Rite of Passage in the Spring

We turned the calendar page to April, but someone forgot to tell the thermometer (and perhaps also the sun). It's been the bleakest spring I can remember during our tenure in China. Our spring jackets are waiting in the "on-deck" position, while heavy woolens and puffy coats still reign supreme on the coat rack. The winter uniforms the girls don each day for school have grown faded and dull. They are stiff from being hung to drip dry. The pants have crept, not so subtly, slowly above the ankle. We are desperately waiting for spring!!

So on Saturday, spurred on by the fact it was Eastertime... I pulled out our bent up rake, the one with the kiddy-whampus tines; the one Mr. Johnson has re-enforced with screws (on more than one occasion). It is a known fact, you can find nary a rake of this caliber in the entire municipality of QD... and if you take a gander at that rake you'll understand that that's saying something!

I hacked away at the dead and mouldering leaves along the roses ... pulling rubbish (Styrofoam, impossibly thin plastic bags, and bits of construction conveniently tossed from the second floor apartment into our garden/yard.)

I was reassured to find bits of green that had been hiding under the long-winter blanket of the organic and inorganic materials listed above. I ran my hands through the warmth of the dark black soil. The soil I had to buy, because rich supple soil is no longer naturally occurring here.

I watched as my youngest girls worked. Pulling the remnants of last year's annual plants. Purposefully turning spade after spade of earth... clay colored and clay textured earth, into which we mixed the dark, purchased soil. They thoughtfully arranged our plant selection, and then gently set the spring plants into the small holes they dug.

We are choosing to stay, for two more years, in this apartment home. The home with traces of mold that forms around the window every couple of months. The home with three toilets that all require frequent plunging. The home with the shower that no longer drains, but allows the water to collect and pool around our ankles. We are staying here in large part because we have a garden.

Because we want our little girls to experience this rite of passage each spring. We stay because conversations about dirt, and the ability to play in it is the stuff of childhood.