Secret Garden

My grandfather on my mother’s side always had a green thumb. He loved to grow plants. I have fond memories of his humid greenhouse bursting with flourishing fauna. It seems he’d passed this love of growing on to one of my uncles who, as a teenager, attempted to grow some clandestine pot in the attic.

If you’re a parent, you know how un-sneaky your kids can be when they think they are being sneaky. My grandparents couldn’t help but hear him clambering around in the attic. He’d disappear and they’d watch cracks appear in the ceiling when he occasionally missed a rafter as he shuffled about in the cramped space.

My grandfather, rather than confront my uncle and lecture him, waited for him to go to bed one night and did a little clandestine planting of his own. He swapped out the pot seeds with those of radishes, and listened each night as my uncle tended carefully to his plants. As the family story goes, he took excellent care of those radishes. My grandparents very much enjoyed observing him meticulously tend to his plants, and I can imagine them biting their lips in stifled laughter.

I don’t know how long it took my uncle to figure out he wasn’t as sneaky as he thought, but I imagine he endured a hearty mix of anger and embarrassment. I only hope I can parent my soon-to-be-teenage children as creatively as my grandfather did with those radishes.