the New Pantagruel

Dirt, What Have You Asked of Me?

by Laurie Klein

What fertile fields our lives become for the slow growth of grace.
–G. D. Watson

or me, to work earth, even briefly, is to become an artist of silence. By turns I am creator, work-in-progress, and beholder. Regardless which role I inhabit, assorted strata beckon, some fertile, some less productive. Sister Wendy Beckett, art historian and contemplative nun, subdivides silence into categories: relative, reflective, and waiting silences.

But this sounds mystical.

I do not tiptoe through Stargazer lilies, swathed in unbleached gauze and patchouli. I have yet to intone Gregorian chant while pulling pigweed. And while I performed Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence” in high school, flower-child-throwback I’m not. Uprooted city-chick was more like it, back in 1991 when Will and I moved to the country to revive our gasping marriage. As an artistic director, work ran my world and ideas kept me awake nights. I loved it, but resigned. Goodbye bookstores, galleries, gym, and symphony. “Kill your darlings,” William Faulkner wrote, describing editing, and surely not including one’s spouse.

Reinvention may cost no less than everything. We hosted one killer yard sale, then enlisted friends to help transfer the remains, which included three islands of lupine much too large to be moved. That evening after everyone left, I lingered outside, transfixed in that moment when twilight proposes silence. What spilled across fields and lawn was the throaty coo of a mourning dove, a song I hadn’t heard since grade-school days at Gram’s. I was home.

To this day a mourning dove’s call ushers me into a daydream-like state that Sister Beckett calls relative silence. There’s an inner shift, and surrounding noise dims. I am buoyed on the surface of my senses with an ease that’s thoughtful, but not revelatory, as it lacks “the muscle of attentiveness.” Burying my face in lilacs or sliding into a hot bath triggers it. Breathing deepens. The heart slows. Relative silence ambushes you.

Consider aspens rustling like taffeta, a laid-back sound with no real rhythm, no groove to make you snap your fingers or swing your hips; it’s background, scored for dreamers. Charmed, but not yet enchanted, I’m still tethered to wristwatch, easily irked by a mate’s casual edging, or crabgrass between the pavers. I remain hinged to my own concerns, like petals that flex to unsettle a bee. But I do relax.

That initial country dove foreshadowed an ensuing education in silence. Bird of luck to the Japanese, the acceptable sacrifice to Jews, cherished by Muslims, and for Christians, a manifold symbol for peace and the Holy Spirit, doves inspire multitudes in quest of quietude. In the wake of its call that night, a hush rippled inward, auspicious on the eve of reinventing home.

When a girl hears the first dove of spring, superstition decrees she take nine steps forward, nine back. To complete this nostalgic ritual that night, I would have searched my shoe for one hair of the man I would marry. But no, I’d stick with Will, unpacking indoors and whistling, one of my pet peeves. He does it so loudly.

“Come hear this,” I called. The liquid notes quieted him, too. Now, I think of Coleridge, who penned what the dove says: “I love and I love!” The reason we were standing there at all.

Subsequent mornings, however, renewed reasons to mourn. In sacrificing work that had been my life’s passion–even for love–grief was inevitable. It wasn’t that my former life was wrong, but letting go meant closure, respecting what had been good to embrace what we hoped would be better. Like iris rhizomes, over eighteen years we’d become enmeshed. Needing healthy space and a dream to build together, we renewed our vows, then began remodeling our cedar rancher, marrying Euro-eccentric decor with latent post-granola tendencies. Work indoors supplied its potpourri of latex enamels, glues, and sawdust. Outside, I planned blowsy, herbaceous borders like Gram’s. I didn’t realize I’d be tending low desert terrain atop endless rock in a mini-snowbelt. In my new digs, I had dialed into an alien ecosystem. Nevertheless, I ferried in plants by the carload.

As spring segued into summer, death would continue to coach me. Hapless perennials would croak by the dozens, victims of an earnest but grieving gardener. Mis-planted, over-pruned, and under-watered.

The lupines thrived, and therein lay another silence, albeit a smug one as I gloated over leafy mounds, bright with dew. I anticipated floral spikes like Roman candles.

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