by Stephanie Durden Edwards

Created on: November 08, 2009   Last Updated: December 03, 2009

It was just a small garden, barely a twelve by twelve foot plot in front of a dilapidated chicken house. The summer I spent in that small garden changed me forever.

I like to think I was saved by the garden that year. Somewhere in my troubled adolescent mind, a light went on through the soft, silky feel of black Missouri soil in my fourteen year old hands.

I had come from everywhere. For several years, we managed to live in multiple states; and I had been a new student eight times in four school years. The moving, and the years without seeing my dad, had taken their toll on me. I was fourteen, and I was confused. I didn't know who I was or what I was supposed to feel. My grades were still pretty good, that was my salvation. But, I often lay awake at night with tears streaming down my face, wondering if my life would ever be normal.

Then, we moved back to my hometown, and my dad was within reach. Everything seemed to be getting better all at once. The years without my dad had been lonely. Mom had come to me one day, and introduced me to the man who would be my stepfather, and we left without a goodbye. They married on the way to another state, and we were gone so quickly, my little girl mind could hardly process what was happening from one day to the next.

But, here I was, home again. The new stepfather was now the ex-husband; and I was not the little girl I had been when we left several years before.

Dad's life had changed as well. He was remarried, and had a new family of his own. I was an enigma to his new wife, step-children and my new brother. They knew about me, had seen Dad cry over me; but they didn't know me. His new wife was so different than my own mother. Their life together was unlike any life I had ever lived.

And now she wanted me to help her plant a garden?

I had worked in gardens before. During our years away, we had stayed with different relatives and done our share of chores. Chores were our way of earning our keep, we were told. I had sweated and toiled in the hot Oklahoma sun, pulling weeds for hours until I was dizzy and beyond thirsty.

Now, looking around the kitchen in my dad's old farmhouse, the cabinets were completely hidden from view by the flats of nursery plants, packets of seeds and other gardening paraphernalia.

I was not thrilled with the idea of spending hours in the dirt with this red-headed stranger. Dad spent the afternoon running the tiller over the garden spot, and it fell to my stepmom and I to remove the rocks before

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