A friend of mine posted this photo this morning and it inspired me to write this story…
Mrs. Greene’s Garden
Mrs. Greene lived on the 52nd floor of a high-rise apartment building. Mrs. Greene barely said a word to anyone and when she did, people privately wished she hadn’t, if you catch my drift.
Mrs. Greene wasn’t known for her lovely demeanor, but she sure was known for her lovely balcony garden that could be seen clearly all the way down on the ground floor.
Mrs. Greene loved to go out onto her balcony and tend to this beautiful garden of hers. And oh my, was it lush, with plants grown from cuttings she’d collected from nearly every garden she’d spent time in over the entirety of her existence.
Directly above Mrs. Greene’s apartment on the 53rd floor, lived Ms. Celia Tolliver and her six year old daughter, Sheila.
Celia Tolliver always wished for a garden like Mrs. Greene’s, but she sighed and settled for the barren slab of concrete that supported the couple chairs and table she’d managed to find the year before discarded on the curb.
Truth was, Celia Tolliver could barely find the time to do much else other than cook, clean, get her child to day care, go to work, pick her child back up, go home, play with her child, have a glass of wine, think about things and try to be grateful for what she did have more than what she didn’t.
One afternoon, Celia Tolliver and her daughter Sheila were out on their balcony enjoying a snack, sharing stories about their day, when her daughter noticed a flower peeking through the slats of the balcony fence. “Look, Mama!”
Her mama leaned down, and sure enough, a most beautiful flower was peeking through, a flower that had grown wild all the way from Mrs. Greene’s garden.
“Now don’t you pick that, Sheila,” her mama said. “That flower still belongs to Mrs. Greene.”
“Oh, Wow! Isn’t Mrs. Greene so kind to share her flowers!?”
Celia Tolliver smiled and kissed her daughter’s head, knowing full well that Mrs. Greene had definitely not shared her flowers on purpose.
This knowledge was culled from the only interaction she’d ever had with Mrs. Greene—the time she’d been so tired and distracted and accidentally got off on the 52nd floor and tried getting into Mrs. Greene’s apartment instead of her own. And though she’d apologized and tried explaining what happened, Mrs. Greene still called the police, insisting she’d been trying to break in.
No, Mrs. Greene was not sharing her flowers.
But she didn’t breathe a word about any of that to her daughter.
.
Time marched on, as it tends to do, and Mrs. Greene’s garden continued to grow. And grow. And grow.
“Why don’t you give some of these flowers away,” asked Mrs. Greene’s nurse who visited a couple times a week. “Before long, there won’t be room for you out here.”
“Why should I? They’re my flowers. The fruits of my labor. If other people want flowers, they should grow their own. I don’t do charity work.”
“Whatever you say, Mrs. Greene.”
“Besides, I enjoy them all.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re finding some enjoyment, Mrs. Greene.”
What Mrs. Greene didn’t know was that her garden had not only grown thick, but it had continued to climb up the building, filling not only Celia Tolliver‘s balcony, but the balcony of the apartment above theirs. In fact, Mrs. Greene’s garden had grown from the 52nd floor all the way up to the 64th.
Not only were Celia Tolliver and Sheila enjoying sitting out on their balcony tending to all those beautiful flowers, but so were the neighbors above them. And above them.
But one afternoon, Sheila looked upset.
“What is it, sweetheart?” her mama asked.
“Well, Mrs. Greene has been so kind to share her flowers…”
“I guess so,” said her mama, smiling.
“And we’ve all been enjoying them, but we haven’t even said thank you to Mrs. Greene. Don’t you think we ought to say thank you, Mommy?
“You have a golden heart, Sheila.”
Celia Tolliver didn’t want to discourage her daughter’s kindness so she asked her daughter what she had in mind.
“I’ve decided I’m going to make her a bouquet!”
“A bouquet?! Don’t you think Mrs. Greene has enough flowers?”
“Yes, Mama, but has she ever received a flower from me? I don’t think so.”
So Sheila got busy making her flower arrangement and then insisted her mama call the neighbors upstairs and get them involved.
And by late afternoon, Celia Tolliver, Sheila, and several other children and their parents gathered on the 52nd floor carrying their armfuls of bouquets.
Sheila knocked on Mrs. Greene’s apartment door and waited as the parents looked at each other, skeptical and worried, hoping for the best.
When Mrs. Greene answered the door and saw all the children holding all those flowers, she looked confused. “You’ve got the wrong apartment,” she barked. But just as she was closing the door, Sheila interrupted.
“No, Mrs. Greene. We wanted to thank you for sharing your garden. We used to not have a single flower to enjoy, but you grew your garden big enough so we could all enjoy your flowers! And we decided to make you these bouquets as a gift. We arranged them especially for you!”
It took Mrs. Greene a very long moment to understand what was going on.
“My garden’s grown that big?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Greene, Sheila said. “It’s grown straight up to the 64th floor!”
“You don’t say?”
Mrs. Greene looked startled. But then, as she began to look carefully at the children’s sweet faces, Mrs. Greene suddenly smiled, and felt something she hadn’t felt in many, many years—joy.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked softly. “I don’t have much to offer, but you’re more than welcome to come join me in my garden. I could tell you the stories of where each of these flowers first came from.”
Sheila was delighted, and so she and her mother, along with the other kids and their parents, joined Mrs. Greene in her garden.
“These right here are peonies from my grandmother’s house. Oh, I can still remember planting them with her. I remember the day she gave me a cutting. She told me if I took good care of it, it would never die... Oh, and these flowers were from the house I grew up in, before I had to go to the orphanage after both my parents grew ill. I remembered what my grandmother said, though, so I took cuttings from each flowering plant I loved best... And these flowers, these right here were from my first job at the candy shop. Oh, was that owner kind… I’ll never forget the way he used to let me take home whatever candy I wanted and never made me pay. Not once. And these flowers, these were from the garden of the house I lived in with my husband, before he was sent off to fight in the war and never came back…”
On and on Mrs. Greene shared as if she never shared before, and the children and their parents sat listening, mesmerized.
“I’m so sorry you’ve had so much sadness,” Celia Tolliver said, her eyes tearing.
“Thank you, dear. Funny, I don’t think I realized this until just now, but I suppose I was trying to take something beautiful with me from every place I’d ever been, so I could look back and remember the beauty and not just the heartache.”
“Thank you for sharing your memories with us,” Sheila said.
“You’re welcome, said Mrs. Greene. Thank you for helping me realize how much more meaningful it is to share what’s precious, instead of trying so hard to keep it safe just for myself.”
“We’ll take good care of your flowers, Mrs. Greene. And we’ll make sure to keep sharing your memories.”
“I know you will. And you’ll be making your own memories too!”
After that day, Mrs. Greene began to grow as many friends in her high-rise apartment building as she grew flowers. And they visited often and took the time to share with each other the things that mattered most.
The End.
-JLK
(Photo of two balconies in a building, one of top of the other. The bottom one, lush with flowers, and the top, pretty plain and barren. I’m still looking for the photo credit. My friend doesn’t know, and I’ve had no luck finding out.)
