Tend

Slowly she locked the door within the high wall. Assured of
her solitude, she breathed a sigh of relief. Finally!…to be done with the
others…to be alone.

As she turned, she caught her breath at the sight. What she
had thought was a desolate hiding place, safe from all reminders of her loss,
was alive with green plants and many colored flowers. They were overgrown and
tangled.

She covered her eyes for days, not wanting even to see the
mess of a garden that was within her precious walls.

Gradually, she began to peek at things as she walked through
the garden. She could tell that it had originally been planted in an orderly way
– beauty created from symmetry. Finally one day she found her resolve under an
apple tree and set to work cleaning up the sanctum.

She found the work hard and at times painful. She would
sometimes have to bend a young branch back and forth, back and forth, before it
would break off – revealing beneath it another path or bed of flowers. Sometimes
she would tire of the tedium and plop down crying for a day or two, her hands
red and swollen as her eyes.

But as she persevered and the garden began to take shape, she
found it easier and easier to endure the pain of thorn pricks on her fingers and
scrapes on her legs. She began to see that it was truly worth the pain and long
hours of work…she lived in a beautiful garden.

Today she lives with the door to her garden open. She travels
freely in and out and sometimes invites another to visit her. But each day she
closes the door for a while and alone she tends her garden.

By Patti H.