Water, Plants, and Pops

Lately I’ve had this urge to water plants: to wet the leaves and watch the water drops cascade down to the soil below, to provide sustenance to roots. And with this urge, I remember my father. I remember that for as long as I can remember he would spend summer evenings watering the shrubs in our front yard. And even though we had one of them rotating sprinkler attachments that would do all the work for him, he chose to do it himself.

I understand.

Turner Leon. A quiet man whose silent pride shows in his work, in his laugh, in his home, his front lawn. I’ve never known him to complain. I’ve never known him to fail bending over backwards if there was something his family needed. Today, he works backbreaking shifts at the airport because I had to go to private school. Because I needed a car. Because I had to go to college. All of this after 30 some-odd years commuting day in and day out to Manhattan, then back home to Jersey, hungry, tired.

In the summer, this is when he would water the plants. Me, excitedly awaiting his arrival to chase lightning bugs in his presence, him watching and watering silently.

Today, watering plants in another hemisphere, providing sustenance to roots on the other side of the planet, I came to know my father in a new way.

So simple, a meditative act with a quenching sense of fulfillment in assisting another being flourish. Dig. It’s so much more than watering plants. It’s a series of behaviors, of attitudes. It’s no longer getting a job done any which way. It’s now putting yourself into the things you do, knowing what your heart is willing to give and choosing chores accordingly. It’s honesty. It’s sincerity. It’s integrity.

It’s being a man.

I ain’t seen my father in six months. But he has been with me, everyday stronger, teaching me, for we share much more than a couple of names. This is my father. My dad, pop-dukes, the primary model of the man I am becoming.

Nowadays, I’ve been wanting to build things: a dog house, a garden, a school, a family, a life. Build like my pops built. Be like my pops be.

Silent. Proud. A man.

So I’m starting by watering plants. The rest, I am sure, will come.

-Amari