From my Office Window

A few weeks ago from my office window, I watched windy gusts battered my green and yellow windmill. The snow was gone and my garden reflected the direction my life had taken months ago more than I liked. Torn up, replanted, edited, made smaller. Hope, possibilities, fear, losses and founds were all there in a sorrowful tumble.

Flower beds had been razed and turned back to lawn. Transplanted perennials clipped short and tucked into mulch-amended soil too far apart for my taste. Gone were my over-filled beds, the riot of flowers, the color, the scent.

Saved? Only the plants I couldn’t live without. My father-in-law’s early peony, my mother’s white lilac tree, the dependable Betty Boob rose. Of course, the blue delphiniums, the white daisy, ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum, tall, purple veronica and winter chrysanthemum, all saved when I eliminated garden beds.

Who would have ever thought it would come to this? Not me. Just over a year ago my garden was my passion, my salvation. But part of the gift of being sick, getting a life changing diagnosis is learning what is truly important, what you’re truly passionate about.

Yes, the remaining flower beds looked ruined a few weeks ago, but what a difference a few weeks can make.

I’ve always named my flower beds, labeled them in my head, at least. Reality is my yard hardly needs names for the postage-size garden beds. But once there was a Rose Garden, Shade Garden, Vegetable Garden. Lilac Garden. Zen Garden. Now, Hope Garden encompasses my whole yard, my whole life.

Last year I felt torn asunder in my garden, my writing, my life.

Before I was diagnosed with MPGN, I was simply frustrated. Every moment of time I grabbed to write was hard won. Wrestled from so many more deserving things. My mother, my family, my husband, the house, the garden. You know, those should-be’s. Battlegrounds so various and long standing. One battle won, another sprang up. Wrangling constantly with what I wanted to do and what was right. Over the years I’ve been angry, desperate, pleading, finally, resigned but determined. Each battle made me doubt all over again what I was doing, what I wanted to do, made me doubt the importance of my dreams.

More than anything I have tried to balance my writing with my ‘real’ life. Writing is not, nor never has been the most important thing in my life. Never more important than my kids, my husband, my mom…and yet—And yet, the need to write is so cutting—a fist around my heart when I can’t, a whip when I don’t, a constant voice in my head no matter what else it is I’m doing. I can’t, don’t ever get away from that voice. That voice, constantly nags me about stories, essays poems. Things that need to be written down.

“I don’t have time for this.” That was my thought, my attitude, so many months ago when the first inkling that something was wrong with me.

Guess what? “Oh, yes, you do,” whispers reality.

That I am writing, right this moment, is a miracle, a blessing. I am grateful, heart high. Yet the struggle goes on, doesn’t it?

And the wonder. Why? Why do I need to write so much? Need writing as much as breath? Is it like that for every writer? What drives me so, and why? And if I was made this way, why don’t I have more success to show for it?

I can’t answer most of those questions but now I know—given desperate choices—if I only have a short time to live I know what I want to spend my time doing. I have my answer. I want family close, love them, spend time with them and I want to write. I can’t put it aside, can’t turn my back. Quite simply, it is me.