The Great Outdoors

“Try this one. It’s sour. The birds like it.” My grandfather held a swollen red berry in front of my eyes. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, I snatched it from his hand and popped it into my mouth. As the juices flowed through the punctured skin, my eyes grew wide, and I turned away to spit it out on the ground. He laughed. I didn’t care much for the red ones.

There were all kinds of wonders hidden in the lush green of that sprawling back yard. It was much larger then, when I still ran barefoot and dug in the dirt, but I know that it is I who has changed, not it. The very back was lined with a maze of trees and bushes, all purples and greens and blues. There were two gardens, fenced off by wire to keep the rabbits out. It was here that I learned to love the rich soil, to revel in dark brown and dirty my hands.

“Sweetheart, you’re alright.”

I sat on the edge of the kitchen sink as my mother brushed the dirt from my face. A midnight rain had softened the ground, and when I fell from my little wooden swing, the one he had so carefully built, the earth cushioned me.

My grandfather came up behind her slowly. He held in his hand a perfect green sphere, a tiny watermelon that he had just discovered outside. His hands had been broken many times, in the army, in car crashes, in clumsy accidents with slippery ladders, but they were still swift, and he cut the melon open in seconds, offering a slice to me. “Better?” he asked. I smiled.

The blackberries were much sweeter, and they crumbled into little purple spheres when you twirled them between your fingers. It was hard to find them sometimes, hidden within the prickly branches that tore at your skin and caught your sleeves in tangles, but the reward was well worth it.

“You’ll get better. Just rest.” I held the cotton blanket up to my chin, covering every inch of my body, but I was still shivering. The purple stain still lingered upon my lips, and I licked them to make sure there was no trace of the sweet juice left behind. My mother always bought me whatever I wanted to eat when I was sick, and it was grape-juice popsicles that soothed my tired throat that morning. “I have to go to work,” she said. “But grandpa will be here in just a minute.” He would bring his playing cards and scrabble, and we would play as the game shows passed hour after hour on the television.

Honeysuckle branches always interested me, because I saw hummingbirds congregating there, and always assumed they knew something I didn’t. I always tried to capture them on film, but they were too quick.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was in the hospital again?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“It’s so sudden, though… He was just there…”

“He’ll be alright. Now that they know what’s wrong, it’s easier to fix. Don’t bother visiting. I know you’re busy.” Her disdain was killing me. I was never as uncaring as she imagined me to be.

We planted seeds every year in inch-deep trenches, scattering them with abandon. It was the bulbs, however, that took real care. They needed to be nestled in the cool ground, facing the sky. There were three types of perennial flowers in our garden, lilies, roses and tulips. All beautiful, all reminiscent of springtime.

I sat in the church pew, barely listening to the pastor’s chalky voice drifting past my ears. My eyes were caught by the gleam of my silver ring, that trinity of hand, heart and crown. It was made in Ireland, like my ancestors, but he had bought it for me three years prior, at a little shop in Stillwater.

I was startled back to reality, and the pastor seemed to look right at me. “This, too, shall pass.”

The raspberries were my favorite. They were sweet and warm. But sometimes they held surprises. Each time there was a little bug inside one of them, it caught me off guard, and I screamed.

“It’s never going to get better!”

She looked me in the eye. “What do you think life is all about, then? Picking and choosing? Who do you think you are?”

There were tears forming on my eyelids. “I just don’t see anything good here.”

“Fine, then. Go, if want to. Leave everyone who loves you. Let them think you don’t give a shit. If all you ever want to do is leave, will there ever be anything worth sticking around for?”

I could never make up my mind. I always wound up changing it instead.

The miraculous thing about the lilies was that their scent carried. You could sometimes catch it in the back corners behind the garage, by my swing out front, and even inside, sweeping up the staircase and into my bedroom with the slanted ceilings so low you could barely stand. It was a sickeningly sweet smell. The white ones were peace. The red ones were passion. Sometimes I could not stand to look at the red ones.

“Do you want to buy them for Grandpa?”

I nodded. They wouldn’t let us plant flowers by the grave, and it seemed such a waste of good perennial bulbs to lay them in a plastic pot beside a lifeless slab of marble, but I knew that, had he been at all aware, he would have appreciated it.

We brought him orange ones. They were bright and sunny, and they looked like the tiger lilies that had sprouted beside his house. Our house.

There are no more raspberries or blackberries. The currents are tangled in a web of grapevine, which is choking the lilacs as well. The rose bushes wilt without his green touch. But there are still the little onion-bulbs of the lilies underground, and each spring, they poke their green heads through the earth and greet the world. The same flower never blooms twice, but each is as beautiful as the last.