Pushing Back Time

Today is the day I want to plant new bulbs—Apricot Beauty tulips—all along the south edge of our house between the thick hostas. I dug the bed thirteen years ago before I had children. My dog then was yellow and calm and sat patiently beside me as I dug. I’ve neglected the bed for several years now. This summer I ordered bulbs so I could do right by that small, first garden of mine.

I put the bulbs and bone meal in my Radio Flyer wagon and pull it to the bed. The thick-leaved hostas need to be trimmed back so I get clippers from the shed. The clippers are rusted and dull. I haven’t used them in years. I try to clip the hostas, but the clippers are too old and neglected to do their work. Besides I only have a couple of hours, so I go get the Ginsu carving knife from the kitchen and start hacking away.

The hosta’s leaves fall like hair. I try to hold them in thick bundles, hack away and toss the leaves onto the grass behind me. Some leaves fall in the dirt and I decide to rake them up later.

As the hostas get cut to the ground I see animal holes and acorns in my garden. Networks of crabgrass and other weeds I never got to again this year cross from corner to corner. A border of white stones I put at the back edge of the garden eight years ago have been almost completely swallowed by the earth. Time got away from me, I guess. There is far more work here than I planned on.

The hostas at the center of the garden are old and thick. They are choking themselves out. They need dividing. The earth needs turning. At one end of the garden, pachysandra from the back of the house has invaded. It covers one whole border of the rocks my boys, Jason and Dominic, and I collected from the woods almost a decade ago. We did it to edge my garden at a time when my boys were small enough that rock relocation was an important chore.

With the hostas cut to ground, I’m suddenly impatient. I want to toss bone meal on the dirt, shove the bulbs in and just say it’s done. But I owe this spot big time, for all the seasons it has provided me the beauty of tulips and daffodils in early spring and hostas through the summer despite my neglect. So I leave the bulbs and bone meal in the wagon and get the rake. I rake the old leaves and acorns from the garden. I bend down and start to pull weeds. I am working hard to push back time here in this small spot of my life. The quiet rhythmic pulling let’s me think how I’ll tell my pre-teen boys about their “surrogate grandma” Frannie and how bad her stroke has become. I’ll have to tell them how hard she tried to push back time for so long and how suddenly time got around her the way the pachysandra crept from the backyard to the side garden and changed everything. I’ll have to explain how Frannie’s brain clogged and left her completely deflated on one side and that she will be almost unrecognizable to them. They will want to know what to do and I will say, just be there.

The middle hostas are thick and raised. It’s hard to lift them out of the ground but I do. All six. I throw three on the compost and divide the others for transplanting. I double dig the soil until it is powder soft and set the hostas in their new locations. This is not as hard as I thought. I might get the bulbs in after all.

I turn to the pachysandra and laugh at its vitality. It won’t grow up in front of the house where I want it to, but in back I can’t kill or contain it no matter what I try.

There’s a section about two feet by two feet that needs to be removed. I start to pull and find how tightly it’s taken root. It’s over my rocks and down under the hostas on one side and woven into the tight net of grass on the other. I bend down and pull. Nothing. I pull again and feel my back start to give so I squat like a monk and pull until the vine breaks above ground and sends me tumbling onto my back like a turtle. I’m shaking my head at myself—glad we don’t have neighbors close enough to see me. I pull again and turf, not pachysandra, comes up like a rug. This is not going to be neat or easy.

When I tell Jason, my twelve-year-old, about Frannie I will tell him the best truth I know. I will start with the facts which are easy, if not neat. That her neck arteries are 80-99% clogged and a clot got away and into her brain. That her left side is utterly useless. That she may lean left when she’s sitting. That she cannot see them if they stand on her left side. If her hand falls off her lap, I’ll say, you’ll need to set it back for her because she can’t feel it. Might not even know it’s gone.

I will tell him her goals: to return home and live with her sister Joan again. I will say Frannie has agreed to rehab and nursing home placement for rehab, but that all she really wants is to get home. I will say she’ll never drive again and that her chances of walking are very slim.

When I tell Dominic, my baby and worried ten years old, I’ll just say Frannie is a lot different. Do the best you can.

When Jason asks if they can unclog her I’ll say it’s too late and she’s too sick.

When he says let’s hope that she gets better, because that’s just what he will say, I’ll say let’s hope.

When I see him wipe twelve-year-old tears from his eyes remembering Frannie’s Friday night pot pies and Sunday lunches at Hinsdale Dog Track, I’ll suddenly understand how deeply rooted our love for this strong woman has become over all these years and how helpless we are at this moment.

I am furious at this pachysandra and get the Ginsu knife. I plunge its pronged tip down and down into the thick mat. I pull up the shredded plantings by the handfuls, thick white roots separating from the crowns so that I need to go back again and again my hands into the dirt, under the turf to clean it all away. I need to clear it all away because I can. Just because I can.

I hack and pull a huge chunk of grass and pachysandra from the lawn and toss it into the woods. I use the Ginsu knife to cut an even border in the pachysandra straight out from the corner of the house. I’ve rescued my large rock border at the side of the garden. I plan to sink plastic shingles into the dirt there to keep the pachysandra back. I step back from my work and see the huge hole in the lawn and hear my husband saying “What have you done?” to which I will reply “Give me a little time and I can fix it.” It’s one of the few things in my life I can fix these days. I just need some time.

When I saw Frannie at the beginning of her stroke she looked small and scared. When I hugged her she sat motionless as though if she sat still this sudden storm would pass over her. She even let me kiss her soft, old head without complaining. When it came time for me to leave she stared at me with desperate eyes and said “It’s just so fast” and I couldn’t tell if she meant the stroke coming on or her life in general.

The bone meal is a proper foundation for the tulips and the bulbs go into the powdery soil effortlessly. A little muscle, a little time and this garden is good as new.

This garden is just beginning again. To do it right I need to give it time. Take it day by day so that I can make the plants and bulbs as comfortable as they can be. If they’re not rushed they’ll grow.

I will tell my boys to give Frannie time now. That’s all she needs. I will tell them to hold her hands—the ones that even a week ago were too busy making pot pies and planning my fortieth birthday party to slow down for a hug or kiss.

If we give her time and not rush her maybe she’ll do OK. Let’s hope.