Dreaming of Gardens

When I wake in the night and have trouble sleeping, when my thoughts race, when the past with its bitter sweetness and the future with its hope and torment consume me, I settle my heart by imagining gardens. Gardens I have, or had, or might invent someday. I shift the colors, I indulge in fantasies of impossible opulence—thousands of daffodils! A wilderness of roses! A maze of medicinal herbs, a walled garden of sweetness.

So when I went over today in the heat to talk to my new friend and to return some change to him, I understood at once how his heart works too.

He dreams in the language of gardens.

But let me fill you in. There’s a disputed place in my town, a would be park and garden. And by the grace of the universe and the generosity of good people I’ve been able to start watering in the height of summer, trees and roses, plants that fruit and flower.

And in the shade of a circle of oaks, on the hard ground or on the boulders, people sit and talk. Mostly a bunch of my friends. Mostly not rich ones, sometimes campers, sometimes travelers.

They’ve been eager to help. Something to be carried? Moved? Garbage to be picked up? My friends are there.

Yesterday I was deeply soaking the little fringe tree, concerned by the dryness at the growing tips, when a guy came over. “Bet you planted this tree, sister” he said. No, I told him, not me. Told him past and current history. Admitted I love trees and flowers with my full heart. He watched me try to reach another, more distant tree. “You need a second hose”. Yeah, I told him that was a great idea; I’d work on it. And he said “here, you get you that hose”. And he handed me a twenty.

He’s from Tennessee. Perhaps my age, more or less, though life has been harsher for him. Neck in a brace, shoes worn. Twenty from him was likely the equivalent of a thousand from a wealthier friend.

That’s why I was concerned about giving him his change back today. But he was having none of that. It was a donation, freely given. “You tell them an old homeless man from Tennessee donated twenty dollars to make this park beautiful. Tell ‘em that.”

And he said he’d had trouble sleeping—pain from his injuries, trouble on his mind. But then he thought of the park, of how it could be—the stone benches, the real sidewalk, the beautiful plants. How it would be so wonderful. “Wish I was rich” he said, “but I’ll get my reward in heaven”. I told him to please hold to that vision he has, of beauty, of people enjoying that beauty, of how this place could be. We need those dreams, those visions, those magical gardens in which all are welcome and all can flourish.

She brings me a rose

She came in with a striped coral rose, rain soaked. She said it was from a seemingly dead rosebush on a back street of the town where an old building burnt to the ground in the summer. There's a bud still left, she said, but she thought she'd bring me the open rose, for pretty.

I put it in the old greeny-purple medicine bottle dug from the desert sands some years ago by a crusty old traveler who brought it in thanks for the time I called for medical help for him, as he lay in a field unable to move. It does look pretty, the rose in the green bottle, near some photos of people I love and critters long since vanished from my life.

She approved. She goes by her initial, D., and she looks as if she stepped from the frame of a PreRaphaelite painting: red-orange electrically curling hair, pale skin, a determined but wistful set to her expression.

She is 22. For some weeks, maybe a couple months, she has quietly come and sat outside, in a little nest of her own making, reading books from our free book display. Sometimes she has discussed her reading with me, sometimes she has simply smiled and nodded.

Once she asked for food, not having eaten in a few days. I told her I always have fruit, the fruit is always available, she need never ask.

She tidied the porch a few times; she likes to remove the falling leaves from the top of the little fish tub so that the water doesn't get clouded and she does seem to know a little about fish, a little more than I do.

Like many of the travelers she has made a fast friend in Champ the pitbull, who whines with joy when he sees her, and gazes with great love into her pretty eyes.

She lives beside a fence, in a vacant lot, out of the view of people in houses. She has a small tarp, a good sleeping bag, a couple changes of clothing.

Three days ago she told me her baby will be born in January. She smiled, saying the due date is the birthday of her mother, who is living in Seattle, which is where her dad also lives, which is far away. I haven't asked if these nice people know she is pregnant; she left home when she turned 16, and I haven't asked why.

With the travelers you don't ask a lot of questions, you don't start a lot of sentences with "you should..." What you do is offer a little space, an open heart, time to talk if talking is needed. An endless bowl of fruit. Clean socks. Connections, if wanted, to a clinic, to public health, to whatever shreds of resources might be out there. And books.

She came indoors today for most of the day--I told her yesterday that she should always feel welcome, she could sit by the fire and read, she need not do or say anything, she'd be out of the rain. I was glad to see her, because the storms began last night, and I couldn't sleep, knowing that she was by her fence, under her fragile tarp, probably awake and wet, feeling her child move and turn.

And not only her, but little Rhea, about the same amount along in her pregnancy. She was just taken to the emergency room after her boyfriend beat her in the rain, in the storm, in their camp. He's not a bad guy; he is trying so hard, he has come to me for help and advice and focus--but the rage comes on, and this frail blonde child I saw growing up is now battered and broken and he has been arrested.

There are times I cannot bear the weight of it all, the children in the ditches and beneath the bridges, the pain, the cycles of hopeless violence. But there must be a way.

Meanwhile, it is a beautiful rose. It is glowing, perfect, unfolding. A gift of love.

(the rose photo comes from someone in Switzerland called Tambako the Jaguar)