Loved and Lost

I always knew I had hit on a good prompt when students asked, "Can I do more than one?"

This is a good prompt!

"Thanks," my brother said when I dropped off the squash and pepper plants I had grown from seed. "Emily will love these!"

We stood outside his house, looking over his garden beds. "The rabbits ate those," he pointed at an empty spot where once there had been beans. "That pepper has a flower," he noted, "but those aren't doing well at all."

I nodded, and he shrugged. "That's why I hate growing vegetables," he said. "They break my heart every time."

“But they’re so worth it,” I said. 

I spent a big chunk of my afternoon at my friend's, who was hit by a car, home. A cleaning crew was inside preparing the place for her eventual return, and I was in the yard with her three dogs, repairing the fence, adding hardware cloth to the gate, and listening to my audiobook. 

The closer I got to the end of The Good Lord Bird, by James Mcbride, the more breaks I needed to take from this National Book Award winning tale about John Brown told from the perspective of an unwillingly emancipated enslaved boy who was initially mistaken for a girl and, stays disguised as one for three years during his association with the "Captain."

Because once they got to Harper's Ferry? I knew the book would break my heart.

But it is so worth it.