Finding the Fuel

October Anxiety Trifecta and Driveway Tomatoes

When we still lived in Queens, I was an unauthorized green thumb tending to the rectangle of earth in front of our building, trying to win over our landlord to let me garden there. Instead, we had an intense confrontation finding out one thing I pulled was a green he intended to use for a soup. Had to take the L on becoming the future building gardener. My plant cultivation dreams would have to wait. Fast forward to having our own yard-- snap peas, lettuce, zinnias, and sunflowers were happy stops on this summer’s daily backyard walkabout. I also have random things grow each year that I didn’t plant. What I thought was a rogue zucchini turned out to be pumpkin vines. Five orange beauties are decorating our front yard now. The cherry tomato seeds also like to blaze their own trail. I discovered one sprouted between our home’s foundation and the driveway. To be clear, there is no land exposed there. A seed mysteriously slipped in a crevice, took root, and found the sun.  

Climate, Election, War Trifecta

Gardening is a balm to my soul. Changemakers need balm in the face of an anxiety trifecta right now: warming temperatures, facism on the ballot, and rise in conflict.  This October, I’ve needed the smell of dirt and a repetitive task more than ever. The 2016 election results were a whack, like missing the bottom stair, awkwardly jutting your leg expecting the floor only to fall flat. Like crab grass through the coneflowers, bully-in-chief creeped in to this 2024 election.  STOMP go our manmade systems. On to the next anxiety layer. It’s been easy to be outside because it’s EIGHTY DEGREES in late October. Cuba has no power after a hurricane. Weird swarms of gnats surround my head like a real-life reminder of worry about what’s happen to our planet. Even still, I’m re-using plastic bags and buying second-hand. For why? It gives me some comfort. STOMP go our manmade systems. On to the next anxiety layer. I saw reports of some scary missile and 100 troops landing in Israel. Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Sudan, and others which haven’t hit mainstream media have too many people surrounded by destruction, death, and conflict.

None of this is new or surprising, instead just yet another giant menacing STOMP of all the manmade systems built over centuries crushing things. Lulling us with abundance and convenience at the expense of destroying balance and peace.

Finding The Fuel To Go Forward

Sharon McMahon’s recent book, The Small and The Mighty, is about ordinary Americans making change. The stories chronicle people written off as powerless by those in positions of institutional power – but they found a way to shape the future. Even in the midst of this October’s existential dread, in my gut I still feel the goodness which drives the majority of us. The book’s stories help me. There is an innate, deep desire for community and connection in us; that desire is the fumes that revved the tank-on-E car up to the station to refuel for a new journey. This month I’m sniffing around for those fumes to keep me going. There are loads of local elections with candidates who inspire me. I’ve found a local Mother’s Out Front group which might be a new path for my volunteer time. For me, it requires switching the internet off because I don’t need more reason to be full of anxiety or rage. That tank is full to overflowing. I need to find the glimmers of the better next I want to help shape.

Back to the Driveway Tomatoes

Every time I walked past our driveway tomato plant, I would think to myself “there’s an analogy there somewhere.” #nerdthoughts. I’d jump to Bloom Where You’re Planted – but that wasn’t it. We didn’t plant it. Then it hit me. A crack is enough space to grow. There is no consideration, debate, or strategy in a seed. Instead, there is a code written inside to chart a path to growth and if code conditions are met, you have tomatoes. What’s the code written inside me? Inside you? How do other changemakers find a crevice and tap into their most fundamental path to growth? Certainly not by listening to media noise.  That also tomato showed me something about myself. Who else would delight in such an annoying placement of a plant that we have to dodge every time we park? Cultivating an offbeat sprout is a part of my code. Without understanding how or why, I found joy seeing a plant thriving in the wrong place and we were instant friends. Changemaking in unlikely spaces is what calls me and is my contribution, my special code. Looking outside the movement of the majority can show us new ways to find the sun. And if we’re going to avoid being stomped, it’s going to take growing even if the opening is only a crack.