Mr. John & the Garden I Love

Mr. John

When I was fourteen I met a very old man named John.  He was 86 years old and had been reluctantly drug to a dinner party at my Uncle’s house by his wife.  He walked into the home without a word or a nod to anyone and went straight to a recliner where he sat down and immediately slumped his head low on his chest and sat there staring at his shoes.  There was a quiet hum of lighthearted comments that rippled through the room about John and his behavior.  After that everyone ignored him including his bright eyed wife who seemed unmoved by his pathetic behavior.

I asked my Uncle about him and he simply told me ‘John doesn’t like it when people talk to him, so we just let him do what he wants’.  Well this thought did not sit well with me.  I always loved the older people, even when I was very young. They seemed to have more time to listen to me and they always said interesting things.  I could not believe that John did not want to talk to people.  So I went and brazenly sat at his feet, staring up into his deeply wrinkled face.  “My name is Geri!” I said loudly, assuming he was hard of hearing like my Grandpa.

He hardly moved but he snapped “Quit shouting at me!”. his voice was raspy and lifeless.  I was unmoved by his cranky reply.  If anything, I was delighted.  In my eyes he was a story book character, all full of  sour looks and rancid words.

I sat up a little and quieted my voice “Why aren’t you talking to anyone Mr. John?” I said.

His answer to my question was not what I expected and very disappointing to me at the time.  I suppose I had a romantic idea that Ol’ John and I would find a kindred spirit in each other.  I imagined we would discuss the great misconceptions of emotions and life, I would uncover a deep kind soul inside of him and people would say something like “Only Geri could crack that hard old nut!’  But, life is not always like Anne of Green Gables and John was not an eccentric elusive old man, he was just very very grumpy.

John grumbled a long boring answer to my question about why he was not talking to anyone.  He told me that I would not want to talk to anyone either if I had suffered a childhood like his.  He told me about his mother who was a terrible housekeeper and never cooked for him or his sister.  His father was a salesman who was never home, and his Grandmother was so crazy she had to be put in an asylum.  Then he told me that he had been married early in life to a woman who thought so much of herself that all she did was primp in front of a mirror. At least she could cook though, not like his mother.  He had one son with her and then she up and left him.  His son was a no count bum that only called him for money these days, but he wasn’t surprised, he had no idea how to be a parent after his Mom and Dad had been so useless. He had joined the army at some point but since his father had not taught him how to work or be a man he had left the army under shameful conditions.  His story went on and on.  Our brief time together ended when I asked if I could take a picture of him.  He growled “Why the hell would you want a picture of me?”

I did not hesitate a moment. I said “Because you are the grumpiest man I have ever met and I don’t want to forget you.”  My candid (and lets be honest, inappropriate) words made the corners of his mouth twitch.  I am sure he did not hear such a brutally honest statement  every day, least of all from some whipper snapper he just met.  I thought for a moment that he would smile, but a smile as unused as his was, was bound to have mechanical issues, and it just twitched right back into his comfortable frown.  John allowed me to take a picture of him and I still have it in an old album.  After I took the picture I went and met some other people and enjoyed myself tremendously while John went back to staring at his shoes for the rest of the evening.

John was a novelty to me at the age of fourteen but his words left an imprint on me forever.  As I grew up what he said seemed to take on a greater meaning in my mind.  It occurred to me that this man, at the age of 86, had not gotten over his childhood.  He had drug it around all of his long life, using it as a quick excuse for all that had gone wrong for him and he was truly and deeply miserable because of it.

I found myself thinking of Mr. John as I was entering my early twenties.  As many people do, I had become bitter and angry over my childhood.  While I was a kid I never questioned the lifestyle I grew up with, it was normal to me.  As a child I never doubted the validity of the bizarre theories my father taught me.  When I was twenty, I found myself married to a good man and living a ‘normal’ life.  Trading a life of living in tents, RV’s and cabins with no running water for a more standard life comes with unexpected adjustments.  It was a transition that was not easy for me. I suffered with extreme self esteem issues, had no idea how to cook or clean (but could run a track-hoe and build a cabin) and I discovered that my home school education was at best that of a fifth graders.  Yes, I became wildly angry.

