Planting ...

One sunny afternoon last summer, my youngest and I were enjoying some freshly shaved roast beef sandwiches in the van with the side doors wide open. A young woman came across the parking lot from the credit union, pushing a stroller. It was a double stroller with both seats occupied by little ones, and two older boys walked beside. My first glance made me wonder – wow, she’s young to have four kids. Maybe she’s a nanny, or a family friend just out with the kids. A glance at her face showed fatigue, no emotion. One of those days? Or longer than a day? I dug a little deeper in wonder: Trying hard not to be negative, so saying nothing?

She took the stroller across a strip of grass, just to the left of a line of newly planted shrubs, bumping over the mulch, toward a sidewalk. The older boy came along after her to the right, oddly, I thought, as he was aligned with the closest of the small bushes. Tromp. One foot went right to the center of the young plant. One solid crunch, and on he went. In the fleeting instant that followed, as I was baffled by his evident need to be musher of the universe, the younger walking boy backed up from where he had already passed in the wake of the stroller, and made a forceful effort to align himself in his older brother’s footsteps. Literally. He didn’t have the height or clearance of the older boy, so he took two forceful steps through the plant, sending its little branches splaying to either side with ugly bounces. There was a clearer path to the left, or even a narrower one to the right, for that matter, but these boys chose the tough way through the little green leaves.

It had all happened so fast, I wasn’t sure if my own child had seen what I had seen in those few short seconds. We looked at each other. “Did you see that?” I asked. She had. “Why did they step on the plant, Mom?”

I recalled the woman’s face. I saw the blueness of the sky and recalled the tiny flash of joy that fragile greenness brings to me. To so many people.

“I have no idea,” I said, “but it makes me so sad.”