June 20, 2023
Path
I encountered the following headline in a recent issue of my local paper, the Times Union: “American Dream convinces people loneliness is normal.” And beneath a photo of Ted Lasso and others, I read, “Today, loneliness plays out on streaming TV all the time in the forms of shows like ‘Ted Lasso.’
In my “how to deal with aging” group, we discuss the fact that the U.S. government recently released a report claiming that loneliness has reached epidemic proportions among adults in America and that it is even more severe among the elderly. According to the Surgeon General, loneliness takes a toll as deadly as smoking.
Perhaps this explains the sense of joy I felt two weeks ago when Kevin and I completed our Friday morning work by creating a path between my neighbors’ house and my own.
Nancy and I have been exchanging plants and plans ever since the pandemic kept us more tethered to our specific location and promoted contacts that occurred outside. Nancy and Sara have shared recipes and kitchen equipment. Post pandemic, longer visits have included Paul and wine.
Recently, Nancy and I have begun to rely on each other for garden care when we are away from home. A better path between our houses would facilitate our helping each other out.
So much of landscaping is about creating barriers – hedges that block views and access, fences that create private space, space without impingement of the other, visually or emotionally. I delighted in doing just the opposite. When Kevin finished removing the last low hanging branch of the hemlock and I cut back the last over-reaching branch of the weigela and a clear path between my house and Nancy’s emerged, I felt not only joy but a deep sense of gratitude. The path symbolizes connection and if loneliness laps at my heels, no wonder I exult in having such a good neighbor.
On a recent trip to Amherst, Sara and I visited the home of Emily Dickinson. While Dickinson is no longer presented as the slightly mad poetess whose poetry was the result of her failure to find a man, our guide still brushed over Dickinson’s relation to Susan Gilbert. The love of Dickinson’s life before she married Dickinson’s brother, Susan was also Dickinson’s first audience and often co-creator. Indeed, Dickinson once wrote, “Where my hands are cut, her fingers will be found.” These words bring tears every time I read or write them. It would, I believe, be hard to find a more moving description of collaboration.
A path connects the home of Emily Dickinson and the home of Susan Gilbert Dickinson who lived “next door.” It is unclear how often Dickinson used the path to visit her beloved Susan but she could see the house and perhaps Susan from her second story room. Standing on that path, I imagined I could feel the love between these two 19th century women that was symbolized by this path. Ironically, a woman known to most for her isolation serves for me as a symbol of connection.
Paths are, indeed, most often a connection between two points. But sometimes paths do not have clear destinations, they are just a way through the world. I think of my garden paths in this light. They are not so much directed at bench or sculpture or focal plant as they are a way to move through the garden and observe what occurs on either side. I create curved paths as a way of slowing down a visitor’s progress through the garden. Sometimes I use stones to increase attention to the beauty of the way.
I suspect the spiritual path is more akin to the garden path than to the path I created between my house and my neighbor’s. Sara declares she is not on a spiritual path and I declare her knowledge is worth a million dollars. For if she is not on it, she must know where it is. And for that information, many would pay dearly, including me. But she’s not sharing.
At the Cape last week, on a much-needed rest from over-exertion, I had the chance to sea bathe. I did not swim so much as simply walk about in the waters of the bay as they covered me up to my shoulders. The waters did not reach above my head until I had walked a long distance from the shore. Looking back, bathed in the water, standing on the ocean floor, I thought: sea-bathing restores my soul. I must do something each day that restores my soul as these waters have.
Home now, I think that on any day I walk the path between my house and my neighbor’s, I will have fed my soul. For if loneliness is epidemic and if loneliness destroys the soul, then surely connection restores the soul.
I need to see if Nancy would like some of the Japanese anemone that Kevin and I plan to remove from a certain part of the garden this Friday. Perhaps later today I will trot over and find out.
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