Grow

I was cranky, I was mad, I was ill.

I was all those things a small girl of four hated to be during the tail-end of the wonderful, glorious and much-anticipated winter holidays.

I sat behind the glazed glass of my bedroom window, "safe" from the biting cold, ensconced in the fluffy pink blanket my mother insisted on covering me with. Things that pleased me when I wasn't sick only succeeded in irritating me now - the hot mushroom soup seemed like cod liver oil, the Barbie looked supremely artificial, the snow falling against the dark sky of the evening looked like a particularly vicious case of dandruff. I'd always liked to lick the snowflakes as they fell but now, the very idea made me nauseous.

I was restless, I was irritated, I wanted to go out, no matter what the consequences were.

I looked at the flames dancing in the fireplace - I couldn't see any monsters in it now. Didn't that mean I was alright again, that I could go out again?

I needed to go out - it was stifling in my room.

I jerked my blanket off and ran down the stairs. There was no grown-up around to reprimand me. The first breath of cold air that went into my lungs made me feel alive, the second one made me shiver in pleasure. Feeling the familiar happiness coming onto me, I knew all would soon be right with my world.

"I thought you were supposed to stay in your room, child," a gravelly voice said.

I skidded as I stopped running abruptly. Our gardener was on his haunches behind the thicket near the kitchen garden. To me, he seemed ancient, someone who'd be better off kept in a museum. He seemed frail but he could work in the gardens tirelessly. He never failed to intimidate me - I feared him even more than I feared the bogeyman. I had a nagging suspicion that the bogeyman was a figment of some sadist's imagination but our gardener was very much real.

I tossed my head like the bad-tempered girl I was and though I wanted to sulk since I would surely be sent inside now, I replied rudely, "What's that to you?"

"Nothing, little miss", the gardener said seriously. "But I figured - since you're already outside, you might as well make the most of it and have some fun."

I stared at him, not believing my ears. No grown-up had ever told me to "have fun" - rather, their standard line was "try to keep out of trouble". The gardener just extended his gnarled and scarred hand and after a moment of hesitation, I put my little one in his.

"Want to see some squirrels playing around the garden? They're really active in the late winter."
Surprised and very pleased, I smiled. My pigtails went up and down as I nodded vigorously.

The slow smile that he sent me then was one of the nicest and warmest ones anyone had ever given me and my young heart trembled into love instantly. He answered my endless questions and never once told me that I talked too much. I held his hand tighter and hung on to his every word as he pointed out the squirrels and their stash of nuts to me.

"Why are you putting that in the ground?" I asked him as he dug a hole and put a shrunken seed into it.

"Little missy, this might look ugly and shrunken to you but when covered with mud and cherished, it will soon grow and give us fine and handsome seeds that are healthier and nicer. Isn't nature beautiful? And spring is one of the most beautiful months."

Winter moved on and our gardens bloomed in spring. Everyday after school, I spent a lot of time with our gardener, chattering away like a happy, chirpy magpie. He always had a flower ready for me when I came back from school and I always had my day's adventures to narrate to him. I'd found a true friend and so, he said, had he.

One morning, my mother came into my room, looking sombre.

"Wear your black dress, daughter. We're going to the funeral."

Of course I knew what a funeral was, even if I had never been to one - I knew that only the dead got it. I didn't ask who got to be dead. I felt that it was an impolite thing to ask so I just put on my black dress and sat silently next to my mother in the car.

I didn't cry as I saw my friend, our gardener, being lowered into the ground - because I saw him being covered with mud. I knew he would come again - a nicer, handsome and healthier him.

I go to his grave everyday, taking a flower for him, narrating my day's adventures, cherishing him - like everything was still the same - and I wait, oh wait, for when he'd come up.