we didn't have nice cars or fancy things. He was the reason there always seemed to be a
cloud of weariness hanging over my parents.
Why did I have to bring up the yard in the first place? I'd never seen my parents fight like this.
Ever. I wanted to grab them and say, Stop it! Stop it!
You love each other! You do! But I just sat there with tears streaming down my face.
My mother stopped suddenly and whispered, “We should not be doing this in front of her!”
“I'm sorry, Julianna,” my dad said, then reached over and held my forearm. “Don't cry. None
of this is your fault. We'll work it out, I promise we will.”
My mother tried to laugh through her tears, saying, “We always have, and we always will.”
That night my parents came into my room and talked to me, one at a time. My father talked
about his brother and how much he loved him and
how he'd promised his parents he'd always take care of him. My mother talked about how
much she loved my father for his strength and kind heart,
about dreams and reality, and the need to count your blessings. And she made me cry all
over again when she kissed me goodnight and
whispered that of all her many blessings, I was her best and brightest.
I felt sorry for my father. I felt sorry for my mother. But most of all I felt lucky for me that they
were mine.
And in the morning, as I rode my rusty bike out the driveway to school, I promised myself that
when I got home, I'd tackle the yard. Rented or not,
this was our home, and I was going to help make living here better.
As it turns out, this was easier thought than done. First it took me half an hour of rummaging
through the garage to find a hammer and a box of
nails, a saw, and some pruners. Then it took another half hour of standing around to figure
out just where to start. The actual yard was just clumps of
weeds, but what about the bordering shrubs? Should I dig them up, or prune them way back?
Were they shrubs, or just overgrown weeds? And
what about the fence? Should I knock it down, or rebuild it? Maybe I should take out the front
end entirely and use the wood to fix up the sides.
The longer I looked around, the more I felt like forgetting the whole thing. Why bother? It
wasn't our property. Mr. Finnegan should be the one
making repairs.
But then I remembered my mother's words from the night before. Surely, I thought, a few
bushes and some dilapidated wood couldn't stop
someone's best and brightest blessing! Surely not!
And with that, I picked up the clippers and got to work.
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Half an hour later I was keeper of the knowledge that one bush equals many branches, and
that the volume of a bush increases exponentially as
it's cut and tossed into the middle of a yard. It was ridiculous! Where was I going to put all
this stuff?
Mom came home and tried to talk me out of my mission, but I'd have none of it. Oh, no-no-no!
I'd already pruned two bushes down to a
respectable size, and before long she'd see— the place was going to look just dandy.
“You didn't get that stubborn streak from me,” she said, but came back outside with a glass
of juice and a kiss for my cheek. Good enough for
me!By the end of that first day, what I'd made was a big mess. But if chaos is a necessary
step in the organization of one's universe, then I was well
on my way. At least that's what I tried to tell myself when I flopped into bed that night, dead
tired.
