To Look Up

I went scuba diving for the first and only time twenty years ago. Bobbing in sea water near the training boat, I practiced diving underwater with equipment strapped to my back until I was ready to descend fully into watery depths for a 45-minute tour. The ocean’s vastness didn’t frighten me, nor did the deep plunge beneath our vessel. Warm water and the promise of seeing aquatic life tethered me to the adventure.

Slowly, we descended away from the boat. I remained calm as vivid colors erupted around me. The clarity of those blues and greens and reds seemed almost otherworldly. Buoyed by water, my eyes scoured the folds and undulations of ocean life.

The diving instructor floated just ahead of me, but for one brief moment, I couldn’t find my scuba partner. Panicking, I thrashed sideways looking all around me. The instructor caught my eye and pointed up with his right hand. Yes. There, above me, swam my scuba partner.

On land, gravity determines human  movement. Of course we engage with people nearby, beneath, or alongside of us. We don’t look up. But that’s exactly how water works — life exists above and below the surface.

Gardening draws my focus above the fray.

Perhaps you, like me, tend to become myopic about life’s routines, to become ensconced by responsibility. Not everything is around, nearby, beneath, or alongside of me. It takes practice to recognize a routine’s trap. It takes effort to lean back and gaze upward, to leave the depth of one thing for the breadth of it all. It’s been twenty years. But I carry this lesson around in my back pocket: life is more than my immediate vicinity.

When I garden, I look up at the world. My perspective changes. My patience expands.

Last week I created what Charlotte Ross calls a “last gasp” bouquet from dwindling flowers brave enough to remain upright on a cold and unforgiving day. Wind blew plant stalks sideways. Petals littered the lawn in their confetti colors. I stole one last chance to build a bouquet before the weather erased any evidence the gardens existed. The moment felt sacred.

I carried a demure collection of haphazard flowers — all of them late October survivors — indoors, where they transformed the living room with pink and white optimism.

One last peek at fall. And yes, I found it beneath me, at my feet.

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See you soon.

-Betsy