So today marks one week since I last worked.
I have planted a garden, like I do every year – but this year, it will be different, because I am not running home from work madly, cooking, cleaning, doing the mom gig for about 1.25 hours before we start bedtime and bathtime and dinner…sometimes even in that order.
This year, I will be able to take care of my own garden.
In social work, we all too often forget what that means. Taking care of ourselves becomes secondary to taking care of others; our clients, our communities, our families, our homes – our own mental health…instead, we document, and report, and try to prove that what we are doing is WORKING! so that we can continue to have a job. We study, we read, we make and receive after hours phone calls trying to find solutions for others, trying to help them have a chance, attempting to patch up the constant leaks that their poverty make inevitable.
I could go off on a tangent about all of that, but I suspect that anyone in a position in this field understands, and it goes without saying.
So today, a week free of the insurmountable obstacles of bureaucracy and other such b.s., I decide to garden. I’m still up at seven thirty, getting kids to school and caffeinating. I spend the morning putting out my necessary networking feelers – letting people I’ve come to respect professionally know that I am now free, signing up for workshops and volunteer gigs – seeking guidance from teachers and community people – e-mailing resumes and putting in inquiries for grad schools. This I do every morning. I tell Lincoln (last baby at home, four, who is the only one of my children I did not make it a priority to stay at home with) that we will be going to the park today, if he can just let me finish “working”.
He is good – he plays “Hobnopoly” with himself (a type of monopoly in which he pretends to be the banker and usually ends up making cupcakes out of the money piles). He draws. He sings “We are Young” to the iPod. He then decides that it is time to garden.
So this is where the whole damn thing goes sideways.
But I don’t know that until later.
I am roused from my computer (where I am applying for energy assistance through my power company, one of the “Perks” of being unemployed officially) by the sound of wailing from the backyard. Now this was unexpected, because I had just told him not to do anything stupid, and we reviewed the list of what “stupid” entailed, such things as CLIMBING BROKEN LADDERS utilized to support the cucumbers as they start to trail.
Turns out, he’s still four.
FUCK…I think to myself, because it’s ok to swear when it’s self dialogue and only you can hear it. The voices are telling me to react like my mother – a big fat WTF to the four year old, for doing what a four year old would do. Then berating him and ruining the whole day.
Instead, I run outside, swiftly extract him from the toppled ladder, and set him on his feet. I look him over to make sure he is ok, and he knows – he’s not even gonna cry about it now. Because he looks like a dumb shit. And he knows it.
This would totally work, if he was 25.
Scaling it back to four, now…I bend down, and say – “are you alright?”
He looks at me, and says – “Yeah”. He’s embarrassed.
I say – “This is the stupid I was referencing in our conversation earlier”.
He says – “I know”.
I tell him that he can come in the house and hang out with me until his brother gets home.
I had no idea, until about half an hour ago, just how much Lincoln accomplished in my garden today. He dug a “river” in my freshly planted and turned over and carefully sawdusted strawberries – apparently, prospectors are moving in to mine for gold and they need a way to transport their goods. The river goes neatly THROUGH my strawberries, and I’d say that this new development has wiped out a good part of this year’s crop. Careless developing practices have also polluted my barbeque with bark dust. Lots of it.
Not gonna freak out. Letting this one go.
I proceed to my gazebo, and I realize that the neatly stacked pile of garden markers are those VERY SAME garden markers that I so carefully placed next to all of my plants, to discern what was what til they actually fruited. Except, somehow, they’ve managed to make their way OUT of the garden and onto the patio table.
Interesting. At this point, I feel it might be appropriate to let Lincoln know that my admonition to stay out of my garden has just become an ORDINANCE. It will be clearly posted, and strictly enforced from this point forward.
And that’s when I see my lettuce. Lincoln has pretty decent coordination, when he wishes to. Today, he took the day off. He has trampled at least five of my precious, delicate little lettuce plants. And about three cabbage.
And a squash.
Ok.
This is where I remember that we deep breathe before we turn into a total psychopath.
Ten…nine…eight…seven…shit, I can’t remember if it’s supposed to be a countdown, because I think it’s supposed to be getting further away from the event, not counting down to blast off…ONE…TWO…THREE…
This all happened before I noticed that Mr. Fancy Ladder Trick also knocked over my fence that keeps the dog from tearing up my garden.
Oh, the IRONY of that.
I can laugh about this now, and I kinda laughed about it earlier. Because this is the nature of my life…and because I am good at fixing things when they break. I have learned to expect BROKEN…and I still believe it is worth fixing. I expect to repeat myself, I expect others to decide their own fate.
And sometimes, they do stupid shit.
And this, my friends, is SOCIAL WORK. And this is PARENTING. And I have figured out that there is a reason I am crazy. Because between these two things, I do this all the time – the reframing, the counting, the paraphrasing, the reflecting…and I have to do it without judgment.
Today, the prospectors and the maniacal developer bringing them to town…they won. But Lincoln will probably think twice before he climbs a rickety ladder again, and he understands the need to get back up and resolve not to make the same mistake again (or betray your embarrassment when you do).
And then the high schooler comes home and tells me that she has managed to get two referrals in two days.
That’s a conversation for another time.
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