The Secret Garden

"Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness..." 2 Corinthians 9:10

Thank goodness for the garden I have this summer, and for its abundance. I remember I did indeed sow in tears--and almost not at all as my husband's accident decommissioned him from tiller work. But I am also reaping in joy, even this early in the season, and not just reaping in the form of garden produce (although my first batch of zucchini relish tastes exceptionally good if I do say so myself.) It has been a hard year financially, harder still this summer as my teaching job does not pay year round, but only during the months when I'm working; and crises robbed the stores we meant to put back during those work months. Summer is lean.

So what to do when the panic strikes, when thought-voices bombard with the reminder that the nebulous web of our financial lives could collapse under one good wind? Do I, like Scarlett O'Hara, say "I'll think about that tomorrow?" No. I'm more tempered to sit and stew during those long hours of the day when I'm least capable of positively changing my circumstances. In fact, that is exactly what I did the other night. So I sat on the sofa, trying to read a book--in other words, trying to do the Scarlett O'Hara thing. But as I read, I noticed I was unconsciously pressing myself deep into the throw that is across the back of the couch, and I realized it was the odor of that blanket that drew me to it.

Now, normally, this smell repels me. In fact, I've considered packing this particular throw away because of its smell. Some olfactory terms carry positive connotations. Words like fragrant, aromatic, perfumed...but none of these would be the words to give this smell this woolen fabric carried. More likely acrid, musty, foul, nearly rancid. It didn't reek exactly, but close proximity made its scent obvious, if not overpowering. In fact, the only way that it could be worse would be to glaze the scent of damp mothballs over the surface smell of it.

But this particular night, I felt a strange comfort in that blanket's scent. Now why would that be? I pondered on this thought as I set my book aside. Then it struck me just what this scent meant to me. It meant endurance. It meant the power to withstand rugged weathering.

I grinned, remembering times when my family has deemed me needful of a spa-day and so has given one as some holiday gift. I thought of my own aroma after those days: I smell like something heady and luxurious. Pampered, powdery, floral and citrus aromas pulsate off my dewy skin--for about six hours. But this blanket's smell is entirely different--it says "I saw the generation that came before you and even now I see the one that comes after you. My scent can be neither gained--nor lost--in a day."

And that thought brought me to discover the deepest appeal of that old quilt. As I recognized its secret bounty, I gave myself completely to that musty old blanket. I pulled it around me with as much a sense of luxury as if it had been mink, and I went out the back door to sit on the steps, for the scent on the breeze wafting through the window had served the perfect accompaniment to the smell of my drape. A long dry spell had left my garden virtually odorless, but the day's rain had raised it aromatic again--spicy, pungent. A bitter mingling of the scents of squash and tomato leaves blew across the potted basil and thyme and dill to meet me where I sat. So I breathed it all deeply, but most of all...I remembered.

I remembered these smells as ones of my childhood, when my first association with them had been at the house of a great-grandmother. I barely remember the woman herself--she died when I was about 3. But I remember when my mother took me to visit her house, when I would sit on her porch or on her living room floor, it carried these same smells--both the musty age and the new garden life. I remember that when I was so very young, dread was not a thing that could hold me long. And with the intensity of childhood I revisited that hopefulness, that anticipation of life wherein the child, in its own state of prehistory, still believes circumstances can not be so dire as to destroy the sanctity of future-life. And this knowing is the essence of innocence, a gift far too profound to occupy conscious thought in the child, but a pervasive state of being, nonetheless. It's primacy is most apparent when some providential trigger causes its memory to swell up again in the forgetful and care-laden adult.

Great-grandma endured two World Wars, the Great Depression, and her husband's bout with TB, among other lesser stresses. No doubt she, too, had nights of sitting in the dark, wrapped in a woolen blanket as a cool summer breeze blew the moist scent of growing things across the porch where she rocked. No doubt she fought the urge to give in to panic over things more pressing than any problems of mine. No doubt she endured until the morning.

And so did I.