Planting Roses

“In the year 1936 a writer planted roses.” So begins the book Orwell’s Roses by

Rebecca Solnit. The writer in question was George Orwell, who wrote pointed social commentary about the state of the world in his time. He had a lot to be discouraged by, for sure: Communism in Russia. Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany. The Depression. If one wanted to be cynical and pessimistic about the future, 1936 looked pretty bleak.

So does 2023, as it turns out. I can hardly stand to read the Sunday New York Times. If the last three years of dire pandemic news weren’t enough to put me off my newspaper reading habit, the news of today makes me want to give up completely. The political scene both in this country and around the world is horrifying. The climate reports are terrifying. If we don’t kill off the human race with our hatred and bad behavior, we will surely perish in a blaze of fire.

And if that wasn’t enough, there is the widespread crisis-mongering over nothing at all.

Case in point:

One Saturday morning this summer Matt and I were lingering in bed with coffee. I was reading a book, Matt was perusing the newspaper. Quite out of nowhere, he turned to me and asked, “So, Amy, how often to do change our bathmats?”

I should at this point interject with a bit of explanation about how chores work at our house. In spite of what one might think based on Matt (the man) asking Amy (the woman) that question, we really do share household chores around here. Yes, I do more cleaning, certainly more gardening, and all the laundry. But Matt runs most of the errands, does a great deal of the cooking, and manages things like making sure bills are paid on time and that all my technology is running smoothly. We have our moments when we feel like we fail at being adults, when our systems break down, when somehow despite two brains and six degrees we still run out of toilet paper, but most of the time we manage to feed ourselves and our cats. The plants get watered. The trash gets taken out.

But back to Matt’s question about the bathmats. “It says here that if you don’t change the bathmats every few days, it could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous. Really?” I could hardly hide my sarcasm.

“Yes, we could be growing mold and getting fungus infections.” “Has this been a problem?”

“It could be. We need to watch out.”

If I hadn’t been married to this man for 29 years, I might think he was serious. Because the world is dangerous, to be sure. 1936 might have had Hitler and Nazism; Communism and Russia, and the Great Depression, but cut to 2023 and we have Trump and the Republicans, Putin and the Russians, and a Climate Crisis. Our own beautiful trifecta of trouble. And apparently, a bonus: a serious bathmat problem.

The whole thing makes me ponder the practice of planting roses. Turns out, Orwell didn’t just plant roses at his home in the Cotswolds. He fell in love and got married. He and his wife adopted a son. He wrote his political and biting satires, and he nurtured his garden, his little corner of the universe. Both.

I once heard a preacher say that humans beings want four things: justice, meaning, relationships and beauty. Or as the old political slogan said, “Bread and roses.” I think that is rings true, but boy-oh-boy, it’s the end of a long hot diminishing summer, and change is hard. Actually, movement is hard. Anything that is not lying on the couch under a ceiling fan eating a popsicle is hard. At some point, in the last few weeks, I realized that life felt not like the infamous Groundhog Day, but like the endless same day. I spent an entire week having this conversation in my head, “Well, because tomorrow is Friday….” And then realizing that the next day was not Friday. It was Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday, my sense of time completely melted away in the heat.

The truth is we all do too much personal drama-mongering in our conversations and interactions, our own versions of: “did you hear about the dangers of bathmats?” I am as guilty as the next person of endless doomsday hysterics. And yes, July has been a hot month, perhaps the hottest on record. However, that isn’t the whole picture. This summer has also included some wonderful visits from friends and family that we dearly love. I taught 200+ piano lessons; I can’t even do the math on the practice boxes this might represent. Matt and I have been a part of (and yes, sometimes also in charge of) a lot of amazing music-making this summer. I swam hundreds of laps. I drank galloons of iced coffees and white wine, and ate a respectable amount of ice cream and watermelon.

Maybe instead of endless spinning in generalities, we all need to plant more roses. We need to sing more Requiems, read more books that leave us breathless, create more acts of beauty in a world gone mad. But more than that, we need to believe that the act of planting roses is a political act. That we haven’t given up, and that our gardens, both literally and metaphorically, matter. “In spiritual practice there are only two things: you sit and you sweep the garden,” says the wisdom of the Zen tradition.

In these depleting days of August, I sit. I sweep the garden. I change the bathmat. I breathe. Practice.