It’s amazing the power they have, these weeds. Even the ones in the garden.
Whether you call it imagination or worry, or awfulizing even, I can conjure up a lot of situations long before they have a chance to even occur. Most, thankfully, don’t occur at all.
I was at my grandma’s house, stooped over on the front cement steps. Waiting and worrying about my cousins arriving. Alone and surrounded by woulds. Would they still like me? Would they remember me from last summer? My grandma saw me, face curled, resting on clenched fists. “Why are you sitting here in the weeds?” she asked me. I looked around the cement. I didn’t understand. “I know that little brain of yours. Popping out all that worry, faster than a garden of weeds. Look out there. Are the birds worried? Do the cows have their heads in hooves?” Heads in hooves — I laughed. She waved her hand and scooted me off of the stairs. The woulds and weeds dropped from my chubby legs as I raced under the summer sun.
I was pulling the weeds surrounding our front entry. I tried to match them pluck for pluck. One from the garden. One from my brain. It made me laugh. Both put up a bit of a fight, but getting my head out of my hooves, it made it a lot easier.
I think a lot about the things my grandma did and said. When they were uniquely hers, we called it “pulling an Elsie.” Her letting go of the weeds was and is the main Elsie I’d like to pull. I keep the drawing of her hands behind me and try to live in the words, “If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.”
