The Tree Said Hello

I am drawn to a certain crepe myrtle just outside my back gate. I have always loved them and this one is particularly beautiful. My son recognized this at a very early age, too. He would run to this tree and stand in it, just stay there, quietly.

I would sit on the bench nearby and wait for him until he was done communing. Even though this was not like him to do this. He was the kind of active boy who usually ran to the big pines out front and climbed, fast, before anyone could yell him into a stop.

I remember, because I had lots of trouble getting the pitch out of his clothes. Sometimes, of course, this was not possible and I had to “pitch” plenty of them.

So I wasn’t really surprised the other day when I walked by my myrtle and saw an accessory waving in the wind. It looked like something I would wear as a necklace. Or as an earring. It was a dried plant cap, attached to a gossamer thread from a spider web.

It was really cute. I went outside at night with a flashlight to see if it was still there. It was. I knew it would photograph well in the night.

Look at the markings on this tree, behind my accessory.

However, the bark on my myrtle not as dramatic as one out front, which is beloved by my friend and neighbor C. Which makes sense. You wouldn’t know it right away, but C. has more flair. She is a government bureaucrat, conservative dresser, initially very quiet.

But if you are out early on a weekend morning, you might see her coming out dressed in a formal riding habit. C. has a horse she keeps stabled in the country and goes riding with a friend. She is a lawyer married to an Irish chef she met overseas as a young woman. He fell madly in love with her and pursued her from afar, persuading her, finally, to marry him.

She loves my gardening and has very strong opinions about the plants. She says they remind her of earlier times when people decorated with large blocks of color via the flowers. She thinks the hostas and nursery flats of impatiens and pansies are boring. So there.

It makes sense that the crepe myrtle she has claimed as hers is one of quiet drama. Routinely, she dons gloves and collects her tools and carefully trims the suckers that try to grow from the base of the tree, which stands guard just outside her bedroom window. Her cats sit on the sill and watch the tree, too, which has vivid coloring.

There’s a new crepe myrtle out front now, to the side. I think the young tree is watching people, trying to see who resonates with this new plant life. I look forward to seeing who it chooses. I bet we’ll know by next summer.

It’s funny how nature leaves little gifts sometimes. Walk slowly. Open your eyes. See. Really see.

Stolen Angel

My favorite Angel’s Trumpet was taken from in front of my house last week. My big white. I couldn’t believe it.

This was a cutting I had pulled from the first angel I had ever managed to grow. I planted the mother plant in the ground and got only one bloom. Still, I was thrilled. I heavily mulched it, all winter, but it died anyway. Middle Atlantic winters are brutal on plants like this. Too many freezes.

This past summer, I lost track of the slips I had kept the previous winter and rooted. I thought all the pots were pink. Then one big pot turned into a beautiful white. I even wrote a blog post about it. It was gorgeous and I was so happy to have a piece of the old white angel with me still.

Then, as the cold descended, I cut all the angels back in their pots, the two whites and the three pinks. I was letting them have some final time outdoors before bringing them in for the very long winter. They won’t be able to go out again until at least May. So three angels were in the fenced back yard, two out front.

And then there was only one out front. The pink. I kept looking and looking. Surely I was mistaken. It just couldn’t be. But it was. The white angel was gone. I’m down to only one white, the one I brought as a slip up from Alabama this summer.

I admit it, at first I was simply outraged. Quietly so, I’m not much of a surface rager. It takes some doing for me to really blow my top. Still, I was mad. How dare “they.”

Then, I decided to view the theft in a way that allowed me to come to peace with it. The trumpet had been cut way back, it was no longer blooming or even leafed out in green. It was basically a pot of sticks. This essentially is what it looked like (this is one of the pinks, but you get my drift):

So, I had to imagine the scenario this way: The thief knew what he-she was getting. The stealer had seen the blooms outside my home and couldn’t stand it any longer. Seeing two pots outside, shorn of their blooms and most leaves, just sitting there, well, it was all over but the crying (for me). Gone. Taken to another home to be nurtured and cared for and coaxed into reblooming indoors in a few months.

Even my husband said, “You’re known for your plants. I’m not the least bit surprised.”

So, I quickly brought the remaining angels inside. I’m not sure what this means for next year’s outdoor blooming season. I’ll deal with it when it comes. They need the full sun to bloom and that’s the only space I have for that.

