Sharing Eden

Sometimes, I think about John.

I grew up in my grandparents' garden. It was fairly large and brilliantly colored in a way Crayola could never compare. I spent my days running through the pods of flowers, jumping from rock to rock, or simply laying on the grass, watching the birds, the bugs, and the days go by.

In my childish mind, I thought that God had one day decided to add Eden to Heaven, but accidentally dropped that forbidden garden on the way home. Eden shattered into pieces, and those beautiful shards fell to the Earth. When He saw how beautiful those fragments were, instead of sweeping up the pieces, he decided to leave them there as samples of Heaven. He sent down angels to care for the gardens so that they would flourish even when the area around them turned uglier and uglier.

I thought my grandparents were angels. Unlike most people, my grandparents did not plant healthy flowers. They had the remarkable ability to reconstitute withered and dying ones; weeks were marked with daily trips to the local flower shop. We would walk an incredible distance to pick up the dying from the shop’s considerable heap of trash. They would give me only a few, even though I, brazen and vocal, insisted that I could carry more. They would then walk back and spend the next few hours, digging, planting, watering. I watched the flowers recover, and I thought that my grandparents had the gift of life in their hands.

It goes without saying that I was proud of the garden my grandparents nurtured. I fancied that of all the fragments of Eden, ours was the best. I wanted everyone to see it so that they could see that this was what Heaven was like, that it was a beautiful place where angels take the dying and make them whole again. This garden was the best thing I had, and I’d wanted to share it. But no one wanted to look. Cars would drive by without ever slowing down, neighbors would pass looking straight ahead, and, during an annual carnival, strangers would park their cars in front of our Eden and block it from the world.

This carnival was held at a mental institution quite visible from our garden. At all times of the year, except for the festival, it was silent, like a premature cemetery. This was where John came from. Everyday at 5:30.

His name probably isn’t John, but that is what I call him in my head. John was in his twenties with dark hair and light skin. I used John as a clock. John kept the time for me. John was a force that walked through snow, that walked through sleet, that walked through rain. John walked through my life.

John was incredibly lonely.

On his walks, he’d speak quietly to himself, eyes on the footsteps in front of him. His eyes were wide and hunted, as if he was terrified of where he was. Yet John continued to walk by everyday.

I wanted desperately to share my fragment of Eden with John. I thought that I could do to John what my grandparents had done to the flowers. Give life.

I came up with some outrageous antics to try and get John to look at the garden. I would pretend to throw things at him, but he’d ignore me. I would leave obstacles on the sidewalk, hoping that it would force him to look up, but John just walked in the street. I left gifts of flower petals wrapped in leaves tied in grass on the sidewalk, but John stepped over them. Thinking that he didn’t know what to do with those packages, I picked and left whole flowers on the sidewalk instead. This I got in trouble for.

Time passed and as I grew older, I grew disenchanted with the garden and with John. I looked at both with the indifference of the people who’d simply driven by my Eden years ago. There were new things to see, and Hell was much more thrilling than Heaven.

Since I was no longer enthralled with the garden nor captivated with John, I began to disregard him as he’d overlooked me and took no notice when he walked by. Only when I no longer cared did John look up from the sidewalk. He took in the flowers, he took in the garden, and he took in me, surrounded with things that I took for granted. He smiled at me with blue eyes and said one word. “Hello.”

John continued on his way. In fact, he continued on with his life. I haven’t seen him since.

I guess I realize now that he saw the packets, the flowers, the obstacles. He saw the baby crawling through the grass, trying to keep up with the ladybug. He saw the child dance in the flowers and catch the sunshine in her hands. He saw the little girl whisper to the trees and totter around with dead flowers in her arms. John saw everything I’d wanted him to see and more.

While he walked through my life, John had watched me grow up, one day at a time, everyday at 5:30.