Living on the Edge

It has been nearly eight months of war, death, and destruction in Israel. I experience fear, then calm, and shattered hope. I cycle between these feelings, finding refuge in my garden where nature continues to teach me lessons. Here exists a predictable world as the reliable seasons cycle. 

With this war raging, there is no predictability other than reading bad news daily: death of our young soldiers, imprisoned hostages, and an intense hatred of our state worldwide. 

There is an uncanny reverence for our brutal enemy. Reality has been inverted, lies are being honored while truth has been trampled.

And so I cycle into frustration and anger followed by hopelessness – until I was dealt a scary lesson via my garden. I go outside for hours every day with a little basket as if I am waltzing through a Disney movie. The birds are singing, the sun shining, a breeze is blowing, and the fruit trees are flowering. For me, this is perfection in a world shrouded by darkness.

 
My basket contains my weeding tools: secateurs, a knife, and gloves. I prefer not to wear the gloves and usually go out in sandals or barefoot. I hop from tree to tree and bush to bush pulling out the weeds around them and trimming back dead growth. 

This act is an example of my favorite permaculture principle called The Edge. Starting with a tree that has been engulfed by weeds, some six-feet-tall, I pull back the strangling plants and clean out the base to reveal a neat circle around the trunk. 

 
This is the edge between wild and cultivated, jungle and garden. It creates a balance that gives me a sense of harmony. I was feeling down, angry, and hopeless that day as I went out to an overrun area of the garden, eager to create edge in chaos, when I was stung by a bee.  

 
It hurt a bit but I continued to work for a while. It was my ring finger and I was wearing two rings on that finger. It started to swell but I ignored this as I thought a sting from such a little bee could not do too much damage.

I eventually went inside, washed the area, applied aloe gel, and took an antihistamine. I could still twirl the ring around my finger, although I could not remove it as the sting as on the joint. I went about my activities for the day and went to bed. 

And then it started to swell even more. I did deep breathing, went outside to apply more fresh aloe vera, did some visualization, and kept massaging the area to encourage circulation. I did not sleep at all. Then I saw a black line develop across my lower finger joint.

At 3am, I calmly got dressed and woke up Amir. “We’re going to the hospital,” I told him calmly and made him a coffee. We got there quickly and the emergency room was empty. I sat and waited for the nurse to find an instrument to remove my rings. 

The swelling worsened and huge blisters of blood started to develop. I sat and did some more deep breathing. They finally found a cutting instrument.  Simply inserting it under my finger was excruciatingly painful.  They pulled it and turned it and nothing happened. 

The situation quickly became critical. A surgeon soon arrived with another tool. The doctor and nurse tugged my finger, sawed and pulled and finally one ring broke off. The second ring would not budge so they frantically pulled and sawed. I was in intense pain. And finally the second ring broke off. 

I was told to lie down, keep my hand elevated, and try to bend my finger. My finger was a purple balloon with barely a tingling sensation. They sent me for an x ray and the surgeon’s last words were, “Force your finger to move and it if turns black, it is dead.”

I imagined a world with nine fingers and started to bend my finger as if it were practicing for gymnastics at the Olympics.  I went home and lay there in fear, afraid to look at my finger, holding it upright and moving it incessantly.

“What did you today?” my daughter asked me sympathetically when she came home from work.

“I lay in bed with my hand in the air,” I replied. For someone who is active almost every second of the day, this in itself was humbling. 

This night and day felt like a living horror movie, especially for someone queasy like me. The good news is my finger did not turn black and the pain is subsiding, although the swelling from the bee sting turned my hand into a baseball mitt.

My romanticized Disney image of the garden has shattered. There are scorpions out there and killer bees (for those allergic to bee stings such a me). Shoes and gloves and a positive attitude is what I need.

My evacuated neighbor who lives in my garden has an amazing attitude. She does not know when she can go to her home in the north and if she needs to move again, she is calling it an adventure. 

There are so many homeless families wandering around this country not knowing what tomorrow will bring, but they dig deep and cope by transforming challenges into opportunities. I am humbled by these people. 

I bend my wounded finger and realize that I too must dig deep and appreciate what I have. I now have intense gratitude for my ten fingers and appreciate how important that one finger is. This finger helps me type, cradle my morning coffee, and assist me with every two-handed task. It is such a simple gift to be able to stretch and bend a finger.

The jets continue to rumble over night and day, there are huge explosions nearby, the news rattles on with loss upon loss, and the situation can worsen at any second. 

My garden teaches me to appreciate seemingly small things in life. This gratitude propels me forward as I learn to live life on the edge.