Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Contents

Acknowledgments..................................................ix1. Grant Us Wisdom, Grant Us Courage.............................12. Be Still My Praying Feet......................................153. You Do Not Know...............................................354. Namaste.......................................................595. Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs.....................796. All Good Gifts Around Us......................................1037. You Are Going to Get Well.....................................1198. Good Neighbors................................................1459. The Comfort of Eagles.........................................16310. Snowshoeing with God: A Playlist.............................18511. Passing the Peace............................................19112. Muerte Beach.................................................20913. Amazing Grace................................................22914. Preying Together.............................................25115. The Music of What Happens....................................267

Chapter One

Dear God, have mercy on me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small. - Fisherman's Prayer

The first day of spring was not March 20, and it wasn't one day but a handful of early April days so bright that the residents of this little seaside Alaskan town crawled blinking out of our snow caves and welcomed it like sleepy bears. Spring fever hit so hard that everyone was smiling and doing their best to push winter out the door. Blankets and pillows were aired, decks were shoveled, and icy walks were chipped off. Anglers post-holed through the snowy riverbanks to cast for the first fat Dolly Vardens. The Public Works Department foreman even took a snow-blowing plow truck to the high school track and carved out a four-hundred-meter oval in the shoulder-high snow so the team could practice.

On Sunday afternoon, I walked in the dripping sunshine to the annual Blessing of the Fleet. Actually, it was only the third or fourth blessing of the Haines harbor fishing boats that I can recall in my twenty-five years in Haines, but it may become yearly if this one works out. It's not that we don't all support the idea of an annual blessing, but community events require organizing and advertising and choir practicing and program printing and cookie baking for the inevitable reception following. This one also needs a nice day and well-spoken ministers. What I mean to say is, traditions don't just happen. People make them happen and, for all kinds of good reasons, some years they do and some years they don't.

As I walked to town, I realized that spring truly was here because no one asked if I wanted a ride. Even casual drivers-by could see it was a fine day for a walk. One pickup truck passed me, slowed down, and then parked at the bottom of Cemetery Hill, where my neighbors hopped out and took a stroll down Mud Bay Road, smiling at the views of the Chilkat Inlet, Pyramid Island, and the snowy mountains that look the way the Alps would, if Switzerland had a beach.

I was more than a little relieved that this April was already so much better than the last two. I'd been starting to think that April might really be a cursed month. April 2005 should have been terrific. My first book was just about to be released and my oldest daughter, Eliza, was just about to graduate from Bowdoin College in Maine. We were planning the book tour around her graduation. That way, I could start on the East Coast and make my way back home. In preparation, I had bought a suitcase with wheels and a pair of nice shoes that I could walk in. On Thursday, April 7, I volunteered to host the local morning radio program - two hours of playing music, reading the announcements and weather, and keeping every one in Haines, Skagway, and the nearby Tlingit village of Klukwan company.

After the show, since it was such a nice warm morning (about forty-five degrees by eleven o'clock), I took my bike out for the second ride of the season. I was thinking about what I'd say when Oprah interviewed me about my book (not likely, but, just in case, I wanted to be ready) when I saw a truck stopped at the stop sign on an otherwise quiet cross street overlooking the harbor. The driver, Kevin from the grocery store, glanced both ways, and seeing no cars (or, apparently, cyclists), pulled out and ran me over. I was medevaced to Seattle's Harborview Trauma Center and put back together. I spent three weeks in a nursing home there and another ten weeks confined to a bed or a wheelchair in my living room. By Halloween, I was able to walk without crutches but was still frequenting physical therapy, acupuncture, and massage therapy sessions once a week. These would continue until January. (I'll tell you all about it later.)

Just as I was feeling almost like myself again, my mother's chronic lymphocytic leukemia went bad, really bad. I spent the rest of that winter and spring going back and forth between Alaska and my parents' home in New York. I was on my way there on April 7, 2006. She died on April 20.

This April had no dark cloud over it, so far, and I have never seen a piano or a safe being hauled into an upper-story window with a block and tackle in Haines (or anywhere except in those Wile E. Coyote cartoons), so I wasn't anxiously checking for one to fall on my head. Still, as I walked down the quiet road, I gave passing vehicles plenty of room and tried not to jump when a truck with a loud muffler roared up behind me. I did think that praying for other people to be spared accidents or death (for a season, anyway) at the Blessing of the Fleet was a positive way to honor my tender feelings. I am not the same person I was three Aprils ago. I'm still an awkward hugger and may always be, but at least now I want to hug people.

The ceremony began so perfectly that I knew I'd been right to come. It was well organized, simple, dignified, and featured plain prayers that didn't ask for more than what was possible, beginning with "Dear God, have mercy on me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small." It appeared that there would not be, as my mother used to say, any "wailing or gnashing of teeth" over the departed today. The Salvation Army captain was in his festive red and black dress uniform with the long overcoat and ribbon-trimmed cap, the Catholic priest wore his black shirt and pants and white collar under a thick fleece jacket, and the Presbyterian pastor had on a warm coat, jeans, and brown rubber fishing boots. In the harbor parking lot, the wind off Lynn Canal was still cold, but the sun was warm enough that water was running everywhere, off nearby roofs and down drainage ditches.

The first hymn was "Praise to the Lord, the almighty, the king of creation," and we all sang from the words printed in our leaflets. It started me thinking about the beginnings of life, of spring and birth. It is often said that there are no atheists in foxholes. It seems to me that shelled bunkers would be full of skeptics. In the middle of a war it must be harder, not easier, to believe in a good God. If it were up to me, I'd change that line to there are no atheists in delivery rooms or adoption agencies, but maybe that's...