Calling Them Miracles
Child philosophers, a few on the shoulders of crouching college students, hover over small plants left over from the creation of their school garden. A four-pack to take home—but which one? Two third grade gardeners, unable to decide, huddle in front of me. Taking her hands off her hips, one swoops down and picks up her prize. She explains to her classmate. “These look like the sun, yellow and gold and orange all mixed up. But I don’t know what you call them.” She turns to me. “They call them miracles, right?”
Marigolds = miracles. Right? “Yes, that’s a good name for them.”
Garden Benefactress
Planted and tended by my community college students, the first shovel hit pay dirt for my grandmother’s memorial garden in 1999. In 2020, the Garden’s renaissance proved restorative for everyone tangled in its over and undergrowth. Thank you to all who have and are pitching in—sweaty friends weeding and mulching and others donating and cheering from a distance. And, my everlasting gratitude to the self-proclaimed “anonymous benefactress” who, unasked, funded this blooming rebirth. My college roommate, who planted a dogwood in the early days of Plum’s Garden, delighted in its comeback with every photograph and video. She snapped photos of each note and contribution received at her Florida home, wanting to learn more about the giver, and thereby founded and assured a thriving Gardening Club.
What happens these days in Plum’s Garden? Exactly what happened on gardening weekends decades ago. Passersby speak. A few stroll on with a wave of their walking sticks or baseball hats. Most stop. Never loud, many lower their voices. “The mountains glow, don’t they?” Some sit, others stretch out. Picnics leisurely savored. Game rules jokingly ignored. “Who built the benches and curving wall?” I receive proper and lengthy introductions to their dogs, definitely—intros to their children, briefly and sometimes. Sadness or anxiety either obvious or expressed in almost two pandemic years? Not once. Smiles and kindness? Always. “Would you like a piece of birthday cake?” Joining the party, a mockingbird brings appetizers to tiny chirpers nesting in the weeping cherry.
Why such a stark contrast between human behavior in the Garden and in a traffic jam? Between games on that hillside and in a bowling alley? Between conversations on a creek bank and in a bank building? Between interactions in a grocery store and in a vegetable patch? Between groups walking along the shore and in the shopping mall? Between those flying kites and airborne on flights?
I have never had a student, elementary or doctoral, who failed to grasp this truth, discomfiting as it is: Separation from nature, our shared home, uproots and isolates individuals. This first divorce next damages and potentially severs human relationships. “If I see myself as part of the living body of the earth, I will see myself as connected to other persons, animals, and the earth itself” (Rita Manning, Speaking from the Heart). Fractures beg for mending. Replenish the earth’s body. Stitch. Irises = eyelashes. Right?
Double stitch. Listen to owl and rain. See stone and cloud. Smell rosemary and salt air. Taste tangy and tart. Touch human skin and tree bark. Everything exists in relationship—our mother, Earth, wraps everything into her fabric’s folds. Only this mother, every moment, for All. One common denominator—nothing outside the equation. Marine life and ice caps—close kin. Butterfly and elephant—kissin’ cousins. Streams and worms—first mates. Climate change and social injustice—identical twins. Fix one—fix both.
In Mary Oliver’s 6-minute NPR interview with Rachel Martin, “A Thousand Mornings,” the poet speaks to her lifelong love affair with the natural world. Oliver honors the earth’s sacred beauty and generously shares it with us in verse. Here’s “Why I Wake Early,” Oliver coaxes. Hello sun, dearest star and preacher that shields us from darkness. Bright maker of all good mornings, thank you for shining in tulips’ faces and in ours. You rise “to ease us with warm touching / to hold us in the great hands of light.” Yes, like Oliver, we’re grateful for the chance to travel “Many Miles.” Heron’s beak—cricket’s hooks. Camel’s feet—your feet and mine. “To each of us comes / the body gift.”
“Away, you rolling river.” Row and drift, drift and row with Bruce Springsteen’s “Shenandoah.” Rolling. Rolling. Rolling. “Away, we’re bound away.” River bound.
From river to mountain. Rub your fingers in James Taylor’s “Wild Mountain Thyme.” Inhale sweet summertime, my dearie, behold crystal fountain and wild flowers. “All around the bloomin’ heather / Will ye go, lassie, go?” Certainly. Mountain bound.
From mountain to ocean. Happy-hearted Ben Howard blesses the morning as the “Old Pine” falls, summer’s warmth zinging through his bones. Sandy toes and steady stars. Sleeping bags and firesides. Guitar and cello. Dawn and joy. Though we grow older, older, yet older, older, we remain “careless and young, free as the birds that fly / with weightless souls now.” Ocean bound.
River. Mountain. Ocean. “They call them miracles.”
Good morning, sun. Preach to us.
Oh yah. Oh yah. Oh yah.
Told with McCarty’s characteristic wisdom, marvel, exuberance, and good will, Leaving 1203 is about navigating that way through. The author draws on all available resources—friends and strangers, food and laughter, life lessons learned in the very house she now empties, and, not least, her newly-inherited West Highland terrier, Billy. McCarty simultaneously learns and deftly teaches the fine arts of remembering, letting go, and holding on to what matters most. She not only finds the way through, she shows the way.
the greatest gift an author could give a reader… lessons of a universally philosophical and existential kind… a touching journey… a welcome, upbeat ride
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