Trevor's blog: 'Digging in the Dirt'

It’s still cold, cloudy, and windy here on the coast of Maine. Not ready for garden planting yet, but the birds, with their morning ruckus, don’t seem discouraged. 

The cardinals have been visiting, and with each flash of bright red in the yard, I think of my grandmother Arlene. 

Especially this time of year, I close my eyes and she is never far, though she has been gone for well more than a decade. I see her sitting in the middle of her flower garden, the small plot between the farmhouse and an old shed, long since knocked down.

The soil is dark coffee brown. She sits in the dirt, carefully plucking the dead stalks of last season’s plants and a few early weeds. 

One by one, she places them in a compost bucket. She is serene, as was always her manner. She moves with grace and intention, neither serious nor carefree, seemingly unbothered by the tasks ahead of her or the memories behind. 

As a boy, I felt no urge to join her. I was a boy, doing boy things. Racing across the lawn in a fantasy land with my cousins, shooting at the basketball hoop, convincing one of the adults to take us to the beach. 

Plus, gardens were never “finished.” From spring preparation to planting, to weeding, watering, fencing, more planting, more weeding. Even the last of the picking in the fall was a segue into seed-ordering for the next growing season. As a man, I remained mostly impatient, outcome-focused, tethered to a list of items I could cross off. 

College. Career. Accolades. Money-earning. Marriage. Family. 

There is a price to pay, of course, for the “to-do” list life. You can strive too much, move too fast, cling too tightly to the boxes you’ve lined up for yourself to check.

Cancer has a way of undoing that mindset. 

If I’m being honest, living with cancer for the past two years has forced me, in a really positive way, to worry less about the to-do list. Yes, I still enjoy taking action and executing tasks. But these days I’m much more energized by the experience of doing, rather than the fleeting satisfaction of finishing a project.

Such is the way with gardening, and with my grandmother. I’m blessed to live on the same family farm where she spent most of her life. When unexpected challenges hit, like the one we now face as a society, I think of her calming presence and voice. 

About a decade ago, when our daughters were toddlers, I helped my aunt and uncle put up a large greenhouse on our shared property. I never contributed a lot of work toward the plants my aunt nurtured there, but would occasionally pitch in with a work day,

For the past two springs, I have not been able to help with the greenhouse. 

I had colon surgery and chemotherapy in the spring of 2018. I had liver surgery in the spring of 2019. Physically, I was a shell of my former self, with no energy. Mentally, I was even worse. 

This spring, inspired by memories of my grandmother, and our new societal challenge of the COVID-19 outbreak, I feel compelled to work with the soil. I’m feeling pretty good on my immunotherapy regimen, and my energy comes in waves. 

The greenhouse, though, was a wreck. My aunt has had way too many responsibilities to keep up with it on her own. So the space slowly filled with tall grasses, weeds, overgrown rose bushes, and thick, gnarly vines covered with thorns. When I stepped into the greenhouse about a month ago with my leather gloves, tools, and wheelbarrow, I stopped for a long while to take it all in. Eighty feet by 20 feet of sharp, dusty wildness. 

It was too much. How on earth would I ever get this done?

I had to laugh at myself. I was already thinking about how to check off the box, instead of how it would feel to lose myself in the work. 

Then I thought on grammie Arlene in her garden, and I sat down in the dirt. Weed by weed, plant by plant. Scooting around that way, she could change an entire landscape, and the attitude of anyone who saw her flowers. All I needed to do was to pick a starting point, and to pay attention to what was right in front of me. 

So I did that. In an afternoon, I had a small section cleared, then a whole side one day later. When the inflammation from my immunotherapy began to bother me, my aunt and uncle had already joined the clearing party. Soon, the greenhouse was cleared out and we were ready for new planting. 

I’ll have our daughters help out with the garden, in their own time. I hope that someday — in the same way I think of my grandmother — my children, and with some luck, their children, will think fondly of me as well.