Weeds & Seeds

Spring opens, most years, with a one-step-forward-two-steps-back dance. Cold rain and snow twirl around sunshine and warmth, as the odd summer-like day and maybe an unexpected frost cut in now and then. Through this spring cha-cha, the landscape greens up, the earliest flowers – both wild and cultivated – bloom, and the trees unfurl their leaves. As color seeps back into the world, gardening tasks lengthen my to-do list.

With a spattering of veggie beds and a perennial garden we revamped during last spring’s time of Staying Home, I’ve been fitting the gardening in between work hours and soccer games, woods wanderings and playing catch in the yard, dinnertime and bedtime. Much like spring, my gardening efforts come in fits and starts.

As soon as the growing things emerge, it seems the weeds quickly outpace whatever it is we’ve planted. Last week, my son and I plucked new weeds from the front garden and spread mulch around clumps of daylilies and irises, moonbeam coreopsis and barely out-of-the-ground astilbe stalks. We got about halfway through the job before running out of mulch, and the other half remains on hold until we have the time (and the truck) to collect more. Cha-cha-cha.

After considering what edibles to plant this season, waiting (and waiting, and waiting) for warmer weather, and sketching out what will go where, on Saturday I dropped the year’s first veggie seeds into one of the raised beds the kids helped my dad build last year. Into the freshly turned soil, I carefully sowed snow peas and beet seeds and spring greens. Still to come: green beans, carrots, squash, cucumbers, sungold tomatoes, maybe a row or two of potatoes, a few onions. It may take me the next month to get everything in, but it will happen. Eventually. Cha-cha-cha.

Last year, I grew two rows of zinnias between the snap peas and the bush beans in the big vegetable garden out back. This year, I think I may fill one of the smaller garden boxes in the side yard entirely with flowers – more zinnias and sunflowers and maybe some snapdragons. These, of course, we cannot eat. (Well, maybe the sunflower seeds, but we’ll likely leave those for the birds.) But they are nourishing in other, also important ways.

Through spring’s uncertain dance and into summer I’ll wait, hopeful, for the seeds to sprout, then for the stems to grow tall, and for the tightly furled buds to open. I don’t know what this dance is called – not a cha-cha or a waltz or a tango – but the choreography is pretty close to perfect.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's May 13, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.

Dancing to joy

For the first several weeks of dance class last fall, Ella entered the studio tearfully. The first day, as she sat against the wall watching the other children leap and twirl, she turned to me and said, a bit desperately, “Mama, I want to do that.” But she wouldn’t – couldn’t – move from the edge to the center of the room. This weekly ritual was painful for both of us, and more than once I was on the verge of pulling her from dance class, waiting another year, or forgetting it altogether.

   

When she was a toddler, she was fearless. She would climb the stairs, jump off the couch, laugh at anyone, tackle her twin brother, play with worms, splash in puddles with unending exuberance. She took to skiing without a backward glance as she careened downhill. She pedaled her tricycle – then a bike – with happy abandon. Then she went to preschool, and my oldest daughter realized there is a whole, big world out there.

Even in a safe place, surrounded by a dozen other children her size, she stuck close to her brother or her teachers. At home she was silly and strong and independent. But at school, she was reserved and quiet – attentive and engaged, but still shy. As her brother expanded his social horizons, running further and playing more with the other children, she still clung to me each morning at drop off.

This year I have watched her, a kindergartener now, branch out to new friends and new experiences. She has learned to spell bigger words and read on her own, add numbers and measure dinosaurs. She maneuvers through other students on the playground at recess. She took weekend ski lessons all winter, with her brother there by her side, and played soccer and t-ball. And she started dance lessons.

From Wednesday through Tuesday, Ella chatted happily about dance class and the moves she was learning and the other kids there. Each Tuesday afternoon, though, the anxiety returned as we arrived at the studio. Ella wanted to dance. I wanted to instill the importance of finishing what you’ve started and the value in overcoming anxiety to get to the fun of something that is initially scary, but ultimately rewarding.

Ella’s dance teacher, Miss Kathy, who is ingenious in ways beyond dance instruction, created a Bravery Chart to help ease the initial angst of class. For completing tasks like walking into class by herself, sitting with the other dancers during attendance, and remembering to have fun, she received a sticker each week. Although still a bit nervous at the start of each lesson, Ella was soon smiling through dance class with the other children and showing off new moves at home.

We all have our fears to face, whether we’re 3 years old or many decades beyond – starting a new job or leaving a comfortable but unfulfilling one, walking through the doors of a new school, training for a marathon or a 5K, moving away from home, ending a relationship or diving into a new one, writing a book, meeting new people, fighting or accepting an illness. Sometimes we have no choice but to confront a challenge. Sometimes we choose to simply take the easy, comfortable way. Often, though, if we make the decision to face what makes us fearful or anxious or just uncomfortable, the rewards are big: personal happiness, professional satisfaction, new friends.

For my daughter, sticking with dance class was a challenge. Would she have been OK if we had decided to wait for another year? Sure. But we both knew she wanted to do it, and I think we would have regretted that decision, even if it had meant less hectic Tuesday afternoons.

Last weekend was the recital. It’s a big deal, with some three dozen groups performing and hundreds of people from throughout our area turning out to watch two shows. Ella was excited, but also nervous – not with stage fright, but with her usual separation anxiety. When I left her backstage before each show, she was clingy and a bit tearful.

But when the curtain came up, there was her smile and her six-year-old shimmy. Not a hint of the fear or anxiety she’d exhibited months ago or a few minutes earlier. Just pure, dancing joy – proof that sometimes doing the thing that is hard is also the most fun.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul and published on her Blog: Writings from a full life.