text: He reached into the jar of seeds, slowly moving his hand through to feel them on every part of his hand. The feeling relaxed him, as did the sound of the seeds moving around the open spaces, softly colliding with each other. When he lifted his hand out it was covered in the particles and dust residing throughout the jar. Reaching back in he stopped just short of submerging his fingertips beneath the top seeds and grabbed a pinch of the seeds, rolling them between his fingers together until there was only one left. He placed it into his coat pocket, then reached in two more times. Three seeds today. It had been over a month since he needed more than one. He grabbed his trowel and a watering can, pushed open the doors from his shed and started making his way to the street. Cars were at a standstill in the middle of the street all honking in concert with each other. Some people even had their windows rolled down, fists out and shaking at the cars in front of them as if their sheer yelling power would free up the traffic jam. He considered grabbing a fourth seed, but instead chose to put his head down and continue walking. The sun warmed his back as he passed a couple holding hands, an old woman walking a dog seemingly twice her weight, and some children kicking a can down the sidewalk, laughing as they nearly barreled into him. Once he reached the park he filled the watering can and went to the corner of the park that he always did. As he approached, the smell of blooming flowers reached him in a gust of wind. He put the watering can down briefly, closed his eyes, and deeply breathed in and out. A smile crept onto his face as he reveled in his hard work from previous days, weeks, years. A swath of the park nearly half an acre was covered in flowers of different colors and sizes. The striking purple from the Provence lavenders competed with the dark blue of the Anchusas, and both vied for attention from the pink of the primroses. All swayed in the wind together as one. He moved to the section he left a few days ago at the end of the spiral, the seeds not yet budding whereas the ones next to it were just starting to poke through the surface. The man shoved the trowel into the ground, pulled it out and repeated the motion in a cone shape before pulling out the whole section of dirt. Worms and beetles crawled as quickly as they could to escape the sudden removal of their homes. The man wondered how long beetles lived and whether or not his father ever saw the same ones he did. Maybe the same beetles kept having their homes ripped out from above them from the same general area. Maybe it’s time to move farther away little buddies, he laughed, placing the chunk of dirt softly down next to him. “Are you crazy?” a young girl’s voice startled him, making him nearly throw his trowel in defense. He looked up to see a little girl, likely around five or six years old, wearing pink overalls with a massive Hello Kitty printed on the front. Her hair was done in ponytails with a red ribbon on top nearly falling off in her loose hair. She brushed her hair aside, moving the bow farther from the center. “Excuse me?” “My brother says crazy people laugh when no one says anything. Are you crazy?” The man laughed at the absurdity, thinking about all of the times he laughed at his own thoughts. “I sure hope not. It’s good to laugh, even when you’re by yourself. Especially when you’re by yourself.” The girl laughed and jumped, knocking the bow free from her hair to fall gently to the ground. She bent over, stumbling a bit as she grabbed the bow and tried placing it back into her hair. About twenty yards behind the girl stood a man wearing khaki slacks and a white button down shirt. He uncrossed his arms and waved when the man made eye contact with him. He reflexively waved back. “Your father?” he said, nodding toward the man in the khakis. “Yes,” she said, “he brings me here once a week. I like the flowers. The pink ones are my favorite.” She bent her knees then jumped as far as she could toward the flowers, missing by quite a long distance, and stumbled again, the bow falling once more onto the ground in front of her. She giggled and placed it back into her hair as if it would finally stick for good that time. The man filled the hole with a little bit of soil. “I like them too,” the man said. He looked at the pink flowers near the little girl, planted nearly two years ago after his sister blamed him for his father’s death. “I think they’re all my favorite, though.” “They can’t all be your favorite,” the girl laughed. She walked closer to him and sat down by the newest flowers. “We see you here sometimes. How big are you going to make these?” “How big?” “Yeah!” the girl exclaimed. “Will you cover the whole park?” The man laughed and waved his hand, imagining the park covered in flowers with no room to walk around. “No, not the whole park. That would take too long since I only plant a few at a time.” He looked around himself imagining how far the flowers would go - he never thought about when he would stop, or even if he would stop. No one at the park told him he couldn’t plant, and most people