It’s a summer Saturday and, after two years of living in this house, I’ve decided it’s time to set up automatic watering in my garden. After a brief Google search, I determine that what I need to do the job is a tool called an emitter and a roll of tubing. Full of hope, I embark for Home Depot. As I pull into the parking lot, my husband, who is at home with our three small children, calls and asks where the safety pins are—the six-year-old needs one to transform a dish towel into an apron.
“They’re in the white cupboard, bottom shelf, in a little blue bin,” I say.
I can hear him rustling around in the cupboard, I’m sure with the baby on his hip. He says he can’t find them, we must not have any, and could I please buy some while I’m out.
“I know we have some,” I say. “I used one just yesterday. There are two little blue bins on the bottom shelf. Did you check both bins? No, not the one with pipe cleaners. The one with clothes pins and glue. The bin is small. And blue. Look behind that one. Yup, there you go. Okay. Love you. See you soon. Bye.”
I go inside the store and, after requisite wandering while repeating the word emitter in my mind, I finally ask an orange-aproned employee where I can find the drip irrigation supplies. On the other side of the store, he says. Big sign that says Irrigation. Right. Of course.
Finally I find the right aisle. From my feet to the top of my reach, there are shelves of products which are coded by color and number. The amount of supplies necessary to accomplish this one task is astonishing. Suddenly, I realize I have no idea what I actually need. I am mentally blinded by all the options, and my mind starts to spin and my cheeks feel hot. There is nothing that says emitter.
The aisle is crowded. It seems that everyone is shopping for this stuff today. Several men come and go as I continue to stand here. There is another woman squinting at the shelves who has been here nearly as long as I have. I feel that something should be said between the two of us, we who have been here too long. I throw out an explanation, a justification.
“There are too many options!” I say.
“Yes!” she agrees, and laughs. “I just have no idea…” She shakes her head. “My husband was the one who did all this stuff. But he died in November. We had just moved to a new place, no landscaping yet.”
I’m caught off guard, and my response is trite and inadequate. “Oh. I’m sorry. That’s so hard.”
She nods. “Life takes unexpected turns sometimes.” She smiles sadly and turns her gaze back to the shelves. She appears to be about my mother’s age—older than me, but too young to lose a spouse.
Perhaps to move away from the subject of death, perhaps to explain what I’m doing here, I say, “My husband does the yard, but I do the garden.” Then I wonder if I have just rubbed it in her face, that my husband is alive and hers is not.
We continue perusing the shelves, studying product descriptions and commenting occasionally on what we’ve found, each of us holding an assortment of vinyl tubing and small plastic bags filled with small plastic parts. While half of my brain is trying to determine which sprayer nozzle will most efficiently water my flower bed, the other half is thinking about the vulnerable position one puts herself in by entwining her life so intimately and dependently with another’s. I wonder how often this woman turns a corner and bumps into her grief. Does it jump out from the nooks and crannies, where she never expected it to be, and take her breath away?
Does she know where the safety pins are?
It occurs to me that she is doing a very brave thing. I may be installing a drip system, but she is doing something altogether different. She is facing grief, moving forward, carrying on.
“Here,” she says, plucking something from the top shelf labeled FREE and handing it to me. It’s an informational pamphlet about the basics of drip irrigation, the key to unlocking the code of colors and numbers and vocabulary!
“Aha!” I exclaim. “Yes, this is what we need!” There is a we now. We are lost, together.
I dig into the pamphlet and wish blessings upon whoever wrote it. When I look up a couple of minutes later, the woman is walking away. I watch her, and though I feel bad about it, I don’t say goodbye. Fifteen minutes later I’m leaving the parking lot and I see her again. I want to roll down my window and shout, “Good luck!” but instead I wave and smile like she’s someone I actually know. She smiles and waves back.
When I get home, my husband is watching Paw Patrol with the kids. The grass is freshly mowed. There is a letter from the insurance company and I put it on his desk. We will have a homemade dinner tonight and he has no idea what it will be. The kids have college savings funds. The kids have trimmed fingernails. There are a thousand things we do in a day, a thousand ways we need each other. Suddenly none of it seems ordinary.
Reckless, maybe.