love

there for each other (2018) by amanda oleander

*

I had been saying I wanted an herb garden. I want something to grow, nourish, feel, to make sacred. I told him. We live seven floors above the ground, but who is to say I can’t still feel connected to the earth?

I have always loved plants, flowers especially. When I was young, my father and I created a vegetable garden every year in the summer. It was such a wonderful ritual. Ripping out all the weeds, softening the soil, refreshing it, softly planting the delicate, newborn plants that would feed us in a couple of months.

When I lived at home during that first COVID summer, we made one again. It was nostalgic, rewarding, life-giving. I watered it every day. I watched the leaves erupt out of the soil into abundance, feeding myself and my guests with the kind of flavour and richness you just don’t get from your weekly grocery shop. I showed off my herbs and vegetables to anyone who would indulge me enough to take my garden tour.

the kale & lettuce in my garden

I remember what it was like when I was younger to pluck that first cucumber—the one that the squirrels hasn’t gotten to before it turned to that dark, foresty green that told us it was ready.

My dad would slice it into thin layers, and salt it lightly. Most people don’t know that salt makes cucumbers into an unbelievably decadent snack. My friend from gymnastics was at my house. We all ate it together—me, my dad and her—standing over the counter in my kitchen, moaning over its exquisite taste, cucumber juice dripping down our faces, gushing to each other about how fresh and cucumber-y it was. More real and authentic than anything any of us had tasted that came from a pile of plastic-coated cucumbers that had probably been picked months before we ate them. This one was plugged into the ground just moments earlier. And I had been watering it and checking on it affectionately for months. Maybe that was why it tasted different. I cared for this slice of life.

*

I told this to him. How I loved having a garden, how when we have a house together, the most important thing to me is that we have a garden, somewhere I can grow things.

*

I have collected close to ten herbalism, flower and gardening themed books at this point. I accidentally bought the same one twice. That should tell you how intimately I know the books I already have before I buy a new one.

I looked at him over a flower-arrangement book I had just picked up in a plant store we were in. We were there because he needed a new nursery pot for our banana plant that he had planned to repot. It was his first time repotting one of our plants, it was exciting. He was always good at that: knowing what he needed and getting just that. Using what he already had. Practicality. Necessity. Order. Action.

I, on the other hand, love a fantasy. A vision. An imaginal world I yearn to exist in, which I will get the ingredients to create without hesitation, with reckless abandon and trust that there simply must be a reason I am pulled to this object. It must mean I must have it. Whether I actually use what I acquire always remains to be seen. An ongoing question mark, a dialogue with me and that vision. I am looking at him over the book. I tell him I want it. He softly shakes his head.

What about the other flower books you have?

I nod and look down at the book.

If you want it later, we can come back for it. He smiles softly, and gives me that knowing look—a combination of love, compassion and sincerity that could only be transmitted without language from his eyes to mine.

I smile softly and recoil softly into myself, in a sort of playful shame that lacks any negative valence, only there to indicate I know he is right. I close the book and place it back on the pile I took it from. We leave with just the nursery pot.

*

He is so good at that, nudging me towards the right thing without ever telling me to do it explicitly. Removing the impulsive urgency that makes me act from a reactive place instead of a grounded, cantered one. Grounded and centered. Something he always is. I love that about him.

*

We get home, and I start reading my book. I can’t stop. It has enchanted me. Once my attention is in between the pages, I can hardly hear him, hear anything. I am immersed. It has been a while since my relationship to books has been as intimate and preoccupying as it has been lately. It makes me think about how dumb my phone makes me, hypnotizing me without captivating me. Preoccupying me with hardly any reward. I push away the thoughts of shame and guilt that accompany any deeper reflection on how much I use my phone and bury my nose back into the book, waiting to see what will happen to the characters I suddenly feel irreversibly fused to.

I look over to the kitchen. There he is, tugging the roots of the banana plant, hovering over a setup only he could pull off, a garbage bag laying over our marble kitchen counter, the new nursery pot just centimeters from the old one. I know he will somehow execute this perfectly without a single crumb of soil spilling out of the pots. If I was doing it, the kitchen would become a mudslide. Somehow, he does it effortlessly. He ladles more soil into the new pot. A playful banter begins between us about the charming aesthetic of gardening inside a floating slice of home in the sky.

I return to my book. When I look back over, he is already preparing my herb garden in a new pot. I had intended to do it myself, to prove to myself I can act on my ideas and visions, not just dream them up. But I am secretly quite relieved he is doing it for me—that part I least wanted to do; the first step. What I really want is to live inside my visions: to water my plants, admire them, speak to them, erupt in joy when I see the first sprout from the seeds poke through the soil. But doing the legwork, the labour of setting them up, well, sometimes I just don’t really want to do that part, honestly.

He never flinches at it, though. How does he know that about me? How is he doing it for me, without even mentioning it? Never asking for credit. That’s him. One of his best qualities, and the one I try to help him shake off when he finds himself in a scenario where he deserves credit, deserves to be known. But for now I just smile and feel a warmth spread over my chest. An overwhelming sensation of love, of good fortune, of gratitude, of humility, of amusement. Of how perfect he is for me. Of how effortlessly he loves me. How much he seems to enjoy doing what pleases me. How easy it is for him to do the things that are hardest for me to do.

I sink into this feeling; I let the warmth spread over me. I allow myself to feel it fully. The incredible sense of love and warmth and mystery that has lead this person to me, me to him. How easy it is between us. How easy it has always been, even when it shouldn’t have been. How clear, true, obvious it has always been. God, I love him. I feel that feeling—of love—overwhelm my senses. I let my eyes close. The image of the herb garden blooming erupts in my mind. I smile. I open my eyes. He is still there, patting the soil gently. He looks up at me and smiles, and gives me one of those small, happy head shakes, indicating to me he is proud of what he is doing, excited for the results of his effort to show. I am, too. I will love those herbs, care for them. I think. I will love this man, care for him. I think.

I wink at him, close my eyes again, take a deep breath, look up, thank God, allow tears of wonder, awe, humility, joy, excitement, sweetness, tenderness to burn gently in the backs of my eyelids. I sit with them. Letting them pass before they spill out of the corners of my eyes.

I love you. I say. Best life ever. I say. I smile at him. I remember that we have all we need here. How could it get better than this? It doesn’t need to. But I still let myself feel excited to have an actual garden one day, erupting from the earth, from the soil we will pat and nurture together. It isn’t a yearning, it’s a knowing. I possess certainty about the future, where he only lets himself desire it, hope for it, work towards it. It rests differently in me. I simply know what we will have. That is why we work so well together. I trust what I feel without reservation. He trusts evidence, proof, rationality. We level with each other always. We understand how we both think. We appreciate the balance between our ways of being.

We never resent each other for being different. I tweeted recently, the biggest key in a relationship is to admire the way your partner is different, instead of expecting them to act like you would. You need their polarity; embrace that.

That is how we’ve done it. In our most frictional moments, when our shadows rub against each other, when the optics of the interaction look angry, underneath it is still a deep appreciation. A knowing in me that I would never want him to be different than exactly who he is. That we are here to love each other, heal each other, to build a life together, to have children together. That we are here to make a garden together, and water it every day.

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