knew to leave him alone by this point. They liked the flowers there, and so did he. “Why only a few?” the girl asked, confused by the inefficiency. “I’m not planting for the park,” the man answered. “My father used to always come out here once I was grown up. He would plant a seed every now and then back when there were no flowers.” The man looked toward the center of the spiral of flowers and remembered when his father started planting them. The man dove head first into alcoholism a decade prior when his girlfriend at the time, whom he believed to be the love of his life, broke up with him. His father, as a coping mechanism, would take seeds out to this spot to plant them, one seed any time the man’s alcoholism negatively affected others. A seed for yelling obscenities during minuscule arguments. A seed for vomiting on the carpet once again. The man detested the flowers back when his father was alive, a constant reminder of his failures as a human and a son. In a drunken tirade he once ran to the flowers and ripped them all from the ground. His father, saying nothing, took a single seed the next day and planted it in the center of the ruined flowerbed. “Why are you doing this to me?” the man asked his father through tears. “I’m not doing anything to you,” his father replied. “I do it *for* you. Those seeds represent something beautiful. This world can be wholly awful at times, but I can take those awful things and literally turn them into beauty that others can enjoy.” “That’s stupid,” the man said, already drunk. His father frowned. “I don’t think so.” “I do.” His father stood quiet for a moment, then said “I hope you find beauty in those flowers someday.” And someday he did find those flowers beautiful. After his father died the flowers became a sort of memorial to him. They helped him overcome his alcoholism when he forced himself to come to the flowers anytime he wanted a drink. Over time he realized what his father was trying to do for him, so he continued planting seeds in the spirit of turning bad things into something beautiful. A seed for strangers being rude. A seed for a hurtful comment from a loved one. “I plant a seed when I see something bad in this world,” the man said to the girl, “as a way to turn it into beauty instead.” The girl looked back at him, confused. “You plant them when bad things happen? That’s silly.” He cocked his head at the girl, thinking he didn’t appropriately convey the emotion behind his planting. “Silly?” “Yeah,” the girl replied. “When you look at the flowers you remember the bad things. I want to remember good things when I see flowers!” The man looked back at the spiral of flowers. All these years of planting these seeds to turn bad to good and no one asked him about it. She was right - there was always a tiny sense of dread hiding in the corners of his mind when he came here. The weight of his father’s tradition and the obligation of adding beauty to the world kept him going, but he was always reminded of the reasons for coming out here in the first place, the shadow constantly following him that he only planted because something bad happened. The girl jumped up and, without noticing that her bow flew off again, ran to her father. After a moment, the man in the khakis reached into his shirt pocket and took something out, placing it into the girls hand. She ran back to the man, arms flailing and a smile stretching across her face. She went to the hole that the man dug for his first seed and dropped to her knees. The girl opened her hand, and in the center of her tiny palm was a seed. “This is for meeting you,” she said, turning her hand and dropping the seed into the hole. The man watched the seed fall into the hole in slow motion, a seed that so opposed the whole meaning of this garden but what he so desperately knew needed to be done. “I’m Catriona,” the girl said. “My friends call me Cat.” “Hi Cat,” the man said. “I’m Chris. My friends call me Chris,” he joked. Cat giggled and waved her tiny hand at him. “Hi Chris.” She turned and ran once more to her father, then the both of them held hands and walked away. Chris watched as the two of them turned a corner around a building out of sight. He looked back at the flowers and realized the girl’s bow was still on the ground. With no chance of catching up to them he picked it up and looked at it. He put the bow in his pocket knowing he would keep it for the girl until she came back. He would show her all of the new flowers he planted that reminded him of the beauty that was already present in the world. He filled the rest of the hole with soil and watered it, then reached into his pocket to pull out the three seeds he brought with him. Each one represented something he planned to turn into beauty that day, but he couldn’t in good conscience plant them knowing what they represented. He put them back in his pocket, then picked up the trowel and watering can and walked home. He came back the next day with two new seeds. A seed for a girl that brought light to his life. A seed for the man he had become. He looked once more at the spiral of flowers, knowing his father would be proud of him.