Although, the truth is, we’ve been talking about moving. My husband has talked about it for years and I’ve resisted. He brought it up again Saturday, this is something he really wants. And what I didn’t say is that losing the angel made me really think about it this time. We wouldn’t move that far. We would stay in the area because my son likes his school and we need to be here for several more years.

And then there was the home for sale I was drawn to just the other day, the one quite near my son’s school. It is not much bigger than the one we are in now. But it is off the road and private and as I said to my husband, “Look at that, straight out of storybook.” He agreed. The notice said the home had a lovely, private backyard adjoining a wooded park area. Woods! I grew up in a house with a woods out back.

I thought when we drove past that house, “This is the perfect home.”

In some strange way was that angel a sign? Angel on the move? I’m not the angel of course, not even close. But still. We’ll see.

For the time being, I decided to focus on other things. On the fact everyone in my world is well. That the big white angel is no doubt fine and being loved by someone who needed him, knew his worth. That the teen boy was spending the weekend away playing a sport he loves, rooming with several of his many best friends (I can say without fear of being overly boastful that this boy has the very useful gift of friendship).

So, his parents went to an Octoberfest party postponed until November by rain. The husband bought beer for the host and I put together a small bit of bounty from my fall garden for the hostess.

If you look closely you will see two tiny origami swans hidden in the bouquet. These exquisite paper gems were made by my favorite sushi chef, who gives them to me by the handsful when I drop by May Island to pick up food for my family and my favorite (vegetarian) dishes. I hid them in the flowers for the little boy of the party house to find after the party.

The cool, crisp fall evening was a sigh of relief after long days and nights of rain. We ate brats from the grill, spätzle and German potato salads. We talked and laughed while children ran and shouted in the yard.

One little boy helpfully warned us shortly after arrival that “a dinosaur is outside the gate” and later told me “t-Rex is out there but he’s dead now.” There were marshmallows roasted on sticks over a fire. And fireworks. Well, sparklers.

And when a little cherub of a girl could not get her daddy to put the German music back on after popular consensus booted it from player, she did not miss a beat. She simply changed tactics. Not yet talking, the little pixie went straight to a new friend, my husband, led him to the table with the music, pointed to the CD and got her wish. Because he is a pushover for miniature charm.

And then we had pie. The universal sadness balm.

Goodbye my angel. Godspeed, wherever you are.

A Gardener Released

For years I was the timid gardener.

There were roses in the back yard when I moved into this house. But with each year the elm outside the back gate got bigger, shadowing the roses, which strained to produce fewer blooms.

So I planted tulips to take advantage of the spring sun. But the squirrels stole most of them. I sent my little son and his friend after them with water guns once, and a neighbor scolded them about being “mean.” Mean?

I did manage to get a few daffodils and bleeding hearts to stay in the ground and bloom. Also peony, white and red, which I love. But peony, like a first kiss, is so fleeting that it is gone before you can properly appreciate this bloom’s full sensuous nature.

But when the elm is in full leaf, the sun is gone from the back yard, which has a tall privacy fence. I grew tired of having a small burst of color in the spring and then mainly hostas. I needed a tall riot of color, blankets of it. So I went to the front where I had a solid block of sun a good part of the day.

Here is what happened, from the beginning, in pictures.

I had lots of failures and things I didn’t care for, in particular. The Angel’s Trumpets I brought up from Alabama as seed and tiny shoots leafed and leafed and finally put out exactly one bloom. Still I was ecstatic. It gave me hope.

I wanted the flowers to be strong, to not depend on chemicals. So I spent several years amending the soil, bringing in bags of top soil and peat and this and that to get a good mix that somehow felt light and airy and well, right. This year I added the pulp from the organic vegetable juicing I’ve taken up. I didn’t use poisons. There are enough of those in the world.

I have mainly planted seeds. Somehow, these have worked better for me. I discovered that the flowers and I needed to start the journey together, from the beginning. I watched them carefully. Just the plants and me.

But I was still being timid. I was out front where the foot traffic was heavy. It was hard to lose myself there. People walked by and spoke and chatted and gave their opinions about my handiwork.

This is the Washington, D.C., area., just over the Potomac River bridge in Virginia. There are lots of people from other places here. But the Virginians love their old-fashioned, unchanging sameness. Red brick colonials. And the plantings following suit.

