Jessie MNGL Suzuki

In this modern world, you don’t need to have a garden like the olden days. You can just have a lawn and a gardening service. Fruits and vegetables can easily be exchanged for money. You could even have restaurant food delivered to your doorstep and wait behind the blinds until the anonymous delivery driver is gone. Many of your neighbors live like that, as you know. They are so used to Styrofoam tomatoes and bland bell peppers that when they taste the nutritious delicious food that you grow in your suburban front yard they marvel that vegetables can be so rich and satisfying.

In this modern world, you don’t need deep relationships like the olden days. You can watch TV and stay inside the house. You can hire people to do the traditional care tasks that families and friends used to do for each other out of love and reciprocity. Community can be allowed to fade away, can be ignored nowadays. Many Americans live like that, you know. A human can survive on take-out food, superficial interactions with service people, parasocial celebrity relationships, and a drained and wearied spouse. But surviving is not thriving, and people who get by without a rich satisfying community aren’t even sure what is missing in their lives.

Gardens take work. Planning, planting, sweating, tilling, buying, weeding, watering. You need to pay attention to the weather and to each plant’s individual needs. More water? More sun? Acidic soil? Protection from birds? What does this particular plant need?

Relationships take work. Listening, loving, solving problems together, laughing, eating together, considering, talking things out, forgiving, appreciating. So much consideration. That’s why they call it emotional labor, it is work. Each relationship is different and each person has different needs. More hugs? More space? Frequent check-ins? More listening? What does this particular person need to blossom in my care? Relationships need sunshine, fresh air, joy, and room to grow. Just as growing green things need protection from predators, relationships need safety from the things that would destroy them: distain, disrespect, and neglect.

Green-thumbed folks like you, who nurture a bountiful year-round garden, put in regular thoughtful effort tending to each type of plant in their care. They do the work, and their reward is an abundant harvest, rainbows of fresh healthy food on their plate, dirt under their fingernails, sweat running down their back, the admiration of neighbors, and the deep joy and satisfaction that the Door Dashers will never taste. It’s not magic, it’s consistent effort.

Brown-thumbed people are not cursed or being punished, they could learn how to care for a garden, if they cared to. Maybe they have the wrong idea and just expect everything to grow on its own? Maybe they resent the needs of plants, the thirsty tomatoes, the sensitive salad greens. They sit down on the couch and don’t want to get up to go water, so they skip it, just today, but also tomorrow, and eventually their garden has withered away from neglect. Eventually inattentive years have gone by and everything has dried up, the emotional distances are vast and uncrossable, and everyone has moved on to greener pastures. Eventually the only time the phone rings anymore is to announce a delivery driver arriving soon.