A Garden Helper

I’ve been feeling absolutely overwhelmed this month. And yes, we just got home from an epic trip abroad, I had knee surgery, and we’re in the throes of canning season. So it’s really no wonder I’m feeling this way.

I pine for August in February, telling myself this will be the year I won’t be paralyzed by the sheer volume of tasks and hundreds of pounds of produce engulfing our lives. Yet each summer there’s a week or more where I feel absolutely discombobulated, borderline seasonally depressed, drowning in an endless, pounding pace of harvest, process, plant, manage pests — and oh wait, there are teenage boys to feed too.

The drowning really weighed me down this week. I look at the garden and only see a ragged landscape. Disease-riddled tomatoes that I don’t even visit because they are well past their peak. Calendula preparing to take over the entire garden next year, dropping dozens of seeds into the raised beds if I so much as brush past one. Broken zinnia like downed logs, making several paths impassable, and instead of taking the 10 seconds to go and remove it, I simply stop walking down that path. True story.

I woke up yesterday and tried to get a solid game plan, having started to feel like I was moving a little faster (in the literal sense) post-operatively. But I still felt this nagging suffocation from the garden. I wrote that ridiculous list of tasks I wanted to get done, and then the watermelon happened.

Those watermelon really shifted my day. They sparked the joy of gardening that the frenetic pace of August so effortlessly sucks dry. They juiced me right up.

And they were my squirrel moment, abandoning the tray of seedlings and overdue seeds to sow.

I went about my entire day, and staying ballpark on-task if you discount watermelon-gate, gifting watermelons at appointments and managing to complete 3 different kitchen projects concurrently.

I was in the flow. I was swimming, not drowning. I may have even been carried downstream by some invisible helpers.

And then it hit me.

I have a lot of really vivid dreams (this really should come as no surprise to you all). Most mornings I wake up and have to piece together what I just dreamt. Pregnancy dreams were the worst and best, and some still haunt me.

Yesterday morning I had this REM dream where I was watching an old memory of me — a fully fictionalized one, mind you. I was about 4 years old and in a small little outboard motor boat with my family. I think my mom may have been next to me.

We didn’t boat. We had a pool, but this was really bizzare that I was in a boat with my parents, and without any other siblings. Because there are 5 of us and we never had one on one parent time. Ever.

Suddenly, I saw myself moving around. It sort of felt like I was being pushed backwards. Little Meg was pretty clueless, but dreaming Meg started to freak out. I could see danger ahead. This overwhelming sense that I was going to fall into the water came over me as I’m dreaming, wondering if this is a real memory or a dream, but still mentally trying to protect her. I didn’t want her to fall in. She/I got to the edge of the boat, still oblivious to the dangers lurking right behind her.

I got to the edge of the boat, the backs of my legs bumped the side of the boat and my upper body arched and leaned, and off I tumbled into the water. It was, unavoidable.

Momentary panic. I didn’t believe I couldn’t swim. I was going to drown. Oh no, wake up, Meg. Stop this bad dream. I can’t believe they didn’t put a life jacket on me. What were they thinking.

Then I saw it. A life jacket. The same mossy green as my shirt, it blended in with my outfit. Yet it was there the whole time, it was just my perspective.

And so was my dad.

There he was, standing right next to me. Standing. In shallow water. So shallow even if I fell in with or without a life jacket, I would have been able to stand too. Because even though I felt like I was about to drown, that wasn’t actually what was happening.

The relief washed over me seeing him. I wasn’t alone. I was never alone. It turned out I wasn’t drowning at all. Not in my dreams, and not in real life.

And the helpers were there to care for me even when I didn’t know it.

I think this dream sort of worked some kind of magic on me yesterday, my dad visiting me and showing me that even though I feel like I’m drowning, he was there to show me what I needed to see … turn a mirror on me, remind me that the water is shallow even if it feels deep. That I’m okay. I’m still choking up reliving it.

This is a dream I will keep close at heart for the rest of my days, and I hope it helps some of you in the midst of your own seasonal overwhelm.