Rototilled

photo credit: Mike McClenahan

Through our front window I saw the red, busted, rust-laden pickup pull up to the curb outside of our house with a disjointed green trailer full of equipment tugging along behind. Throwing on my coat and shoes, I sprung out the door into the sunshine and brisk air. The robins were out, picking worms from the soil.

"Jim!" I greeted him as he walked up my driveway, wheeling behind him a bent up rototiller (it's funny how a man can be so much like his truck) which he stood in the middle of my back lawn.

"You just tell me where," he said, his brow wrinkled and eyes wide, almost like he was speaking to a foreigner, "and I'll do it." We filled the gas reservoir and with a number of strokes the small engine sputtered and growled.

A few days ago, I shared with my neighbor, Marcy, that I wanted to plant a garden just off my back porch. I wanted to grow potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, jalapeños, strawberries, thyme, cilantro,
rosemary, corn, melon, and cucumber. "O my dad will come and till that up for you no problem," she said. What? Really? But there I stood, watching blades chop up grass like salad as Jim gently lowered the lurching blades into the dark earth.

My mom came outside* to see all the commotion. Marcy and John came out too, baby in hand. We started talking and sharing. John and the baby had to leave. Rachel came out to take pictures. We all watched, mesmerized by the spinning blades breaking up the sod. Sandy came out too to joke and laugh with us all. My dad came out and met all my neighbors. We shouted and laughed over the noise and Jim was just heaving, pushing, sweating, and sucking a burning cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

My mom and I sat in the adirondack bench** and Marcy came to sit on the porch. I asked her about her new job at the gas station, what she likes about it, who she's working with.

"I want to go back to school to be a lawyer. I'm always fighting for people, sticking up for what's right," she dreamed out loud. And we asked her about it.

These are the beginnings of God's Kingdom: neighbors coming out and gathering and helping one another, sharing stories and dreams, practicing whole relationships. It can happen in the spring on porches around tilled and softened soil.



*My parents are out visiting from California. What a treat! For the last seven months I've been telling them about our new home, what's been going on. But now that they're here, our stories intersect and something feels complete. They can see my world and I feel seen. 
**She says it's actually a "double adirondack chair". I say bench. I should paint it too, she says. I think she likes it.