I changed that in our little corner of the world.

The cleome were the first of the wild things. My mother had lots of it in Alabama. So I brought back seed in pods to plant in front. It took off like wildfire. One friend, a psychologist from Boston, shuddered when he saw it. “WHAT is that thing? Straight out of Star Trek,” he insisted.

Mother had always grown zinnias too. I cut a bouquet while visiting and it cheered up the house so. The flowers lasted and lasted. That’s it, I said, zinnias too. The nurseries had the same variety, State Fair or something. Small, only a few colors. I wanted tall and vibrant. So I went for the seeds.

There were times they didn’t do well, so I learned to bend over a young zinnia plant, cover it with soil and it would grow long along the ground and push up new shoots and blooms. The picture above is all from one plant!

I planted lillies. Each year they grew bolder, as I did.

And dahlias. These low-to-the-ground but showy orange flame blooms are the favorite of some neighbors. And they just keep coming back every year, despite the cold Middle Atlantic winters that freeze them every winter.

I found my gardening sense of humor with the dahlias. Dahlias or zinnias, please stand up.

I have a fondness for the starburst hydrangea. I think because it isn’t the usual.

This year my something new was purple bells.

But the star of the show is always the zinnia. I hate to thin them, so I keep taking over little plots of earth I find.

They range from minis to California giants that grow as tall as me (5-5). Blocks of vibrant color, sometimes I feel like I am painting with plant life.

This year I grew two new colors, white and a green called envy. New neighbors I had never seen before were coming around to see this one.

And of course as much as I love the zinnias, for the joy they bring me, for the attention they get and for the bouquets they bring for months, the angel’s trumpets captured my heart. After playing coy for years, they burst forth. And bloomed and bloomed and bloomed.

So, is it any wonder that through my front door the following things have been on my walls for decades? These representatives of an inner life, pieces of art I selected for myself and which were selected for me.

These paintings, some abstract, are of flowers and plants. Two are of places in the deep South where it is warm most of the year, where I yearn to be.

Proof that a not-so-timid flower gardener was inside all along. Waiting for the right conditions. To be born aloft by the completing elements of soil, sun, water and air. Finally, set free.

Cold Weather Stop Gaps

After losing my summer garden, I decided to turn to drink. Although not that kind of drink. The bottle of Campari in the picture is ancient. Actually, I had a friend I had not seen in a long time over for tea last weekend.

I made finger sandwiches, cream cheese cucumber and minced ham with pickle (yes, I cut off the crusts). And I baked pumpkin bread, my favorite, the kind with black walnuts and yogurt. The recipe calls for three loaves. If I’m going to that kind of trouble, why not make enough to freeze for later, is my attitude.

I have lots of tea pots and many kinds of tea. My husband gave me this teapot, way back when.

We sat and chatted about mutual friends, about the neighborhood and our children. About my attempts to go back to work fulltime. It was good to catch up.

Of course I can’t just exist on friendship alone. A couple of days later I was down by the river, walking, on a glorious day. That’s when I finally felt happy again.

And although I shouldn’t have done it, I brought back a few bits and pieces of the river as keepsakes. To keep me from calling that suicide hot line. I firmly believe in leaving wild things in their natural habitat. But, well, the cold is settling in and I needed them. I won’t do it again.

At first I thought “these are all scratchy” and then I realized they are pieces of shell that are fossilized. There were many of them.

And finally this, my favorite part of the week. A few little pieces that I crafted into something all my own, to keep over the long, cold winter. To help keep me from descending too far down into that dark winter hole. The place where people who thrive in summer light and heat go when they end up in places where it is cold for the majority of the year.

I absolutely love it.

I might make it after all.

The Elm Made Me Do It

(Special thanks to the writer of Secret Cottage Garden for showing me I was on the right track all along, even when I didn’t know it: Mary Delle
<a href="http://secretcottagegarden.blogspot.com/" and of course someone who inspired me to write about it all, Ms. Moon, blessourhearts.blogspot.com)

I have fallen in love with the big elm just outside my back gate. I resented this tree for years. The wood giant drops seeds and dead leaves all over my patio. But my former dislike had roots in the tree’s glory, the full leaves that block the sun, keeping my back yard in shade during the summer.

