Backyard Conversation
Cynnamon Schreinert
The day was brilliant with a beautiful blue sky. I was playing in the back, along the edge of the yard where the garden had been devoted to sunflowers. They were Mama’s favourite flowers; she loved anything to do with sunflowers. Every spring she sowed and planted the garden, getting it ready for the coming wall of yellow that would bloom along the back of our yard. In the summer she would water them consistently and be out there talking to them. I found that the sunflowers seemed to be one of the few things to give her pleasure.
My brother Joseph had been sent to a centre for juvenile delinquents and Mama was mad at him. She spent a good three hours yelling at him before the squad car came to take him away.
Two months ago something had happened and it was only just recently that the news came out that Joseph had been involved. A church had been purposefully set on fire over on Lakewood Drive. The church had been standing for the past sixty years, never doing any harm to anyone, built by some of the original offspring of this town’s forefathers. The fire started around three in the morning and blazed all through the night.
By the time the fire department arrived, the main structure of the building was completely in flames crushing all hope of maintaining the frame of the church. The firefighters could only make sure none of the surrounding buildings caught fire while everyone watched the church burn to the ground.
The ashes of the church made it near impossible to find any traces to confirm if arson or accident was to blame. Two weeks later, someone happened to be walking around the remains of the church when they found a suspicious looking object near the foundation of the building. This do-gooder picked up this object and then brought it into the police.
The small item happened to be a carrier of some pretty explosive materials recently stolen from the hardware store. It wasn’t long before the fingers started pointing towards my brother Joseph and his friend Lionel. The two of them, typical fourteen year old boys, were always getting into one incident or another, especially since Father died.
Our father had died about two years ago. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, just some freak accident that happens once in a thousand times. Father was walking in his field as he had done every day of his adult life. The weather changed suddenly and Father turned to come back home. When he was 200 metres from the house, a lightning bolt came down and struck him dead. Mama spent four months in her bed while various aunts and uncles took turns watching over us kids in the house. My brother was twelve and I was ten; we didn’t know what to do or how to act around our mother so we did what everyone told us. We just left her alone to mourn.
A couple of months had passed when one night I saw the light on in her bedroom and heard her crying. No one was around in the hallway and I quietly opened the door.
“Leslie,” I heard her say as she looked over at me. “How are you, honey?”
I looked at her, surprised by this tenderness when everyone had told us to leave her alone, that she just needed time. I started to cry.
“Come here honey,” she whispered and pulled the covers back on her bed. “Come into bed with me. Let me just hold you.”
The two of us lay together and just cried, each missing him for our own reasons and knowing things would never be the same. It felt so good sleep in the arms of my mother, feeling her love. Each day I would be fearful that she would never be the mother I remembered again. But this moment almost erased those fears.
The next morning she came down for breakfast and slowly started being around us more and more. In a few more months things were back on a routine; they weren’t the same, but they had changed into something that was working well for all of us. I think that’s why my mother was so upset when my brother was sent away. That’s when she started to lose herself in the sunflowers.
In all my years, there was only one year without sunflowers in the backyard and that was the year Father died. He died in April and Mama had missed planting that spring.
But this year, they were in full bloom. It was late August, Joseph had been gone a week, and I was alone in the garden. Mama was inside, taking a rest as she liked to call it. I worried about her, worried that she would turn back into the person who never came out of her room just like she did when Father died. I kept up the housework, doing dishes and letting tears fall into the sink as I prayed for her to get better.
This day was hot, and I wasn’t wearing a hat. Our sunflowers were usually about five rows deep; this year Mama had planted double that. She said she needed to overfill her soul with happiness in order to overcome the sadness of the past couple years.
I knew the flowers were only ten rows deep but by the time I counted past the twentieth sunflower I wasn’t sure where I was anymore. The weather had suddenly turned up a couple of degrees, the sun beating down with an increased intensity, my poor head was boiling, and I realized I didn’t have water. I turned to try and find my way back to the house but there was nothing but sunflowers around me.
The anxiety started to reach into my twelve-year-old heart and it couldn’t handle the strain, the worry, I passed out. I fainted flat to the ground.
It could have been minutes; it could have been hours. But when I woke up I noticed the blue sky and, more surprisingly, that there was a shape providing shade from the sun, looking down at me with love I had only experienced from my mother.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be fine. It’s pretty confusing sometimes in the world isn’t it? Not sure what’s real, what’s false. It only takes one slip-up and everything can come crumbling down.” He sighed. “We’ve got plans for you Leslie.”
“Me?” I was shocked, my eyes popped out of their sockets as the impact of this comment reached my brain. “I think you may be wrong.”
“No, we’re not. You marvel at the small mysteries of life and still remain wide-eyed to the changes that happen in life. I’ve seen you experience loss and love and come out ahead. Many would have failed but instead you seem to rise above it all. We need someone like you on our side.”
“But I am on your side.”
“I know, but we need someone rooting for our team. It won’t come as a surprise to you that there are other things working in the world. Strange incidents and freak accidents are not always my work. We need to make sure our message is getting out there.”
I lay on the ground, looking up at the figure, wondering if I had sun stroke or heat stroke and if I was dreaming.
“I believe in you because you believe in me. You are truly one of God’s children. With that knowledge, you can make a difference in the world.”
Awestruck, inspiration and fear ran around in my mind. “I can do that.” I accepted my mission. I could feel my heartbeat and pulse quickening and tiny goosebumps shivered up my arms. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, or how I would do it, but somehow I would help God get his message out there. “Where do we start?”
“You’ll know the right time when you’re in it. For now keep living life fully, with purpose, and following your ultimate good.”
I closed my eyes and repeated what had been said to me. Live life fully, live with purpose and follow your ultimate good. I repeated it to myself before opening my eyes. I was blinded by the sun. He was gone.
I sat up and looked around. Through the flowers, I could see our house; I hadn’t been lost, I wasn’t far. Was it all heat stroke or sun stroke? Did I experience hallucinations in the garden? I pulled myself to my feet and surveyed the garden. The ten rows of flowers were still there. Nothing had changed except for me.
I stood up and walked back to the house. It seemed like my feet barely touched the ground. They were leading me to the house. I opened the back door and I could see Mama lying on the couch in the living room. I tiptoed past her and made my way into the kitchen.
As my hands tried to turn the tap on and fumbled in the cupboard for a glass I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not. Did I imagine that experience in the backyard or did God really talk to me? I wasn’t sure. I stood at the kitchen window drinking my water and looking at the garden. I knew something special had touched me.
It would be something I would carry with me every day, even on the hardest days, as I continued to follow the goodness that was inside of me. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be an easy road but I knew it was a road that I could walk along and be happy.
I walked back to the garden. It seemed different to me now. Taking out the scissors I had brought from the kitchen, I cut down one of the sunflowers. Carefully smoothing the stalk I carried it back into the house.
I stood over Mama, watching her sleep. Leaning over the couch I kissed her on the head with as much love as I had experienced in the garden. I laid the sunflower down beside her so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. I went back to cleaning the house, knowing it would have a good effect on both Mama and me.