Page 72 of Big Island Neighbors
When that emptiness threatened to swallow her, the garden was her salvation.
She stood, put her hands on her hips, and turned in a slow three-sixty. The weeding was done - or as done as it would ever be - and she was still itching for more work. She would like to cover the newly weeded ground in mulch, but she’d used up all that she had, and the next mulch delivery was nearly two weeks out.
Finally she decided to uproot a patch of sweet potatoes and see how much food was hiding beneath the thick mat of vines.
Before she got started, she brushed the dirt from her hands and called her big sister.
They talked more now, more than two thousand miles across the ocean, than they had when they lived in the same town. Then again, Adam had always been the person she talked things through with. The void he’d left behind had made room for her to strengthen her relationships with family.
She felt guilty for just how far she had drifted from her sisters and from Lani - and grateful that they didn’t hold those years of neglect against her.
She and Toni had never been particularly close, but her newfound love of gardening gave them plenty to talk about.
“Emma!” Toni always sounded excited to hear from her, and that alone was reason enough to call. “How’s life?”
“Just another day in paradise. I’m about to dig up some sweet potatoes.”
“Lucky. I don’t have much growing here other than the starts I have going indoors under grow lights.”
“To extend the growing season?”
“More because I’m not patient enough to wait for spring, but sure. Let’s go with your thing.”
“How are you?”
“Hanging in there. It’s nearly spring. And Juniper’s got big plans for next year.”
“And how is our oldest niece?”
“Thriving.” Toni’s voice was warm. “I love to see it, Em. I really do. She dotes on her baby brother, stays over sometimes, but she’s still happy up here in her treehouse.”
“That’s good to hear. And her mom is alright?”
“Everybody’s good,” Toni assured her. “How are you really?”
“Lost,” Emma said lightly. “Desperately casting around for a sense of purpose and meaning.”
“That good, huh?”
She let out a one-note laugh. “I’ve been helping at the weekly soup kitchen, and my neighbor and I are talking about starting a little nonprofit to bring food to people who need it. Volunteer work helps, but I still feel unmoored without Adam.”
“Are there times when you feel okay? Really, deeply okay?”
She thought about that for a while as she created a tall mound of sweet potato vines and pulled pound after pound of food up from the soil. “I only feel happy and grounded in the garden.”
“Lean into that,” Toni encouraged her. “Do what makes you feel alive, and the rest will follow.”
“Hey Mom?” Kai rattled the overgrown fence, peering at her through a gap in the green.
“The problem is,” she said quietly to her sister, “my time isn’t entirely my own. Just a sec.”
“I’m hungry!” he called.
“There’s yogurt in the fridge,” she told him. “And more of that star fruit that I cut up for breakfast.”
“I don’t want yogurt! I want French toast!”
“I’m not available to make French toast right now.”