Not to mention the times it has tried to strangle my holly and my dogwood tree.

My old tea roses bloom lavishly in the spring, before the elm wakes up properly. Then I have to settle for a bloom or two here and there for bouquets.

Between the shade and aggressive squirrels, I also can’t grow vegetables back there. No bright, splashy sun lovers. Only shade plants. So for years the back has been neglected.

But I ignored what this big elm was telling me with the big fat leaves and long arms that blocked the sun during prime growing season. Go to the front. Show yourself. Don’t hide in the back, behind the privacy fence. You have something and you don’t even know it.

So I did. I started cultivating the small plots in the front of the house, little squares of dirt that had been lying fallow, covered by mulch and defined by monkey grass. With her permission, I pulled out the dead lavender that a neighbor had planted on my side and hers. Dogs with careless owners had promptly killed these with daily markings.

The neighbor was thrilled that I was working on the plots, even though my style was undefined and hers was: English gardens, precision, careful cuts and frequent trims. She even owns a chain saw. But her work for the Secret Service meant she was away frequently and she had no time for gardening. She happily turned it all over to me.

At first I bought plants from the nursery. They were nice, but I was not satisfied. So I started buying seeds. Better. I was enjoying myself, experimenting, shaping the beds, putting my imprint on it all. Letting the garden grow on both sides into riotous shape and color. No English garden this!

That’s when neighbors started coming out of the woodwork. Yes, with the occasional disapproving glance. The architecture is prim and proper here, all red brick and white columns. The plantings run to hostas, evergreens, impatiens. In the fall the mums and pansies are broken out.

Except for my wild garden. And the yeas for this rare color riot far outnumber the nays. We need this, they say. It is different. It breaks the sameness and brightens our day.

Before the wild garden, I had been so timid. In that front plot, I had planted two miniature rose bushes from Trader Joe’s. They were nice. Sweet. Tiny. One still blooms, a reminder of my timid time.

And every year these roses are dwarfed by zinnias grown from seed, some old and some new. Angel’s Trumpets multiplying in height and number like wildfire now that I am not just talking to them, but listening to their needs. Starburst hydrangea. The flame orange dahlia, which survives every winter even though C., who designed the ghost lamp in my previous post, says “they don’t come back here, how do you do it?”

Well, I started putting the pulp left over from my vegetable juicing into the soil this summer. But the dahlias were coming back before that. I do give the flowers a bit of Miracle Gro now and then, sprinkled on the ground, no mixing it in water or such carrying on for me. So, I just love them and they respond.

The elm was behind it, really. The elm pushed me to the sun, to the front. I had grown vegetables with my father as a child and again in a plot rented from the county and shared with a friend. But I had never tried my hand with flowers. It just finally seemed the thing to do.

At last, I listened to that small, still voice. And it was saying you are a gardener, you were born to this. You are not alone. We are with you.

Show your love.

Ghostly Light

This is my neighbor’s wonderful Halloween display. He threw some old lace curtains over a lamp post in the middle of a garden setting, secured with some clips.

Underneath, the “face” is quite scary. It is a mask. You can catch a glimpse of it underneath the veil.

I love this kind of display. Very grownup. Very spooky. It also incorporates, of course, the garden.

In looking through blogland, I’ve noticed that readers seem to love the photo blogs. Few words, many many photos. These blogs are absolutely lovely. Some are pure poetry, lyrical. They capture life.

So, my question is this, I wonder. Is the writing over? I still will write, even into the void. I am posting pictures now because they illustrate the words. I can’t not write, after all. But I just wonder whether there has been a fundamental shift forever.

Anyway. On to the next season. You know what I mean. In the style of the new wordless order, you’ll see a bit of it here, in this visual.

The Plant Was Telling Me

The tall plant that refused to bloom until the last possible minute tried to tell me all summer that it wasn’t a pink Angel’s Trumpet. But I wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t even hear it from myself.

Why is that? When someone tells us who they are, why don’t we listen? Like the new friend who abruptly inserts into the conversation that she’s “not as nice as you might think.” Then smiles and laughs and charms away the chill she brought into the room with that announcement. So the warning is forgotten. Wariness dropped against good reason.

But back to the trumpet.

