We can work it out.

(If we work together.)

Last week, I flew home to Albuquerque to celebrate my Mom’s 80th birthday. She wasn’t sure she wanted a party, but she wasn’t sure she didn’t want a party. She had some questions. She wondered who would come to the party and what we would eat.

My answers were: Everyone and Enchiladas.

I rented some chairs and tables and we set up in the shade.

What will happen if it gets too sunny?

People will move their chairs.

Everyone came to the party and mom wore a gorgeous new grass green linen dress. All our friends ate enchiladas and cake and home made ice cream and, when it got too sunny, everyone moved their chairs. And, this being New Mexico and the sun being extra bright and hot in that turquoise sky, moved them again.

Everyone had a great time. Perhaps most of all, Mom.

A few days later, in the company of my stepmother, Carla, I visited Parker’s Farm in Edgewood. To get to the farm, you turn your back to the Sandia mountains and drive all the way out Frost road through some of the flattest, sun-baked land imaginable. The wind blows and you can see so far into the distance, the earth seems as tucked in as a bedsheet. Once you leave the paved road, you rumble-bump down a washboard of dirt, leaving a cloud of dust in your wake. When you’re close enough to see the place, park where ever you find a spot, put your hat on, adjust your sunglasses, and prepare to be amazed.

Inside the gates, there are a couple of huge greenhouses and rows and rows of netting-draped plant aisles. We’d come in search of purple delphiniums, but we couldn’t resist filling our blue Radio Flyer with some sage, purple coleus, and trailing sweet potato vine with lime-colored heart-shaped leaves.

The history of the farm goes back four generations beginning with Bill Williams and Ada Bassett who acquired the ranch in 1932. Their daughter, Gracial married Kenneth Parker in 1939 and they lived with their four boys on the property. Though the whole family left the ranch in 1954, the second youngest son, Ricky, returned, and, in partnership with his wife, Monika, began to rebuild in 1973. At first, they were truck farmers, growing vegetables and hauling them to market in Albuquerque, but in 1991, the family switched to horticultural greenhouse production. Though the farm is only open on weekends from April through July, the Parkers, along with their son, Andy, work year round to plant and tend and nurture new sprouts hardy enough to withstand the high elevation and erratic temperature swings of the mountains outside Albuquerque. I know this because my Mom used to work at the nursery during the summer. In the years that my dad was sick and I was living at home, a trip to the garden to pick up a few four inch pots of flowers was a real cheer-up.

Once we found the delphiniums, Carla and I parked our wagon in the shade of a tree and paid five bucks each to wander the Parker Farm Garden. Monica Parker’s labor of love is a lush contrast to that parched territory outside the fences.

Over two decades ago, the Parkers offered to grow the flowers for my wedding ceremony as a gift. As the date grew near, the garden filled with pink, white, and purple blossoms, everything bursting open in the heat of early June.

The night before my wedding, a freak hailstorm shredded pretty much every petal.

At the time, I had no idea that this had happened.

A few hours before the wedding, Monika and Mom arrived with boxes and boxes of flowers.

“Everyone contributed,” my Mom said. I could hear the tears in her voice.

Monika had put out a call to all the gardeners in the mountains, asking for any flowers the hail had left standing.

Everyone showed up.

When I walked down the aisle, I was holding my community as much as my community was holding me.

From time to time this story comes to me and, as much as it continues to move and amaze me, I’m reminded of just how often this happens. How often we can make it happen. We as humans can and do show up for each other in so many ways. We pick up trash on the street in front of our neighbors house. We stay on the right side of the painted lines on the road. We create meal trains and blood drives and food pantries. We share advice and recipes and pick flowers from our gardens for our teachers on the last day of school.

I found this photo at my Mom’s house. I’m probably in middle school. It’s very likely that just after this photo was taken, I cut some lilacs from the trees my mother planted in our yard, wrapped their stems in damp paper towel, and tinfoil and carried those drooping and heavy blossoms onto the school bus. I can imagine the scent of them filling the air inside the bus. Spring after spring after spring. Mrs. Netz, Mrs. Pierson, Mrs. White, Madame Vosges, Ms. Briscoe — each delighted to accept this wonder.

There are giant and terrible things afoot that I have no power to change. I know this. It is a little thing to pick some flowers; a small gesture to pass them on. Perhaps it’s that dreamy girl with the parasol who thinks that maybe, just maybe these actions plant like seeds, one after another, after another, after another… roots under the soil and blossoms above.