Because of our half-cross-country move, I don’t have a garden this year. It’s making my hands itch, that urge to plant something. Or kill something. By kill something, I mean weeds. But also, possibly, the mortgage lending industry. For a few days in June, I stayed at a friend’s house and yanked weeds out of her flowerbeds.
It was a hot day and the sun was pounding my neck. My phone had been pinging me for hours. It was the mortgage lender telling me (the first of what would be many times, but I didn’t know that yet) that our house closing had to be pushed back. I was on my knees in my friend’s dirt, slamming my shovel into the ground, at first, pleading with the woman, and then, giving up and letting go. What was another week between houses. I slaughtered more weeds.
A few days later I was down in my daughter’s community garden plot, tackling the weeds that were growing there. It was the 4th of July in Washington DC and every twenty minutes fighter planes would streak overhead. I felt like I was trapped in a dystopian novel. I walked over to the neighborhood Starbucks and tried the Tropical Butterfly Rainbow Refresher.
The drink comes with an overlarge straw so you can suck up the tiny mango-pineapple boba-tea-like pearls. I sucked the drink down carefully, mindful not to accidentally swallow down the wrong pipe. This is not an unfounded worry. I read an article about how people who drink a lot of boba tea run the risk of inhaling tapioca pearls into their lungs.
Another streak of a fighter jet over the Starbucks, and I thought, Who the hell cares. And then it was back to weeding someone else’s garden.
The new house has no garden, and the nearest Starbucks is forty-five minutes away. I had a moment of panic upon learning this. (Which is funny because back in Columbus we had a Starbucks on our street, and I can count the times on one hand that I walked the three-minute walk down to purchase a drink.) Shh, don’t tell anyone, but I went back to Columbus last week for a long-scheduled doctor’s appointment.
I drove to our old neighborhood and parked in front of our old house, fighting the urge to tear across the lawn and pull weeds. Once, a million years ago when we first moved into that house, I’d crawled through the overgrown lawn, the bamboo thicket, a patch of out-of-control ornamental grass.
A flash, and there was something hurtling toward me. An old woman on her hands and knees. Wild hair. A fierce expression on her face as she moved in a frenzy through the weeds. Oh my God, I thought, until I realized it was me.
The previous owner, for some bizarre reason, had planted a mirror in the garden. I sat in the car in front of the house for a long time, thinking about taking advantage of the Starbucks while I had the chance, but in the end, decided not to.
What I wanted was to go home.
The new yard is a blank slate surrounded by trees. No weeds as far as I can see, but then a helpful neighbor points out something called Buckthorn, a non-native plant that’s wreaking havoc in this part of the world. Now that she’s shown me, I find the weed popping up all over the place.
I grab a shovel and get to work.
