I'm No Builder, I'm No Gardener

 

There’s a song by The Black Crowes called “Nonfiction” that is “our song”. Truth be told, we have a lot of songs that are “our song”. As you could probably guess, I have a Spotify playlist called “Gumbo & Honey” where I add any song that is mutually certified as “our song” or just the ones that remind me of us. “Nonfiction” has been one of our songs since the earliest days, December of 1994 to be exact. The song was on The Black Crowes third album “Amorica”, released just two months before we were married. Honey was carrying our first child at the time, though it was too early to know the gender. Besides being just a great song, we would grin and wink at one another when we sang the lyrics along with Chris Robinson, “If we had a child I'd like a son, Not a daughter, ‘Cause she'd be just like you, You know that would not do.”

We did in fact have a son and not a daughter — two eventually — but the truth is, if I had a daughter I’d want her to be like Honey. Life is funny, and if you live long enough you get to see pieces of the people you love spread across many generations. I don’t have any daughters by birth, but I have two by marriage and many times I see in them things I first loved about Honey. I can’t help but think when my boys spent time with those girls there were glimpses of things that were familiar to them; things that made them feel safe and loved because they had always seen them in Honey. Cid has the same fire and loyalty as Honey and Val is the free spirited, loving hippie chick. 

And then came the granddaughters. Long ago Honey and I figured out that your children’s personalities are already present when they are very little. At the time it is not obvious, but looking back at childhood videos of your adult children it is undeniable that their personality was already fully formed by the time they were three years old. When I look at my granddaughters now, one not quite five months old and another almost a year and a half, I see the seeds of their personalities already growing. It will be fun to figure out how Mardi is going to be like her Honey, but it’s already becoming visible in Nola in what we call her sass. 

If you look up the word “sass” in the dictionary it refers to being rude or back talking, but as slang it also refers to being bold, confident, and perhaps a bit rebellious. As with all of our natural born traits, sass can be a strength or a weakness. I make no apologies when I say I love to see bold and confident women. Many times before I’ve written about the women in my life whom I consider Southern knights or steel magnolias; women who follow in a long line that goes all the way back to bible times. When you look at the list of biblical “heroes”, the females — sheroes if you will — rarely exhibit behaviors or attitudes that are frowned upon on by the divine, especially when compared to the men, though those same attributes have a tendency to draw the ire of insecure men. That’s not to say those women were perfect, just that more often than not, it was the women who were spotlighted for their good alone, while the men left a lot to be desired. This isn’t meant to be a battle of the sexes — after all “in Christ there is neither male nor female…you are all one in Christ” — but simply to say, there is no shortage of sassy (bold/confident) women in our sacred stories (Esther, Ruth, Deborah, Mary mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the woman with the issue of blood, the Samaritan woman at the well, Priscilla, and on and on). In their generations, when the men in the stories were faltering in their faith, these women took care of business.

Simply put, bold and confident women inspire me to be a better version of me. Tolstoy said, “Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.” Leo Tolstoy should know. His wife’s labor is what allowed him to come to prominence as an author. She was his editor and his copy writer on top of being a homemaker and mother. She reworked War and Peace SEVEN times by candlelight at night. For better or worse, the truth is I am not instinctively a bold and confident person myself; it’s just not my default setting, but that changes when Honey believes in me. You see, there is another line in that song “Nonfiction” that has grown to have great meaning with us in the last three decades. “I’m no builder, I’m no gardener…There ain't no other language I know how to speak, Some like their water shallow, And I like mine deep.” I couldn’t tell you what those words meant to Chris Robinson when he wrote them, but I know what they mean to me. I was never interested in just a pretty face when it came to girls; I became enamored with Honey because she was real, and layered, bold, complex, and a little mysterious. I learned very early on she was not a girl to be trifled with, and if I was going to keep her around very long I was going to have to get my act together and be a man, not a selfish and immature little boy. Her boldness and confidence inspired the same in me.

Where am I going with all of this rambling nonsense? I’m no builder, but I spent tonight — along with my son and my father — building a toddler bed for my granddaughter Nola. I wasn’t the lead man on the project or the brains behind the operation, but I was part of this three generation gesture of love from the men in her life. All three of us had worked all day, didn’t get to eat dinner, and were exhausted by the time we were finished, but we found the inspiration to get it done because of our love for a sassy little girl, whose personality reminds me a lot of her Honey.  

It’s poignant that this is Good Friday, the day the carpenter from Nazareth made the ultimate gesture of love with His hands in wood. I spent a lot of time sanding wood tonight and thinking of Him and how I want to be more like Him, how I want to love more like Him, how I want to elevate and spotlight the women in my life like Him, and it’s little things like this that provide the opportunity to develop those spiritual muscles. My time with, and ever growing love for Him has inspired me to do quite a few things that I never dreamed I would have been able to accomplish too. I can’t help but smile knowing The Black Crowes have a pretty good song called “Good Friday” too. Love truly is the most powerful motivator. People have written countless songs proclaiming that they would climb mountains, swim oceans, and many other seemingly impossible feats, all for love. Whether or not you would succeed is not the point; the point is love makes you want to try. 

I’m no builder, but when the ladies I love want me to build something, I will at least try. And I’m no gardener either, but most days I spend time in a garden that has grown out of the love that Honey and I share. I have to admit, it made me smile this morning when I was reading a passage from the book of John where Mary Magdalene was talking with Jesus in the dark morning hours of His resurrection, but did not recognize Him, “Thinking he was the gardener.” (John 20:15). Jesus wasn’t a gardener either, but on occasion, the women He loved believed He was. Same here.