After the Windstorm

The neighborhood boys were riding bikes down the street, and I was in the yard picking up sticks. The other day we had a windstorm. Seventy mile an hour wind gusts. Now it was warm and everywhere, sticks. Also, a house shingle. A small piece of a roof. Someone's garbage lid. The boys on bikes drove by again.

A car beeped, a near miss, but the boys laughed. No one was wearing a helmet. I could worry about this all day. Instead, I bought flowers at the garden center and lettuce seeds and two purple cabbages. Maybe it's too early for planting. Maybe it’s too late. It’s supposed to be 80 degrees today. 

Tomorrow, a wild plunge into the thirties. Weather is all anyone can talk about. Meanwhile there’s a war on and crazy people in charge. I gathered up every stick in the yard. At the funeral I went to last week, the loved ones said, She wanted more time. She was angry about it. But in the end, she made peace. 

I was sitting in the church pew with my husband and our son, ruminating about the plant I’d brought with me. Long story short, it came, in a roundabout way, from the person who’d died. When I got it, it had two small purple leaves. But then it grew into a full-blown thing with multiple leaves. Once, when I was watering it, a stem broke off.

I stuck it in a glass of water, and next thing I knew, it was a whole other plant growing. I tucked it into a pretty pot where it outgrew the original. Now it was sitting in our car in the church parking lot. The idea was I could give it to the family of the person they lost. As if a plant could make up for anything. 

And why wouldn't she be angry? If you don't watch yourself, you could be angry every second of your life. I swallowed back tears at the funeral. I watched the baby in one of the pews in front of me, her parents exchanging her back and forth, trying to keep her entertained. She was gurgling a smile and looking right at me. 

No, she was looking at me, my husband said. Our son rolled his eyes. After the funeral, I was starting to waffle about the plant. Maybe the loved ones wouldn’t want it. Maybe they wouldn’t know how to care for it, how much water it needs and how it likes to sit in a sunny window. 

Back home, after I picked up the sticks, I planted the flowers and the lettuce seeds and the cabbages, the boys on their bikes speeding up and down the street, not a care in the damn world. 

I'm glad I let the plant go. 

I set it in the sunniest window where the family was gathering and left a note with instructions. The truth is it’s not the kind of plant that’s hard to take care of. 

We are.