A BEAUTIFUL CHILD

I had a very strange dream last night. I know that by telling you this I’m breaking my wife’s No Dreams Rule, but perhaps some of you can relate. If not, I apologize in advance to you (and to her).

So here goes…

I’m sowing a miniscule garden. It’s at the bottom of a twilit ventilation shaft between two multi-storied buildings. The wall on the other side of the shaft is blank concrete with a dirty grey whitewashed surface. The patch of ground I’m working on is an ad hoc “patio” between the buildings. My place has a sliding glass door that gives onto it. But the buildings are so close together that the space is nominal. The garden patch is about the width of the handle of the hoe I’m using. Widthwise, the length of the hoe handle will span the garden in either direction.

On a tiny strip of concrete bordering it, I’ve arrayed a trowel, a small watering can and a number of envelopes of seeds. There too, trying hard to stay out of my way, but at the same time, not wanting to miss a thing that is going on, is a delicate, pretty little girl. She looks to be about five or six. She isn’t dressed for gardening. She looks more as if she were on her way to Sunday school. She has on a belted, cranberry-colored coat. Below it, a fringe of lovely blue dress with a crinoline underskirt is visible. She’s also wearing dark leggings and shiny patent-leather shoes with straps and silver buckles.

The little girl’s dark hair forms long, corkscrew curls that reach past her shoulders and is tied back at the temples by a large pink bow at the back of her head. She has a bright, open face, with large, intelligent eyes, the color of which is an almost mahogany brown. Their expression is intense and wiser than her years might indicate. Her facial complexion and the skin on the backs of her hand are the color of a burnished buckeye, a rich, luminous brown. She is really a quite beautiful child.

Although, as I say, the little girl is working very hard to stay out of my way, it is also clear that she is very excited by the project of a garden in such a squalid, joyless little place. It is also clear to me that she’s my ward. I’m responsible for her. I can tell that she is already imagining what that drab, ugly patch of ground will look like once the seeds I’m planting sprout, grow and start to bloom into a stunning, multi-hued bed of vibrant, floral joy.

But in order to be allowed to stay, she has to put up with my grim, joyless concentration on the task at hand. And on my ill-humor, my own lack of imagination to already see the future as she, in her innocence, already does. She must cope with my lack of hope and faith that make sowing these seeds a last-ditch exercise in futility rather than an expression of an inner confidence and of the certainty that beauty will triumph. As such, she is forced to repress her overwhelming joy, to tone down her bubbling enthusiasm, to mask her certainty that planting a flower bed in such a lugubrious place is an act of unshakeable faith in a brighter, more beautiful future.

As I toil without anything like happiness or hope, I’m constantly barking at the sweet little girl to stay out of the way and let me finish “my” work. She is virtually vibrating with her enthusiasm and desire to be part of the project. But she is aware that, with me in charge, the price of her being here is for her to hide and suppress any outward manifestation of her almost uncontrollable excitement.

She stays on the sideline, smiling and almost visibly tremulous with emotion, waiting for me to finish making meager furrows with the trowel and sprinkling in the seeds, before raking the loose soil over them with my hoe.

“There!” I say finally. “Finished.”

I take my tools and duck backwards through the sliding door into the gloom of the ground-floor flat, leaving the little girl alone in the “patio”—such as it is. The point of view momentarily shifts and the focus is on the little girl. Alone at last, she is now beside herself with happiness in the newly-planted garden. She squats at first, surveying my handiwork from the concrete strip that I have marked as her “in bounds” territory. But then, she can no longer resist the temptation, gets down on her hands and knees, and gently starts to caress the cultivated earth.

With her tiny hands, she pats each ridge where the seeds have been sown. She leans close and whispers to them, murmurs and coos. She tells those seeds, tucked into their warm berth beneath the soil, how beautiful they are and how much more beautiful they are all going to be once they’ve grown and are in bloom. 

She picks up the little watering can and starts to sprinkle the soil, seeking to nurture the seeds, so as to ensure their health and progress. She knows that water is the key, the fountain from which all life springs. Not too much, mind you. Not enough to drown the tiny seedlings. Just enough to make them grow and flourish, strong and healthy.

The whole while that she is doing this, the pretty little girl keeps talking to her seed friends. She keeps telling them encouragingly that she loves them, that she will never abandon them, that she will be back every day to visit them and to water them.

But then, suddenly, I am back. And I’m angry, intimidating, asking her just what the hell she thinks she’s doing and why she always has to make a nuisance of herself.  “Didn’t I tell you to keep out of there? Well, didn’t I? What have you got to say for yourself?”

At first she stands with her head down, letting my overwrought tirade wash over her like a cold, heavy rain. But as I go on and on, as if that tiny patch of miserable dirt were the last shred of anything I still possess, she eventually lets the watering can fall to the ground and looks up into my face. Her eyes are filled with tears and incomprehension. They look wounded, full of sorrow. They reflect hopes dashed, love betrayed, joy choked and murdered.

Quite suddenly, my anger melts into remorse. I am awash in deep regret. And then, looking into her dark, wounded eyes, I’m feeling everything she is. I am not talking about just “knowing how she feels,” but rather, feeling it first-hand—the humiliation, the incomprehension, the frustration, the fear and pain. It is the terrible, shattered sensation of a cruelly broken moment of happiness.

Just as suddenly, I am gripped by a revelation. It is the lightning knowledge that the little girl is not “my charge”. Rather, she is an integral part of me, a piece of my very own soul, one face of my own inner child.  I am she and she, I. We are both victims of my inability to resolve issues of the past, to enjoy the miracle of each moment of life. She is a better, more innocent, more perfect me. She soars above petty frustration, futile remorse and crippling pessimism.

In short, she is the best of me, and as such, the part of me that I consistently bully, repress and abuse.