Blue flax, newly transplanted from a friend’s yard, fluttered by
the mailbox as I stared dumbly at the letter from my landlord of five years.
“Therefore, you must find another rental before September 1.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Just a few
months earlier the same landlord had invited me to choose new carpet and plant
a garden. All spring I had removed sod, forked loam, fertilized and planted
gifts from my friends’ gardens. Now the delphinium, lavender, lilies, tulips, daffodils
and veronica would stay behind. I’d be gone before the painted daisies, grown
from seed, showed their colors.
Leaving my garden was the least of my
worries. Where would I go? Rentals were few, and my job search hadn’t turned out
the way I had hoped. After twenty three years in my cozy community, why was
everything falling apart now?
Or was it? For several years I had pondered relocating two
thousand miles back east to my native New Hampshire to keep closer tabs on my
frail parents, who were now in their eighties. Was this the right time?
Within days, pieces of the
transcontinental move clicked together: I would live at my parents’ summer
place in New Hampshire, just an hour away from them, and teach at a nearby
junior college. Carol, my friend since college, would drive back with me. I
would keenly miss my community and my garden, but I knew my parents needed me
nearby.
Minutes before departing, I dug up the
English rose I’d planted just weeks earlier. “Rosie” would travel with us and
begin a new life in New Hampshire, too. As I started the car to begin our
journey, Carol slid in and offered me a nosegay plucked from my now abandoned garden.
She smiled.
“Something pretty for the trip—and seeds for your new garden.”
Lord of creation, help me trust Your time,
not my own.
—Gail Thorell Schilling
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