our eden

It was a coach house, which meant you had to walk around the front house on the lot. Next to the house was a concrete path, the gangway we called it when we were kids, but on the other side of the gangway was an empty lot for cars, it was a sea of wood chips and walking on them was the best feeling, like walking on sponges or sand. At the end of the woodchip lot was the community garden. The plots were marked off in irregular chunks and varieties of plants in various states of growth sprawled across what could have been a backyard.

The coach house was this pretty little white house. We lived in the basement. An artist lived on the other floor. His name was Bob and he was the most marvelous conversationalist, he would bump into you and wonder about something and you could spend the day shooting the shit with him and felt like you learned something or went through something profound with another human being in a way that you just don't feel with any old human being. And he rode a motorcycle, sometimes he parked it out front of our house. It was an old Italian motorcycle and sometimes I watched him work on it when I had the day off and the sun wasn't too bright. When I had to leave there, Bob took my green plastic molded chairs on wheels and gave them a good home with the appropriate reverence and delight.

There was a privacy fence that was about eight feet wide and six feet high and three or four bunches of clematis draped over it, big bursts of purple flowers and the green of the leaves snaking up along it made me smile when I saw them. I decorated the roof of our front entrance with strands of glass squares on fishing wire and delicate crackled aqua ornaments. And then there were the cosmos I planted, the only seeds I ever buried in dirt and watched grow. The white wooden planter in front of our door held them and they grew into large stalky plants only one of which ever had flowers and the flowers were small and sad and shriveled up quick. Oh, but the stalks of those cosmos, the delight I had watching them grow, how I would stare at their shadows on the white painted bricks. They looked like a forest of trees in their shadow and I would sit and smoke and trace with my eyes every single leaf and I adored those plants.

Outside the house was almost like a room in our house. It was all paved, cement, but there were things from Bob that he'd collected and deposited there, collages of found objects, stacks of like items, a giant husk of a rusting metal cross that he filled with every profane thing he could find. He liked stuff. His van sat on the other side of the privacy fence and it was covered, so covered I don't remember what color it was, with doll heads and stuffed animals and vintage toys and pretty much anything you could imagine a guy who liked stuff would attach to his van.

I would walk the length of the house and stare at all these pieces stacked on giant wooden spools or cement cinderblocks. We grilled out as much as possible and ate at the table outside. We loved being outside and enjoying the wonderland that was our place. It was quiet, except when the neighbors were loud, it was serene, it was peaceful.

I remember the best times we had were in the garden, tending to our little plot, looking for where the snap peas cast nubile green tendrils up the chain link fence as we hoped, pulling ripe raspberries off someone else's underwatched plot and eating them straight from our fingers, watching with delight as the broccoli grew, staring at the asparagus that someone had in the back corner, watching with interest and then concern as the melon vine grew and its fruits spoiled or were half eaten by squirrels or rats. Our little garden was the best part of our meager lives, we touched and palmed and stroked so many plants, it was a delightful seduction.

We always got along well, spending our days in monk like silence and keeping to ourselves, meeting somewhere to eat after work, our nights curled into each other's limbs, but the garden and that space outdoors littered with the found treasures and whimsy of the artist Bob, it was where we learned to love each other again.