Last year I finally coaxed a trumpet into bloom — a big white brugmansias. I had tried for years to manage this through trial and error in northern Virginia, bringing up seeds and shoots from my hometown in Alabama. This one was planted in the ground. And just before the first frost I took cuttings and trimmed it back, mulching heavily. I brought in the pinks in pots.

Despite carefully protecting the white all winter, it did not make it. I was upset, but I brought another shoot up from Alabama this summer. And I set out the cuttings I had cultivated during the cold months in water in the basement window well. They had strong roots. These should make it, I thought.

Not a single white survived. I thought.

The pinks were beautiful. They bloomed and bloomed. The new white finally bloomed just last week.

And then the day before yesterday, the last of the trumpet cuttings bloomed too. This “pink” just barely survived the chopping block. Because I absolutely have too many plants to bring inside this year. I have a small house and not enough room. I kept counting up the pots and hoping I was off. One white, four pinks. Wait, five pinks, but two are tiny, so they really don’t count.

I’ll never get away with all these pots inside the house. One of the pinks will have to go, I thought. So I was going through the sad routine of having to choose. I kept looking, balefully, at the same pot.

“You don’t even look like a pink,” I told this plant once. I remember it because the plant is tall and bushy on top, like the other white, the trunk strong and thin. The leaves are longer and smoother than the pinks. “You’re not like a bush at all. It’s like you think you’re a tree.” Which of course, it is. But I can’t grow them as trees, not here.

The plant was telling me. I was even telling me. But I wasn’t listening.

Then yesterday, to my absolute delight, I was confronted with the beautiful truth. The “pink” wasn’t a pink at all. The blooms waving in the wind weren’t pink at all. They were white. The offspring of my long-mourned white Angel’s Trumpet, my first born, the one that died in ground over the cold winter despite assiduous mulching efforts.

Somehow I had mixed up the cuttings. I’ve been so sad about the loss of the colorful annuals to fall. And now, I am beyond thrilled. In loss, there is new life after all. And to think I was considering sacrificing this one.

The garden shows us these lessons, over and over. Regeneration. Truth. Hope. Never giving up on a life. And once again I am shown that my intuition is a thing to acknowledge and trust. And if I falter, the garden is there to help me along with ancient metaphors and knowledge. Circle of life.

Which brings me to the topic I’ll be writing about next: “The Secret Life of Plants”

Requiem For A Garden

I had to say goodbye to the wild garden.

Powdery mildew was spoiling the zinnia leaves, it always does this time of year. And the men came to say they would be by the next day to put in the bushes in front of the basement window well.

The bushes I don’t even want, really. This is the husband’s initiative. We had some monster hollies taken out and he thought it looked too bare and yes, in the winter that’s true. But still.

It was too early. I’m bereft.

The regular walkers, the bikers, they’re gone now because the riot of color that drew them to the front of the house for months is gone.

My neighbor D., whose big white dog I love, who says he needs the zinnias, hasn’t been able to speak to me. I understand. I feel cold all the time, aimless.

And what about the neighbor woman slowly losing herself to some sort of memory deterioration? The one who used to go to the community pool around the corner every afternoon and stand, grasping onto the chain fence with her fingers and stare into the water for long periods of time before I convinced her to go by my house and see the flowers. We would stand and stare at those astonishing blooms together. She loved every single one of them, as I did, with childlike wonder.

I never minded when she repeated herself, enthusing about this bloom and that. Like a mother with an incredibly beautiful baby, I never tire of the praise. She even complimented me for working in the garden in my bare feet. I rarely take off my shoes outside (I’m a tender foot). But it just feels right in a garden.

It started out this way in the spring:

And then, after the zinnia seeds came in, the garden became this:

So now I have some Angel’s Trumpets in pots to keep me from, you know, calling the suicide hot line.

And if you peek around in back you’ll find a few of these:

But all in all, I’m just sad. I realize now more than ever I’m meant to live where it’s warm all year. Where the seasons don’t change. Where I can keep the growing going in the sun and the heat. I don’t get tired of the hot. So I’ve been quiet, listening to talk about enjoying the cool and the changing leaves. I don’t say anything.

Because now I’m like the woman who used to stand at the pool fence. Instead I stand at my window, wrapped in shawls against the cold, peering out at bare brown soil, where a riot of color used to vibrate in the wind and sun and the rain, lifting hearts all around.

