Not Every Mark

Adeline opened her back door and greeted the first day of spring with a smile. Her lips twitched upwards only slightly, but a whole world lit up in her eyes: sparkling blues dancing with glowing greens and betraying the warmth of the joy inside her in a way the simple movement of her mouth could not.

Standing in the shade, she could still feel the last breaths of winter, digging in its fingernails in a final attempt to avoid losing its grip to the incoming spring, so she stepped out into the sun. After months of driving snow and rain that felt like winter slapping her face every time she ventured outside, the feeling of the sun on her skin warmed her heart, melting her frozen insides and allowing a surge of happiness and energy to flow through her. Spring had arrived and it was time to start gardening again.

She slipped on her gardening shoes and made her way over to her beloved rose bush. It didn't look like anything special at this time of year, but when the time came for them to bloom, they were always the most beautiful feature of her perfectly landscaped garden: big bright flowers with the most intricate arrangement of delicate petals.

But first, she had to tackle the cutting back of the thorny canes. She had first done this years ago, in her mother´s garden, when she spent hours resting on the hard concrete of the path as though it was a bed of clouds for her knees. Now she could almost hear the creaking of her joints as she bent down, and breathed a short sigh of relief when her knee met the dirt underneath her. Back then she felt a pang of wrenching guilt with every cut, as though she was tearing it limb from limb, imagining with every snap of wood the screams that it might have emitted if God had granted it lungs.

Years of experience had taught her that what she was doing was more akin to a haircut; removing the deadwood and straggling leaves that would make the plant look fuller for a while, but would ultimately hold it back from thriving. It might look as though she was destroying the progress, but wisdom told her that progress towards a goal she had no interest in reaching wasn't progress at all.

She pulled the once-pink, now-brown gardening gloves from one pocket and put them on, feeling a little like she was covering her hands with old rags. Then she wrestled her garden shears from the other before starting to explore the bush to find the best place to start. She began to cut away some scattered leaves from the outermost canes, lifting each one gently as she-

“Ow!" her hand flung itself from the bush back to safety. She laughed for a few moments, not caring that if any of her neighbours happened to be outside, they might well assume that she’d finally lost the rest of her marbles. She was used to the sharp sting of a stray thorn finding its way to one of the many holes in her gloves by now, but the unconscious mind refused to have its reflexes tamed, and each time she felt the familiar scratch, her hand would catapult itself away from the rosebush. Her son had offered her new gardening gloves for every birthday, Mother’s Day and Christmas for at least the last five years, telling her over and over again that they were old and worn and not fit for purpose. But she couldn’t let them go.

The scribble of black marker on the right palm reminded her of her grandbaby, Ellie, and the time she got into the stationery draw and splodges of black mysteriously got onto, well, everything.

The thread that always trailed up her wrist like a tiny tail, a reminder of the first time her daughter brought her new puppy over.

The way the left glove was just slightly bigger from… from Richard’s one attempt at gardening.

They were useless, really. But she couldn’t let them go.

She looked down at her arms: spots of sun damage, wrinkles, scars from injuries over the years. If their damage meant she should throw them away, where did that leave her?

The long thin scar on her forearm made her skin imperfect, but it was also the last reminder she had of the very first day she brought home her very first kitten, and the work she put in to make the little guy trust her. The last reminder of the cat that kept her company through her whole childhood.

The tattoo on her left ankle was faded now, and the once sharp lines had become blurred, the writing that had once spelled David in perfect calligraphy now looked more like chicken scratch, but every time she looked at it she still remembered the joy she felt the first time she held her son.

Her posture had become stooped, and her skin had loosened, but that only showed the years that her spine had supported her, the years her skin had protected her, the memories they had allowed her to make.

If the stains and damage of her gloves made them not worth keeping, how could she justify her own perseverance through the arthritis and the heart problems and the… and the cancer.

She thought back to her last day of work, 10 years ago almost to the day. The day she retired, 5 years early, after the third cancer surgery made it impossible for her to keep standing up all day. The first few months of retirement were hard. Richard was gone, she was lonely, and she felt so useless. Like if she couldn’t do her job anymore, what was her purpose? What was she supposed to do all day? Why should she do… well, why should she do anything at all?

Then she discovered gardening. At first, she had just one flowerbed, but now she had a whole garden, a whole beautiful garden that people gave to see every year, where people took pictures and sat amongst their favourite plants. Gardening gave her a renewed sense of purpose.

She had an idea.

She took off her gloves and walked over to her stone water feature. It stood around 5 feet tall, an intricately carved angel with wings so delicately sculpted that you almost wanted to reach out and pluck one of the feathers. She fell in love with it the moment she saw it, but ever since it had been delivered, it felt like there was an invisible barrier between the fountain and the rest of the garden. The flower beds and winding gravel paths felt like hers, she had plotted them and planted them and raised them from seedlings. The fountain was like an imposter. An aesthetically appealing imposter, yes, but an imposter, nonetheless.

She stepped up on the 2-brick-high wall around the empty pond and raised her own hand to meet that of the angel, whose arms were raised towards heaven. She carefully placed her glove on the angel´s hand, then made her way around to the other side to place the other one.

She stepped back to admire her handiwork and chuckled; it looked ridiculous, a beautifully carved statue of an angel wearing her grubby old gardening gloves. But now the angel was hers and her gloves had a new purpose.

Giving up is not the only option.

Change is not the same as destruction.

Not every mark has to be a scar.