Remembrance in a Garden
Groundhogs
eat the daylilies,
and usually leave the dahlias.
It is a small lesson,
but important
when you're trying to grow something beautiful.
So I plant dill.
I plant basil.
I plant mint
around the edges,
a fragrant promise.
Why dill?
Why not?
We're German.
We love pickles,
the sharp comfort of memory,
the taste of summer preserved.
The heat settles in,
a heavy quilt of July,
thick with humidity—
the kind of afternoon
when they say you could fry an egg
on a country road.
Maybe bacon, too.
Happy Birthday, America.
Two hundred fifty years,
still learning,
still forgetting,
still beginning again.
I remember another anniversary—
the Bicentennial.
I was almost twenty,
certain I understood the world.
I wore my red, white, and blue dress,
danced beneath fireworks,
believing tomorrow
would keep its promises.
It was just after Watergate.
The country was bruised,
but still breathing.
Gerald Ford stood quietly
where history had left him
and offered no victory,
only healing.
"Our long national nightmare is over."
Not a boast.
A hope.
He served,
then stepped aside,
accepting both office and defeat
with uncommon grace.
His farewell was not about himself.
It was a prayer:
May God guide this wonderful country,
its people,
and those who choose to serve them.
Amen.
Now, fifty years later,
the groundhog returns,
testing the garden once again.
Still, I plant.
I tuck hope beneath the soil,
ring the borders with herbs,
believe that what survives
can bloom.
Because remembrance
is not longing for a perfect past.
It is choosing,
season after season,
to tend what is worth saving,
to gather what is good,
and to leave behind
a garden of faith
for those who come after us.
