Rose Colored Contact Lenses

   
     I woke up at three o'clock this morning thinking about my garden. If you know my family, between my green-fingered mother and Grandma and Grandpa Gregory, gardening is in my blood. I have a bed of Creeping Phlox at the end of the driveway in honor of my mother, who called them May Pinks. I awoke with grief filling my chest, realizing I will not see them bloom again. I love to garden and I worked hard on my garden here even knowing that it wasn't my house and I would leave it some day. It didn't stop me though, I can't resist flowers and I have grown them everywhere I have lived except for King Street because the soil was dead and nothing would grow.
     I am an overly optimistic, glass-half-full, hopeful far beyond reason type of person. "Rose colored contact lenses," my ex-husband Michael used to say. He would tease me about having my head in the sand. I can't help it, it's the way God made me. That and the inability to say no to anyone in need of help is the legacy my parents left me.
     My sister Kathy's birthday is in July so she got to have her birthday parties at the beach or someplace else fun. One year I convinced my mom that I should have a picnic at Beardsley Park for my birthday party. The day of my picnic was pouring rain, like so many days in April, and she tried to get me to change my mind but I could not imagine that the rain would not stop. Such was my hope for a birthday picnic. My beautiful, extraordinary mother loaded us all in the station wagon at the appointed time and I still have the crystal-clear memory of our drive along the narrow roads, up and down the rolling hills of the park, our picnic in the back. My face was pressed against the window with the rain streaming down the outside, my tears streaming down the inside.
     The hutch on my sun porch, where I keep my gardening gloves and stuff, has one shelf full of empty jars of every size and shape, plastic and glass. They are perfect for fire flies and caterpillars and grasshoppers and whatever else my little girls find on their adventures. And I know that it's stupid, but I will wrap them up in paper and move them along with everything else I own. We are going to need them for bugs.