Garden Cucumbers: Mundane Celebrations
My cucumbers won’t grow this year. I’ve planted them three times so far. First, I planted them too early because I really, really want cucumbers. Second, I planted them and then something – something nefarious and evil and unbelonging to this world like baby bunny – ate the little precious baby seedlings right out of the ground. Now, I’ve put them in for the third time and we’ll see if they grow.
I’m upset because garden cucumbers are the best, most delicious, most improved over the supermarket food you can grow. I will fight you on this. They are crunchy and cool and perfect eaten just after being picked, with the dirt (mostly) brushed off. If you’ve never had one, I’d love to offer you one but I can’t. Ours never make it out of the garden. They rarely make it out of the hands of the person who discovered the cucumber. You’ll have to grow your own.
Which brings me back to the fact that my cucumbers just Will. Not. Grow. This. Year. I’m not even sure why I started this blog post with this story except that I can’t stop thinking about it. Oh yes, celebration. Sometimes, the things that are most worthy of celebration are the things that seem the most mundane. Except for the five people living in my house, not a single person in the whole world cares about my cucumbers. But between the effort we put into growing them and the enjoyment we get out of eating them, I cannot imagine something better to celebrate than a garden fresh cucumber.
In community, because people are creatures who attribute meaning to, well, everything, nothing is really just a thing. A full plate is a sign of love, a stuffed animal is a memory, an unworn ring is a promise or a loss or any of a million complicated emotions. So, in our family, a cucumber isn’t just a cucumber. It’s a connection with my husband’s childhood spent eating cucumbers. It’s a reminder that life is a cycle and no matter what happens each winter, summer brings bounty for the picking. It’s a culmination of hard work by all of us – composting, tilling, planting, watering and weeding.
In a community larger than a family, perhaps the meanings being celebrated are more varied but no less important. When we choose celebration, let’s choose celebration of the small as well as the big events. The rest of the world is eager to celebrate promotions and weddings, new houses and new babies. Those things are all good and worthy of celebration. But they take no less work than a new hobby that has turned into a lifelong passion or a friendship that has developed into a strong, resilient bond over years. Today, when so many of our external celebrations have been cut off, consider finding the meaning in the deep, small moments that are just as transformative as the big, public ones.
Even if it means you have to keep planting seeds again and again.
What can you celebrate today?
