Over the past month, I've started quite the garden. I'm growing tomatoes, hot peppers, sweet peas, string beans, lettuce, herbs and a nasturtium or two. Alissa reminds not forget the marigolds, but that's beside the point, I suppose. This post is less about what I'm growing literally, and more about what I choose not to grow, figuratively. And that has a great deal to do with those ladies looking over the garden wall, who seem to always stand together, clucking.
This garden grows in an 8 foot by 8 foot raised bed near the garage in my Lauderdale backyard. I started planting it because I needed a refuge, and it's always peaceful and refreshing to watch life grow. And since then, those square feet have, if anything, gotten a 'lack of negligence.' You can find me back there, quietly watching (watering/wondering).
I should be making some sort of witty analogy where I equate myself to Contrary Mary, since that's where I'm trying to go, but I'm having a little trouble making the connection, given that it's Friday, and I've been her all week (or since grade 3). Originally the nursery rhyme was said to be an allusion to one of the Queens (Mary, of course) who had a husband who cheated on her constantly and a rumored inability to produce viable offspring (for more on the historical roots go: wiki). But I'd like to put my own spin on said rhyme.
Let's say I'm Mary. It's certainly true that I've been known to be contrary, willful, rebellious and sometimes unruly. And I think we choose to grow gardens to divert us from other things. Namely, silver bells, cockle shells, or in my case, those beauties who have always had too much time on their hands, and too few ideas (as opposed to a surplus of people) to talk about.
It's much like deliberately planting seeds versus germinating weeds. Self actuality is what I hope to cultivate, whereas that uncomfortable energy caused by insipid voices, inadvertently roots weeds and fertilizes them. If we let the poison in, cause yields effect.
Those pretty maids...are the reason why (as I learned my lesson from Hayley Stubbs et al. at that fateful sleepover party in third grade where everyone ended up crying) I don't usually hang out in huge groups of chicks (see: above illustration). I never aspire to be on the receiving end of sideways glances; but I guess the de facto position one takes when one decides to turn away from that row, is that of the object. It is too often that as a woman, if you aren't doing the talking, you are the one being talked about. And I guess one moral I'd like to put forth is simply that if our own story is not compelling, that should not compel us to retell (or speculate upon) the stories of others. Our own boredom or unhappiness is not close to reason enough to pull others down too. It's the whole trite "you shouldn't blow out someone else's candle to make your own burn brighter" thing. Co-misery loves company.
So it was in high school, and so it continues to be today.
All nursery rhymes have a lesson. Mine, I think, has something to do with wanting to just be allowed to figure stuff out on my own without a whole lot of drama, controversy or background noise. We all gotta tend our own, and not spray our hoses in others' so much of the time. When the whispering stops when one walks into a room, she knows it's time to mulch. And this, I think, is a lesson for most women (and some men).
And they all lived happily ever after.
The End.
