words to comfort the misguided in my garden

A multitude of graduations

“their own place” Photo by Reena Kapoor (c) 2022. Instagram @1stardusty

words to comfort the misguided in my garden 

Flowers often wild, I haven't planted,

spring up in random garden spots —

amuck, unruly, rather undaunted.

*

They arrive in beds clearly marked 

for a more pragmatic veggie crop.

But I can tell these rogues apart.

*

Telltale signs with leaves astray, 

and early buds in breezy swagger 

readily give their names away.

*

Such wayward ones I should uproot…

but a sucker for flowers, I stop to muse:

Should I let them be? They’re just a few.

*

No license to spread wild, unchecked,

but a temporary allowance while I decide.

Pull them or leave them, for days I fret.

*

Then one day I read a gardening clue: 

Plant flowers with tomatoes for a bountiful crop. 

Draw butterflies and bees — harbingers of fruit!

*

Cultivating wonder for this uncharted space,

I withdraw my plans, borders and stakes,

unearthing new trust for its serendipitous ways.

*

The flowers still keep me gardener though 

to love and tend with grace, but who

need not arrogate a loftier role.

*

In well-trodden gardens where we once grew, 

crops in seasons n’ soils we once knew, 

the young now define their own milieu!

###

reena, 6/8/23

This poem came to me as my garden flourishes thanks to the arrival of spring/ summer, and bumper rainfall in California this year. This gardener’s happy. And from a major life milestone: child’s college graduation. Much joy in witnessing these rites of passage. They also make us reflect.

Firstly, no big deal. After all this graduation is her 5th one! That is after her play school, preschool, middle school, and high school ones, all of which were celebrated with much ceremony. Yes, this is America!

My mother who was here for my daughter’s preschool graduation found the whole enterprise quite amusing. My post “The graduate” last year was based on a poem I wrote when my daughter was a high schooler and was invited back to her middle school as an alumna! This is all indeed part of a peculiarly American affliction.

Because you see, growing up in India, colleges didn’t bother with any such pomposity. That’s how it used to be, though I’m told they’re much more “American” now. My four years of engineering college ended with exams, a final GPA plastered on some board for all and sundry to note (oh yeah!), and no event to mark the occasion. Bye-bye, tata, cheerio! Yet we all survived with no (additional) damage to our self-worth. That was certainly the other extreme.

Besides joy, celebrating my daughter’s graduation brought many disparate thoughts. As my daughter herself remarked, it’s a bittersweet milestone; for all that was accomplished, all that lies ahead and all that’s left behind. And I’m all for celebrating these milestones, just with keeping their sanctity — and our sanity — intact.

Such celebrations are definitely good for marking time and reminding ourselves of how far we’ve traveled. Although in all our celebrations, external symbolism, humble brags, Instagram posts, etc. let’s not forget to find meaning and significance in our journeys that’s uniquely meaningful to the graduates.

As I said in this haiku in a previous post…

Let me grab that time

Fold it neatly for later

To be here again!

The other observation that I’ve had before and more concretely now, is how when kids come home from/after college for long or short stays, many of us parents can’t help but continue to view and treat them as the high schoolers (or even younger selves) they used to be. Welcoming and recognizing them as the adults they’ve become, instead of caving to the patterns of behavior, expectation and treatment we once relied on is a learning path for both parents and kids.

The good news is that many kids today — even in family-oriented cultures like mine — do set firmer boundaries. The question is if we parents are ready to rise to that challenge. In a funny way, the kids learn to “manage” us perhaps because they’ve gone out and had separate lives, while we’ve been living in the same physical, mental and metaphorical space! It takes some self-awareness, honest acknowledgement and conscious action to change that interaction equation.

Not claiming to be any kind of super parent (I come with my own flaws and blind spots), these words are more a reminder-to-self than anything else. How I’ll fare as a gardener who continues to tend and love yet who knows when to step aside for the maturing adult to define a place in their own unique, precious and sometimes surprising milieu, remains to be seen. Just a reminder that graduations are markers for the gardener’s time and place too.

Do write to tell me if the poem and/or these thoughts resonated in any way!

Thanks!

Thank you all for the comments, messages and emails about my short story. Short stories are perhaps my favorite narrative form. They tell so much and they ask even more. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons for my slow pace of release. I’m rarely satisfied with any of them even after months of editing. But they’re coming…