I come to the garden...

I spent a large part of last weekend edging and cleaning out flowerbeds. This is extremely rewarding work for me. I don’t know who said it, but I subscribe to the adage that one “can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt.” I spend a lot of time working through the details of my life while I dig, trim, pluck, and mulch. Life is just a little less overwhelming when I’m hunkered down digging in the earth. I begin to find significance in feeling so tiny and insignificant. Maybe that is why I love Walt Whitman so much. I understand his ashes to ashes mentality and the cyclical nature of life as he describes it so vividly. The complex just becomes so simple in nature.

Granted, my tree hugging, one with nature goodness can come to a screeching halt very easily. One glimpse of a snake can send me screaming, lunatic style for the nearest shelter. So when I was blissfully digging along on Sunday afternoon, humming a tune that had been stuck in my head all day, I cannot tell you the terror that struck my heart and the indignant anger that surfaced so quickly and violently when I reached beneath some Holly Fern and pulled out a snake. Understand that as I threw down the small, squirming, pink bellied reptile, I knew my options were simple: A.) I could run to the house and get my husband, hoping the snake would still be on its back trying to right itself when we returned, or I could B.) Grab the hoe, edger, or spade (all of which were lying within arm’s reach) and chop it into a hundred tiny pieces. I chose option A.

Of course, when we returned the snake was gone. And for some reason my anger boiled over and I was reduced to tears. Which made me literally stomp my feet and flail my arms. I was just so incredibly angry that that stupid snake had to ruin my perfectly wonderful afternoon and infuse the place I find most peaceful with fear. And Stan and I had for what must amount to the 5,000th time since we have been married, the “Steph, The Snake is Smaller Than You” speech. And as I stood there huffing with anger, covered in goose bumps, I finally was able to verbalize for the first time my understanding that I knew my fear was unreasonable. I am a reasonable person and I knew that snake was not going lunge for my throat and suck the life blood from my Carotid Artery. I knew each segment of chopped up snake was not going to grow into a full sized live snake capable of terrorizing me as I stood paralyzed by my fear. I knew this. Yet I fear from a place so deep inside of me that a picture of a snake in National Geographic can make me ask “What if it comes to life?” I know this is not productive fear and I don’t know how to make it go away. But I know I cannot live in a spirit of fear, dreading what may not even be there before I even see it. So I will come to the garden and I will probably not be there alone. And when a snake shows itself I will surely be afraid. But until then I will dig. Cautiously, and with gloves, but I will dig.