Honoring our Internal Greenspaces

Tonight after dinner, my friend's husband asked me to come into the yard and help him shovel and rake in the muddy dirt track I accidentally created when I was trying to angle my newly purchased 1993 GMC cargo van into the far left, half parking spot in front of the storage room, attached to his big two stall garage. The normal concrete driveway ends a few feet away from the door and then branches out into an additional parking space, so I have to turn my van up and in a bit to fit the spot with out clipping the grass. Not much of a turn but unfortunately, in all the rain and poor visibility last week, I misjudged the angle. It was not a really long track, though a pretty wide one, considering my big tires. It didn't take two people at all but for him it was the principal of the thing. I can only assume he felt I did not show appropriate respect for his yard and wanted to hold me accountable to fix the mess.

I felt humiliated and embarrassed. You see, due to a childhood eye surgery, I have no real depth perception. My brain has learned to compensate pretty well, all things considered. I can stay inside the lines and drive down the road pretty well, but when I have to take really tight corners, especially when I am stressed or focused on other more important aspects of driving, or focusing on my destination and goals, I tend to bump corners. Just that afternoon I pulled into the Wendy's parking lot and got to close to a round decorative brick wall on the left side of the drive-thru lane closest to the building and scraped all the paint off, sheer through to the metal, as I tried to navigate around a particular tight part of the round, coming up to the ordering consul. I was pushed so tight against it there was no way to back away without doing severe body damage to the vehicle. Thankfully, it was old and cheap and paid for. I've only had the vehicle for a month and have done well at being extra careful so far but the mishap did not surprise me in the least. Par for the course with me and cars.

If that were the only mitigating factor, I would have probably been okay with the whole experience having to have the owner of a piece of land make a show of shoveling in his half of the track and then standing their watching me shovel in my half, especially someone whose spouse is a friend of mine, nevermind the additional problem of my extreme lack of experience and paradigms for doing anything with dirt in the first place. I have, sadly, never owned my own patch of land to tend. The only garden or yard I have is the creative thoughtful space I try so desperately to tend in my own head, my future internal oasis, always a work in re-progress it seems.



Yet there was an even more difficult irony to process. The reason I had been extra distracted was because I wanted to make sure I respected him enough by allowing him enough room to squeeze in between my friend's and my vehicle when he came home at night. I know him to get pretty irritated when his son leaves things lying around in his way, as many parents do after a hard day at work, when he is trying to pull in at night so I figured the most important thing to do was keep that space clear, so I would not upset him by requiring him to come in and ask me to move my car over so he could pull in. I did not get out a ruler and measure the width of his car, and compare it to the width of the space. Given my knowledge of my handicap and the knowledge that this person was pretty particular about how things looked around the house, those extra obsessive steps would have been entirely appropriate. Wish I had thought of that earlier. But the first thing my friend said after she requested I begin parking there instead of in the two extra spaces at the end of the entrance driveway, so she wouldn't make the mistake of backing into me while pulling out, was to make sure I left enough room for her husband to get through. Brains being what they are, the first thing I heard was the most important thing I remembered. Every time I pulled in, I was so busy listening to the little voice in my head reminding me to make enough room for him that I destroyed something that matter more to him in the process. Funny how that works.


I managed to get through the experience without tears of hurt and bruised ego, (OK, least until I pulled away to run errands). And as he walked away to inspect another house-tending job, the powerwasher had done at removing the mold from the trim around the top of the house, I had this sudden epiphany. "I wonder what the world would be like, if we tended and treated our internal yards and those of the ones we love with as much respect as we tend and treat our external yards and acreages." Do we understand that EVERY TIME we misrepresent, deny, downplay, or treat with disrespect, the feelings, thoughts, dreams, aspirations, pains and struggles of those around us, we might as well have driven a muddy track through their yard in the muddy rain? And after a while, if we abuse someone over and over again, if they are "chronically success deprived", as Mel Levine calls it, whether intentionally or unintentionally, they are left with nothing but muddy tracks, misplaced dirt, torn up grass, and the hard work of shoveling, digging, and reseeding over and over again only to have it torn up again and again. In our society, the work of healing and tending our mental spaces is work we ultimately have to do alone.

Yet, I think sometimes we are called in this life, whether we made the tracks or not, whether we meant to make them or not, to get out our shovels, rakes, and rulers and stand over the mess and the sacred spaces where we and others park our hearts and minds, with another human being, and help them and us put it all back in place the best we can, carefully, honoring every inch of width and depth, measuring carefully, navigating once. Sometimes, as was the case tonight, fixing the gap in the yard with my friend's husband, all you can do is fill in the holes, for now, and get the dirt back where it belongs. The replanting time, the real healing time, is still to come, but at least you made the start. Together.