Day 17: Chase the Water

WASHINGTON D.C. —

April 10, 2024

Day 17:

There is a community garden perched atop the alley behind Q’s condo that is shared by surrounding tenants, and its growth depends on a collective understanding of the delicate marriage between harvest and the passing of time, a partnership that requires effort.

Today, Q and I shared steps in their backyard, making our way to the Smithsonian National Zoo. Although the zoo was without a panda, due to poor relations with the Chinese regime who had taken her back as a sign of disapproval over recent U.S. foreign policy, the Japanese cherry blossoms lining the capital’s streets bloomed with pink.

Shortly before 6:30 P.M., as Q and I summited a steep hill leading up to Connecticut Avenue at the end of a 10-mile day along the ADT through northern D.C.’s Rock Creek Trail, the busy road before us came to a halt and cleared at the dictate of blasting sirens coming from the motorcade transporting President Biden, who was on his way to the State Dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio. One all-black SUV after another, multiple dimly visible silhouettes of the commander-in-chief and secret service were paraded before the People.

“That’s so D.C.,” said a young cyclist parked beside us.

As we walked past the community garden after returning to Q’s condo, they recalled something their horticultural therapist (horticultural therapy being a form of garden therapy often utilized for the treatment of PTSD) had said to Q during their enrollment at a trauma rehabilitation center in New Mexico:

“Flowers aren’t constantly in bloom, so we shouldn’t expect ourselves to always be in bloom either.”

Q gestured with their hands an explosion around their head, “pshh!”

I was far more intrigued with this than I was the presidential motorcade earlier, because in Q’s holistic understanding of the union between harvest and the passing of time, they were better than blooming; they were now reborn in all its stages, including each season of withering, where what’s old (no matter how tempting it is to cling to) must die to make place for the potential of the new.

A biblical metaphor from our Lutheran upbringings found in the book of Jeremiah came to mind:

“They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

As I considered this, my eyes were drawn toward the upper portion of a painting Q made while in rehab, where they had adorned in gold:

“We seek the guidance of dead humans. The water has always known where it is going.”

We are the garden. If our roots chase the water, it has a knowing to follow us back, a partnership that requires effort.