Spirit and Story Archive
Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you can find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys.
To access the CLAL Spirit and Story Archive, click here.
The Harvest
By Janet Kirchheimer
It seemed pretty simple at the
beginning. My father showed me how to prepare
the soil, to plant the seeds and to water them, and to harvest the vegetables. If I sustained the garden, the garden would
sustain me. But my relationship with our
garden has grown much more complicated than that. Over
time, the garden has sustained me more than I have sustained it.
In December 1998, my father suffered
a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. His
heart stopped twice during the operation, and he was not expected to survive. He had an intensive recovery period, and I wanted
nothing more than to make him better immediately. His
trauma had made me impatient and afraid to hope. I
was having trouble waiting for things to unfold naturally and wanted to know what would
happen in the end. Simple, everyday decisions or occurrences took on great importance.
For six weeks, I was running between
the hospital, home and work, between fear and hope, anxiety and joy. One January morning, I went out to the garden to
check on a small patch of parsley that my father kept covered with blankets to protect it
from the snow. It had been neglected since he
went into the hospital. When I uncovered it,
I was surprised to find bright green and fragrant parsley. I began to become filled with
hope that like that small patch of parsley that was still flourishing in the winter
despite the odds, my father would flourish again as well.
By the time spring came, my father
was regaining his strength. My father and I
tilled and prepared the soil, then began planting the seeds. Though I wanted them to
sprout immediately, they had their own timetable. When
they finally did, I was so excited to see them pushing their way up through the dirt and
climbing towards the sun. We cared for the seedlings, giving them manure, aerating the
soil, watering them daily, doing everything we could so they would keep growing. But my father would point out that the first rule
of gardening is that we are not in control. We
can only wait and watch and enjoy each moment. As
the plants grew stronger, I felt myself growing stronger as well. Slowly, I was learning to wait and coming to
understand that the growth process, like life itself, has a force and rhythm of its own,
and that I could rely on it.
In late July of 1999, we began to
harvest. I especially remember one Sunday
morning when my father and I picked string beans, spending more time talking than we did
picking. It took us over an hour to pick a
small amount, and those beans became the added bonus to a morning spent being together. By
the end of October our "harvest" was in, and we began to prepare the garden to
lie fallow for the winter. Our garden had come full circle.
Over the past three years, my father
has taught me much of what he knows about gardening, which is really a lesson about what
he knows about life, its rhythms and cycles. Gardeners are optimists. They plant, believing the seeds will take root,
sprout, grow, and that the plants will bear fruit to be harvested. In spite of being at the mercy of nature,
gardeners take it on faith that the garden will thrive despite the odds. Though I still have more to learn, I'm becoming an
optimist, too.
Now it's mid-winter, and I'm buying
seed packets and thinking ahead to the vegetables we'll plant this spring. Three years have passed since my father's
aneurysm, but I still have moments when the trauma is very close, and it is difficult for
me to trust in the future. It is at these
moments that I think about what I have learned from my father and the garden about life,
about hope and about letting go.
To read additional articles by Janet Kirchheimer,
click here.
