Small changes can open us to miracles: Danny Heitman

While I was deep in the newspaper the other morning, a sound from the patio, like the steady shake of a maraca, took me out of the headlines. Glancing out the window, I quickly solved the riddle. My wife was working among her tomatoes and cucumbers, salting their roots with grains from a jar. With jolts of fertilizer, she was trying to give them a second life.

August is an in-between time in Louisiana gardens. Fall isn’t within reach, but summer is bottoming out. Plants that seemed strong and vibrant when the season began now tend to look a bit shopworn, so a little perspective helps. Old gardeners know that the doldrums will pass, and in the meantime, it’s best to wait things out.

Or so I tell myself when I glance at our tomatoes, which have gotten stingier with their fruit. Our cucumber vine is a little played out, too, as if it’s decided that summer is a hill it no longer wants to defend. The hydrangeas wilt more these days when the weather’s dry, but I stand over them with a hose at dusk to give them courage. Out in the front yard, our big sycamore is shedding as it does every summer, strips of bark littering the yard like leaflets dropped from enemy planes.

This August, other parts of life have also seem a little tired. Summer is supposed to be a restorative season, but it’s had a different feel this year. The news cycle doesn’t seem to chime with summer’s celebration of carefree times.

Even so, the days bring their gifts. I was watering our pencil tree the other evening when a rainbow appeared in the spray. The colors faded in and out as I moved the nozzle, reminding me that the tiniest changes in how we see things can open us to miracles.

I‘ve been thinking about this more deeply after finishing “And Then? And Then? What Else?,” novelist Daniel Handler’s new memoir. Near the end of his book, Handler wonders whether appreciating this little stuff matters very much in a broken world.

“How,” he asks, “can such a loss be comforted, and how can it be repaired? You must — we must — build it back the same way, layer by layer, out of tiny things we find and love.”

This seems like wise and timely advice, which I’m trying to keep in mind as we all navigate a challenging year. In the spirit of respite and renewal, I hope to do a better job at noticing goodness close at hand in this final leg of summer.

One recent weekend, my wife and I smiled when our neighbors inflated a bounce house near the fence. Children squealed through the afternoon as they danced on their improvised cloud.

At its best, summer lifts us out of the ordinary, if only for a moment — a flutter that, like the deepest joy, surpasses understanding.

Email Danny Heitman at danny@dannyheitman.com.