Seed Money

“Did you throw anything away, Dad?” Callie takes a deep breath.

She’s in the attic, knee deep in her father’s “affairs”— at least that’s what he called it, though most would just call it “hoarding.”

“It wasn’t always this bad, was it?” she wonders.

It collects over time…like a scab over a wound, it just grows there — covering what was once so painful.

Her mother went suddenly. She was finally going to have time in her garden.

Callie could still see her tending her tulips. She unearths a decorative wooden sign, “Bloom where you’re planted!”

Callie laughs, “It’s so corny, but for you, it was so true…

How many dandelions I picked for you… Hundreds maybe! I’d come home so dirty and so proud…and you were always so good. You’d run the kitchen tap filling a teacup with water, setting your “bouquet” on the windowsill, with the sunlight on your face.

As a girl, I never knew they were weeds — and to you, they never were.”

Soil-stained gardening gloves, old photo albums, ribbons and trophies… Amidst familiar family treasures, Callie finds a small black leather book she’d never seen before. A delicate painted green leaf adorns the cover. She pulls at the elastic closure and runs her finger along the rounded edges. Slightly worn ivory pages hint at the possibilities inside.

She sits down on the floor, criss cross applesauce — the way she taught her students to sit for circle time. Thumbing through its pages she finds intricate watercolor paintings of flowers, each an elegant portrait. Atop each page is a word written in her mother’s perfect calligraphed handwriting. At first it doesn’t register, until she sees her name, “Callie” on one of its pages. Leafing through the pages she reads her mother’s message, “The seeds to help your dreams bloom, Callie, are beneath your feet.”

She stands and surveys the attic. “Beneath my feet? In this mess?”

She sets the journal on a high shelf with intention, right where she can see it. What was once an obligation, an item to check off her to do list — becomes a mission to heed her mother’s words, propelling her forward to find a piece of something she didn’t realize she’d been missing.

Hours pass. Covered in dust and dried sweat, Callie is bone tired.

“The entire afternoon — digging, digging, digging… It’s just one pile of garbage after another — is this what you meant that day in the garden when we set all those earthworms free? ‘The garden’s magicians,’ you called them ‘disappearing beneath the surface where no one can see — turning garbage into things plants use to grow…’” Callie sighs. “I’m digging in the dark here, Dad.”

She stumbles, as if she’s being pushed, over a pile of papers. Beneath it, she finds another painted leaf — identical to the one on the journal.

She lifts the buckling floorboard to find a note scribbled on an old electric bill’s envelope:

"Your mother started the seed with $5,000. Over the years I cared for it, and you, as best I could…adding another $15,000. Our love for you grows always."

Callie counts the money in amazement. “Where did they even? How did he?” Sobbing, she replaces the money in the envelope.

Her tears turn to laughter, “They’re both pushing up daisies, and still worrying about my happiness.”

She suddenly realizes she’s never stopped to worry about her own happiness…never stopped to sit and dream.

Here in the attic, it feels like she has all the time in the world, as the memories and possibilities of childhood spring to life all around her.

Callie hugs her knees to her chest and sighs. “There’s no going back now…but maybe it’s time to make some new memories.”

She’d started the day with an emptiness in the pit of her stomach. As Callie contemplates, emptiness grows into possibility.