Imagined History 3

(This post is mostly fiction – at least the first sentence is true – and part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

When I was a child, my father's father had an amazing garden. Garden doesn't even feel like the right word for it; it seemed more like an entirely separate world to me. And maybe because in those early years I only saw it once a year – my grandparents lived in Pittsburgh, which was about a five hour drive from Big Flats, my home town – it was impossible for me to imagine that my grandfather's elaborate, terraced garden had been planned and created by him. Just as I hadn't yet made the connection between books and authors, Opa's garden was less his creation than a wonder of the world that I couldn't wait to explore.

We have a home movie of me helping him in the garden when I was about six years old, and sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if my father hadn't decided to test out his new 8mm camera that day. Early in the film, I am carrying armfuls of trimmed branches down the central steps and then out of the frame. A few minutes later, you can see me crouched in the shade of my grandfather, a tiny pair of trimming scissors in my hand as I snip as directed while he holds a rose branch between the thorns. He then gives me the rose, and tells me to take it to my mother, and this is the part of the movie that the rest of my family always comments on.

"Look, there he is," my father will say teasingly, "mommy's best boy!" My mom always puts up a protest. "It was sweet! You can give me roses anytime, Jimmy."

But the part of the movie that always stood out for me was the look on my face as I carried the branches down to the compost, carefully feeling with my little foot for the next step. So proud. And then, again, the look on my face as I listen to my grandfather talk about how to choose a pruning spot. Such concentration.

When I was about twelve years old, I finally figured out that my grandfather wasn't just the caretaker of his garden, he was its creator. And as soon I figured that out, it's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

My father (the engineer) and my mother (the chemist) were taken aback, I think, in the beginning. But I wore them down with the persistent fact of my happiness. And I am happy with my choice.

But I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if some other home movie had been the one that got played over and over again.

(Many thanks to the folks at The Creative Act
for their inspiring challenge this month.)