Hope & Defiance

Owning a small business and seeing what my fellow makers and farmers do each week, month and year; fills me with pride in each of our resilience. For starting something from nothing, is just like sowing the seeds each spring with the hope of something to emerge. Each day my compatriots take a stand and defy the set course. This spring will bring us all into a changed world.

Past springs I’ve planted a garden, growing greens, beets, tomatoes and herbs. It’s marked on the calendar, a milestone completed by the time we roll into May. Most years the struggles to keep the garden flourishing are waged against slugs with platters of beer or caterpillars, and my resident gopher that defies and mocks me from the edge of the yard, sunbathing next to the garden.

Four years ago, the summer my father passed, I sowed the patch and suddenly left for India. Knowing that the patch would be neglected during the peak of summer, I came back to the tallest tomato plants I had ever seen. The garden’s sturdiness and the crop that Fall defied how I felt. The struggle that year was to accept that gift amidst the grief.

The next spring, with my mother’s cancer treatment completed, I looked at every stirring of life as a sign of hope. I dug the dirt, spread the compost and placed my seedlings with gratitude, I willed each root to grow deep and rise strong. The struggle was to stay rooted in reality within the headiness of hope.

And this spring when I plant my garden, it will be an act of defiance. And in that defiance, I will be sowing hope. Perhaps even a struggle against slugs and gophers would be welcome.

For, hope is an act of defiance. It is in our nature, and is nature, itself.