It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon, so hot, the usual.
Only today, you wish it was a Friday. An escape day from all sorts of burden. Burden from living the lie. The lie that all is going on well. That the house, the job, the road, and the mate is all perfect. The only pure thing holding you down is the fresh air you get to breathe in on the balcony. The balcony became your best friend. Where you could heave a sigh of relief, where you could take a fresh breath and speak quietly to yourself the new truth… All is going to be fine.
Something else draws you to the favorite spot, it is the view of the walkway. A grey walkway made of limestone. Lined by both sides of the walkway was a dense vegetation. So green, so fresh, so lush. As your eyes trail the sideways further , you see blooming sunflowers. A radiant array of yellow goodness. Just then, you look more closely, you see multicolored butterflies, with their wings batting gently, slowly and so peacefully.
The sound of the miniature birds chirping distracts you for a moment. They were swallows. Very little, perfect looking creatures. You wonder for a second if they were real and not a figment of your imagination. They are flying towards the flowers of the flamboyant plant, bright red in color.
Your nostrils find something vaguely familiar, a smell you have come across once before, a long long time ago. You struggle to remember your first encounter with that smell while still glued to the awe of the chirping birds. Suddenly, it strikes you. That smell was from grandma’s home grown garden. Grandma’s lush garden. One you visited many years ago on grandma and grandpa’s 60th and last wedding anniversary.
A loving memory. They had both picked up the gardening project on their 59th wedding anniversary as an inheritance for their favorite grandchild Sally and as a plea to divinity to grant them one more year together.
You remember taking a walk across the garden, with its fine smell, a combination of several fragrances. You remember how good and alive you felt after looking, listening and feeling the garden. How much you didn’t need a break from this goodness. How healed your soul became, how much you would want to stay in the lush garden forever.
If we all could plant vineyards and nurture gardens, there would be someplace to go, somewhere to relax and heal. Somewhere to take a moment off life’s anxieties. Just if everywhere was a garden, the earth would be a paradise where we could take life a lot easier and breathe through everyday’s challenges.