Bringing It To The Surface

So why did my garden grow so wild and beautiful this year? There’s my notion that the plants embody the people growing them, working on the blooms, talking to them everyday. And I was in a good place this summer. The flowers reflected that.

I was writing, for one thing, for the first time in many years. Really writing, beginning the process of opening up, stretching, reaching for something. I’ve just started to let the light into spaces long silent and dark. I have a long way to go. But I pushed away the packed dirt and opened the trapdoor.

Another reason is I’ve been amending the soil in a different way. I’ve been drinking lots of fresh vegetable juice, especially this year. And I started putting the finely minced pulp into the garden.

I heard that suggestion listening to a gardening program on the radio one day. The expert said to take a spade and dig a hole, drop in the pulp and cover it with soil. I juice with organic produce so I especially felt good about amending my soil this way.

Another theory is related, but more whimsical. I’ve been juicing because I changed my diet to nearly all raw vegan late in the summer of 2008. Initially I went all raw, something I had played around with for years. This actually reflected, in a way, my summer style of eating as a child. My father grew a Garden of Eden of fruits and vegetables and I loved eating them raw, on the go. My mother rarely ordered me in for meals since I was mostly “too busy” running in the woods. I took food from branch, stem and vine and ate that. So switching to all raw felt like coming home.

After several months, I lost the weight that I gradually had gained over the years eating in ways that did not agree with me. So I added back in some non-raw food, supplements and a bit of fish. I also happily eat what I’m served when I am not at home. It’s too much trouble when traveling to try to strick to a raw regime. And it’s not right to decline food in the home of someone who has been kind enough to invite me over.

Besides, taking breaks from this style of eating has given me the willpower to stay with it. I enjoy the breaks, then am relieved to return to it, ultimately because of the way it makes me feel.

So, now for the whimsical part. What if filling up with fruits and vegetables, organic at that, has actually contributed to this feeling of lightness I’ve had all spring and summer. Not just the physical part, but something else. The light body I hear people talk about sometimes. The truth is I don’t really know what that means. It’s not just that I’ve the lost excess weight I never carried when I was younger. I literally have felt lighter, more buoyant, spiritually as well as physically. Hence, the light body.

Do the flowers feel it too? If I’m pouring green juices into my cells everyday, nourishing myself with unprocessed fruits and vegetables, literally existing on these, am I resonating with the flowers in a different way?

Consider this: Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society recently reported on a month-long study into the effects of the human voice on tomato plants. Recordings were made of volunteers reading to the plants. Controls plants were not exposed to recordings.

Researchers found that plants responded to being read to, that they grew more than the control plants. And that female voices had an edge over males in helping plants grow.

The study, and others like it, indicates plants aren’t just, well, concrete blocks. They are alive. They are responsive. And time after time, all summer long, people I know and those I don’t have stopped me as I worked in the garden and asked, “How do you do it?” And when I say, “Um, to start, I get zinnia seeds from Target,” they point to blooms the size of salad plates and are incredulous. “You grow these from SEEDS?”

And the Angel’s Trumpets, which I’ve not seen anyone else grow here. Surely somebody does. But they certainly are rare in the D.C. area. In fact, the neighborhood gardening aficionado came by the other day with the head of a gardening service and actually asked me whether one of the pinks, which was getting ready to bloom, was “an okra plant.”

Because how do I explain the wild garden, really?

Well, I started to write after years and years, and I also talk to the plants. And I slip outside more than I should, sometimes at night too, just to be with them. And I feed them with finely minced organic vegetable pulp. From my juicer, which I started using because I started eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables again. Which is one of the reasons the garden is so beautiful, you know, in my opinion, because in a way it’s like I’m turning into a plant too and the flowers resonate with that, being raised by their own.

But I don’t say that. Because generally I’m not prone to admitting this sort of whimsy. Not in person, in public, not in the real. At least I wasn’t.

But here in the dirt, with the trapdoor pushed up and the sun beating down on my head, I’m going to cop to it.

And who knows what else I’ll bring to the surface, into the light. Next.

He Hated the Light Inside

“I pull off the flowers and squash them. I love to kill them,” the little girl confessed with a slight lisp, her mother talking to me as I worked in the wild garden.