Around the time that I had my first son I began thinking of my old friend Mr. John.  It occurred to me that I did not wish to be 86 years old and still angry over my childhood.  However, letting go of my anger was like letting go of a cherished friend.  Anger is so comfortable and addictive and as I learned, a false protector.  To let go of my anger I had to take responsibility for everything that happened in my life as an adult.  Terrifying.  It would take many years to stop leaning on anger and using the past as an excuse for my weaknesses as an adult. It would be a long journey to break these old habits. What I learned during this journey is a beautiful story that I feel compelled to share.

The Garden I Love

We all have gardens.  Perhaps not made of soil and dirt, but as certain as you are breathing, you have a garden.  I call it a Soul Garden.  The garden of our lives, dreams, feelings and accomplishments.  When we are very young and unable to care for our gardens ourselves it falls on our parents to tend them for us.  Just as in literal planting, some have a green thumb, some don’t.  So it is with the soul garden.  Some parents are well fitted to the work of tending their child’s garden, while others struggle.  While one parent may plant a ripe crop of self esteem and fail entirely to trim back the great hedge of narcissism, another parent may plant tall rose bushes of kindness and love but fail to add any neat rows of work ethics.

No matter what is planted, or not planted in a garden, at some point the child will grow up and the garden will become his or her responsibility.  It is like an inheritance you do not receive until you have come of age.  I found myself at the age of twenty sitting in my garden staring at a pile of weeds and empty spaces wondering what the heck my parents had done to my garden!  I think having a time of anger over the past is reasonable and of course for some, the injuries of long ago take longer to heal from than others, but at some point you have to give yourself some tough love and call it what it is, pouting.  Yeah, I was sitting in my dusty little garden pouting, bottom lip out and all.  Mr. John had started pouting in his garden too and hadn’t stopped for 70 years.

So when I decided to take responsibility for my life I was really taking ownership of my Soul Garden.  I told myself ‘It might be full of weeds but it is my garden, and I will make it amazing’.  So I went to work.  I started pulling out old, deeply rooted thistles and brambles.  These weeds were the things my Daddy had taught me that were too crazy to be useful.  They choked out my passion and overwhelmed my own voice of reason.  Daddy’s hot temper and violent outbursts had scorched part of my garden and I had to remove the hurt and damage of it.  As I cleaned away the lessons of my childhood that I had decided would not serve me well in life, I found something amazing.  Beneath the weeds, the burn and the hurt I found little tiny plants growing.  For so long I could not see these little ferns, flowers and seedlings because all I could see were the big weeds. Under all the craziness, dysfunction and pain, my Mom and Dad had planted a little flower garden for me.

My parents had loved me.  They had taught me strength and loyalty.  They taught me how to work hard and love big.  They had given me a childhood full of adventure and freedom.  These were the beautiful things planted in my little garden.  These were the things I started caring for and encouraging to grow.  Having cleaned away the things I did not want, I began to plant the things that I needed but did not have in my garden.  I started growing self esteem, self confidence and a big blooming crop of forgiveness.  It wasn’t long before my garden became a wonderful place that I enjoyed working in.  My anger and bitterness slowly began to be replaced with gratefulness and laughter, I stopped pouting.

Our Soul Garden is ours and only ours.  Because it is an inheritance we can not decide what condition the garden will come to us in.  But, what we do with it after it is ours is entirely up to us. Mr. John had left his garden just the way it was given to him.  His garden got more cramped and miserable to live in as the weeds got bigger and the little plants withered to nothing.  Mr. John was a sad man who sat in the dust of his dry garden and saw his whole life looking through the wall of weeds that he never bothered to remove.  Poor Mr. John.

For a long time, I would imagine myself as a little girl and get very protective, feeling sorry for her.  In my mind she was a broken sad little thing.  Today I see her as my partner, the part of me that makes me rich.  What I know as an adult and what she learned as a child are combined to make something strong, something that is better for having both of us in it.  I am no longer trapped in a cycle of anger over my childhood and I have not abandoned my past telling myself it was without value.  I have claimed my garden, I have tilled the ground and planted my roses. Gratefully I discovered that though some of the weeds in your garden start there by no fault of your own, whether they get bigger or put in deep roots is up to you.  Freedom comes when you learn to keep the good from your childhood and truly let go of what hurts you.  This is a freedom I wish everyone could experience, a freedom I suspect would have put a light in Mr. John’s sad eyes.  This is the exceptional freedom that comes when you learn to dance without hesitation in the garden of your soul.

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