Miss Garrison & God’s Work

By Michael Anastasio

I was not always a fan of gardening. My mother grew rose bushes by the hundreds, all of them requiring constant care. As kids, we all had our “jobs” and mine was weeding the Bermuda grass out of the roses in the backyard of my Not-So-Old Kentucky Home. If Kentucky blue grass was part of God’s plan, Bermuda grass was most assuredly an add-on from satan. It grew horizontally, snug to the ground, in all directions deep-rooting itself every inch or so, ensuring its absolute resistance to pulling of any kind. It was a thoroughly invasive, nightmare species hell-bent on breaking the back and spirit of any adolescent boy given the task of its removal.

Since yard work meant hard work, it was with some skepticism that I listened as my mother told me of a job opportunity. Church friends had an unmarried neighbor lady needing help with her yard. I could always use spending money but there it was, that back-breaking two word euphemism “yard work.” Still, seduced by the almighty dollar, I said, “Yes.”

As I bicycled my way around to the front of Miss Garrison’s home I saw trees, bushes, shrubs, high grass and…weeds. Somewhere in the middle, barely visible, was a stone house. Assessing the amount of work to be done and resisting the urge for a hasty retreat, I forced myself up the curved stone walkway, dropped my bike and rang the bell. An ancient old lady (probably my age now) in a flowered dress appeared, her gray hair pinned up Gibson-style. After wiping her hands on a dish towel, she opened the screen door and asked me in. As I took in her heavy Victorian living room, I was reminded of a room in an old Shirley Temple movie and a wisecracking big city gal proclaiming, “I wouldn’t like it if I was a moth.” Suppressing a giggle, I sat down and answered Miss Garrison’s questions.

Agreeing to start right away, I was put to work raking leaves and felt instantly overwhelmed. At lunchtime, we ate tuna on toast and apple salad along with freshly made lemonade. We also talked. Miss Garrison was kind. That much was clear and, she wasn’t scary, unlike most old people. My great-grand father and both my grandmothers, German and Italian, were, for instance, terrifying. Miss Garrison was not. She seemed genuinely interested in me and asked so many questions that I’m sure my little emerging ego was fed in a way it hadn’t been before. Her questions weren’t of the “where are you going?” or “what are you doing?” variety I was used to. Hers were more personal. She’d ask what I thought about things, what I loved, what made me happy. I’m sure I overshared but I’m just as certain she enjoyed it because she would say so time and again. “Oh Michael, I could listen to you all day,” she’d say as I’d happily prattle on with story after story of my not-very-eventful 13-year-old life. “You are such a fine storyteller,” she’d say, “when you describe something, I see it, plain as day.”

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After lunch, we returned outdoors but this time through her back door. It was then I first saw her backyard which, at a glance, was a big weedy mess. My fear of being cruelly overworked reared its ugly head but gave way quickly to something else. As Miss Garrison pointed out this flower and that, it became clear that this wasn’t a backyard at all, but a garden. A real garden if ever I’d seen one. Gone to seed and thoroughly overgrown with weeds, it still held the latent beauty of a well-planned, thoroughly loved garden ─ until the gardener had grown old and could no longer kneel or stoop or bend or do the things such a place requires. Trailing my new friend and listening to her describe her neglected garden’s former glory, I began to feel its magic and hear it quietly crying out to me. Miss Garrison’s garden wanted me. It was as if the milkweed vines that had overtaken everything else had taken the opportunity to wrap themselves around me as well, determined to pull me in and keep me there. My budding inner-gardener saw the potential and I knew why I was there. I’d be Miss Garrison’s new back and knees.

We’d spend hours, Miss Garrison and I, growing our garden right along with our blossoming intergenerational friendship. She was winter and I was spring as we’d work all the seasons, side by side, raking autumn leaves, winterizing with the first frost, planting bulbs for spring and in the summer, tending and transplanting. As we’d lovingly move a flourishing flower to its new home, she’d whisper to me with a conspiratorial wink, “There, it’ll never know it’s been moved.” Because of Miss Garrison, I began to think of plants and flowers as sentient beings able to respond to us and our love. I liked that. We’d work together discussing plant life and life; love of flowers and love itself. Some of it I got and some of it would wait decades for the seeds my gardening friend had planted to take hold, grow and blossom as my own spiritual awareness eventually caught up. It was Miss Garrison who first sowed in me the seed of an idea that there is divinity in all things. “Where there is life, there is beauty and where there is beauty there is God. Just look around you,” she’d say, proving her point with those four words and a sweep of her hand. Gardening became something truly meaningful with Miss Garrison; more than just pulling weeds, gardening became “God’s work.”

As with any teenage boy, my interests began to change and my visits to the aging Chalia Garrison became less frequent. I went away to school and wasn’t particularly good at keeping in touch. I can’t remember the last time I saw her. I wish I could. Her kindness, her friendship, her love and the things she taught me are always with me. Miss Garrison is especially present whenever I’m in a garden doing “God’s work.” To this day, as I carefully transplant a flower, sure of her presence just over my shoulder, I whisper a conspiratorial, “There. It’ll never know it’s been moved.”

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The article is a chapter from Michael’s Book “Gay Boy’s Life” which is available on Amazon.com