I could not stifle my annoyance. I chided, “PLEASE don’t pull off the flowers, that’s not nice.” I had blamed the birds, the squirrels for the brutalized blooms lying broken beside the flower patch at odd times of the day and evening. Even though that made no sense. The animals don’t have that particular kind of brute force. But children do, even small ones.

The mother hustled the girl away and made a point to herd the child another route to the neighborhood swimming pool. But eventually I was glad for the remark. Because it gives clarity to something I’ve puzzled about for so long and finally been able to put to rest.

There are people in this world who can’t stand beauty. And others despise those who have a light inside. That light can burn with brilliance, or cast a mere gleam. And its presence can trigger rage.

Thinking about the little girl and her confession brought to mind a boy I knew decades ago, when I was a young teenager. I was slow to develop, awkward, a tomboy long past the stage when the last holdouts my age had dropped their childish ways.

And then finally I began edging that way too. Paying a different sort of attention to the boys I’d long thought of as brothers, teammates, smart aleck remarks opponents.

So when this boy stared at me one night at the roller rink, I didn’t understand why. My friend C. and I had forgotten to behave like “girls” that night. We were skating fast, twirling in circles, one leg cocked back, racing each other backwards. We were at home there. My brother’s girlfriend’s family owned the rink. It was the hangout in our deep South rural hometown.

This boy, from a neighboring town, had recently started attending my church with another group of teenagers from a rival school. I found out later their families had done this before, gotten “mad” at a church and left. These young people weren’t particularly friendly. I had not really noticed this. I still had one foot in the world of childhood anyway.

The boy, several years older than me, was leaning on a post, not skating. He called me over. I skated up to him, extended a foot behind me to brake, and glided to a stop. “Yes?” I said, smiling, I’m sure at what I thought was a gesture of friendship.

And he started. “You,” he said quietly, softly, with a man’s deep voice. “You are the ugliest girl I have ever seen.” I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me. I mean, I wasn’t a natural beauty. But people had told my mother I was “cute.” Hadn’t they? I had heard them, for years. I was sure of it.

But he kept talking. Mean, awful things, in that steady, deep, slow voice. This tall, well-dressed, bespectacled young Christian leader was saying horrible things that made no sense. Or maybe they did. All I remember is saying, “Oh shut up” and skating off. A childish remark from a childish girl. But I didn’t mean it, didn’t feel it really. I believed him. And it ruined my night. Not that I was going to let him see that.

His assault of ugliness did not end there. He kept it up. I don’t know what his friends at church knew about it, but they kept their distance. I was tainted in their eyes, at the very least.

We were different physical creatures, his friends and I. His friends at church were sisters, daughters of an affluent farmer, self-assured, mature, going steady at young ages, marriage bound. They were deliberate, ladylike, people said. They had beautiful tans, were soft-spoken, and in my mother’s parlance, “well-fed farm girls.” They were women already and had been for years.

I was slightly built with high energy, mercurial, light skin with black curly hair. I was comfortable with boys, but had never had a boyfriend. I performed in plays and was happily college bound. I also was reading Henry James in 9th grade and thought nothing of chattering about it.

So for years I said nothing while this horrible boy menaced me with whispered nasty words and looks. A new dress, a flattering haircut, my self-assurance withered in church under his glares. I sat with two older sisters who probably wondered why I wasn’t with those my own age in the back pews. But they never asked. And my mother didn’t either.

I’m not sure anyone would have believed me. And it also seemed important to me to not acknowledge the damage he was doing.

He went away to college, but still showed up for holidays. The glares lessened in intensity. I never spoke to him, pretended he did not exist. And before long I was graduating from high school, leaving. And in time, those same families left for other congregations.

I used to wonder what I had done to make that boy hate me so. I now know I didn’t do anything, other than exist. He was damaged in some way, obviously. I wish I hadn’t felt so alone, that I had no one to help, to listen. That is, after all, how bullies are empowered. That’s what I would tell someone in that position today. Don’t be silent, fight back, don’t let yourself be terrorized.

He didn’t win in the long run, though. When someone despises me on sight now, I think of him and no longer torture myself, try to change minds and hearts. I glide away, re-imaging myself on roller skates, smiling warmly but thinking “okay just shut up” in my mind and laughing aloud at that one.

Hate me all you want, just don’t squash the flowers.