Photo by Anna Tarazevich
Mark stood in Lisa’s garden, watching his new wife battle with a stubborn tomato plant. She’d been trying to train it up a trellis for weeks, but it kept growing sideways, reaching for something only it could see.
“Want me to fix that for you?” The words came automatically, like muscle memory from his first marriage. Fifteen years of solving problems, checking boxes, moving forward. It had worked, in its way. He and Jennifer were still friends, great co-parents to Tommy. But “working” wasn’t the same as growing.
Lisa looked up, dirt smudged across her forehead. “Fix what?”
“The plant. I could rig up a better support system. Maybe some wire guides to—”
“Mark.” She sat back on her heels, that slight smile playing at her lips. The one that said she saw right through him. “The tomato plant isn’t broken. It’s just growing its own way.”
He blinked. Something about her words felt bigger than gardening.
“But it’s not growing right,” he said. “It’s supposed to go up the trellis.”
“Says who?” She turned back to the plant, gently adjusting a leaf. “Nature doesn’t read instruction manuals.”
The Sunday afternoon sun painted shadows across the garden. Somewhere down the street, kids were playing. He thought of Tommy, now thirteen, asking questions about relationships that Mark was only just learning to answer honestly.
“In my first marriage,” he started, then paused. Lisa kept working but he knew she was listening. She had a way of creating space for words to find their way out. “I thought if I could just fix everything that was wrong, everything would be right.”
“And was it?”
“We made it work. Jennifer and I, we’re good now. Better as friends than we ever were as a couple. But…”
“But?”
“But I think maybe I spent so much time fixing things, I forgot to let them grow.”
Lisa stood, brushing dirt from her knees. She took his hand, led him to the small bench they’d placed under the apple tree. Their Saturday project three weeks ago – another thing he’d wanted to “fix” until she convinced him that a slightly wobbly garden bench had character.
“You know what I love about gardening?” she asked. “You can’t force it. You can’t solve it. You can only create the conditions for growth and then…” She spread her hands. “Let it happen.”
Mark watched a butterfly land on the wayward tomato plant. “Even if it grows sideways?”
“Especially then.” She leaned against him. “Because maybe sideways is exactly where it needs to go to find the light.”
He thought about their first fight as a married couple, just two months ago. How his hands had itched to fix it, solve it, file it away in the “resolved” category. How instead, Lisa had taught him to sit with the discomfort, to let the argument breathe and evolve into a deeper understanding.
“Tommy asked me last week why this marriage feels different,” Mark said. “I didn’t know how to explain it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I’m learning to be a gardener instead of a handyman.”
Lisa laughed, the sound mixing with the wind in the apple leaves. “And how did he take that?”
“He said it explained why his mom likes me better now.”
They sat in comfortable silence, watching the tomato plant reach sideways toward something they couldn’t see. Mark thought about all the things in his life he’d tried to fix – relationships, emotions, other people’s paths. How much energy he’d spent trying to make life grow straight up the trellis.
“I still want to fix that plant,” he admitted.
Lisa squeezed his hand. “I know. But maybe instead, we just watch where it goes. Together.”
The butterfly took off, dancing on the afternoon breeze. The tomato plant continued its sideways journey. And Mark, for perhaps the first time in his life, simply sat and watched things grow.
Not fixing. Not solving. Just being present in the growing season of his life.
And somehow, that felt like the biggest fix of all.