being cut by it, burned by the cold. No one knew where I was. They'd only miss me when there was no one doing the housework. In my nightmare I know I’m going to die, for all I know, I did. I just remember coming to, cold, couldn't feel anything, I couldn't move at first and it was dark. I have no memory of making it home, just that when I got there no one had even noticed I'd been gone. As the pain from the frostbite started to hit me I remember thinking it hurt. Pain, I can handle that, that I’m used to. Anyone who noticed the frostbite and asked, I just told them I had stayed out too long ice-skating.
Three years later, I had gotten used to all the things sizzling in my brain pan, other peoples thoughts floating like feathers in a tornado through my mind. We’d go to the hospital to look at my mom while she lay in a coma. She wasn’t there, but everyone was crying all the time. I knew she was gone, I knew she wasn’t coming back. She was fine with it, she was tired. I got sent out of the room a lot and that is where I’d hear them, not just the dead either, I’ve always seen and heard them. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have more dead friends than living ones. Mostly what I had gotten good at was keeping it to myself. I am thankful every day for Lucy, sometimes you only need one persons support to turn a mental breakdown into a mental breakthrough. Lucy would disagree, she’d say that at the end of the day, you still do it on your own and you should be proud. At hospital, I could hear what the nurses were thinking as easily as I could hear the plants in the lobby whining when they needed water. Out in the hospital garden I would see people, I would see what their colors were and I could match them to the plants they needed while grey clouds of varied darkness hung over the areas of their bodies where they had dis-ease. At times there would be an almost visible connection between plant and person. It was a lot to process, it's still exponentially expanding outward, I'll be processing that experience my whole life. Falling through that ice, whatever happened then, it had enhanced some of my weirdest traits.
I won’t forget the ice. It’s so loud when spring comes to Minnesota, back then, that first time, it was almost unbearable for me. Everything coming to life all at once, all those voices in my head, all the colors and the things I could see that no one else could. Over time and seasons I learned to co-exist with what happened after I sunk into that icy abyss. Like the seasons and my garden it is an ever evolving, constantly changing thing. There are times when all of it seems like a blessing, when I help people for example. When I can warn them and avoid catastrophe. When I can help them with their relationships, help people understand each other and themselves, when I can help them to be honest with themselves. It’s always a two-way street, if you’re doing it right, you can’t teach without learning.
As to the curse part of it, well, I’m sort of a quiet person. I tend to keep to myself and my blessing becomes my curse when people won’t leave me alone. It determines where I can comfortably live and where I need to stay away from. Perhaps this is why I ended up in the southwestern U.S. People around here either are accepting of what they see or just don’t believe it, either way I’m safe. Everywhere I go I end up being a magnet for the unbalanced soul. On the east coast I stayed too long, my small community started calling me a “witch doctor” behind my back, the window on my truck was broken one morning when I went out to go to work, threats to myself and my offspring, that was enough. I headed out west, again, and haven’t looked back.
I wonder now if it's the lack of changing seasons that makes it easier to be here, part of me misses the quiet death that winter brought in Minnesota. Everything entombed in snow, laying still and silent. The cacophony of spring which was at first so loud to me was eventually like a slow starting symphony that crested like a wave and spilled over me into summer. Summer, when I can hear so much of it all dry up and die. Autumn, my favorite season, a balanced season, in the Autumn dance between life and death, one screams no louder than the other. When I was six I died in winter and was re-birthed in spring. I screamed and no one heard me, I screamed and heard ice. I screamed and heard silence and when the silence was over, I could hear everything.
2 Comments
Hollis Porter
7/26/2021 02:54:15 pm
Thanks so much for sharing this, Hanna. It's interesting - what at first appears to be a simple description of seasons and gardening morphs into a character of an entire neighbourhood. And each character has a story, along with the protagonist who is set both as a friend and outsider to everyone else. A wonderfully enjoyable read!
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Highway Hanna
“I travel in gardens and bedrooms, basements and attics, around corners, through doorways and windows, along sidewalks, over carpets, down drainpipes, in the sky, with friends, lovers, children and heros; perceived, remembered, imagined, distorted and clarified.” Archives
July 2021
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