Previously Bound and Trapped

So I stopped by Richard of the Worms' house to get some new worms. I had emancipated mine when I spread them in the garden along with the worm castings one beautiful day about two weeks ago, but then I found I missed the little guys when I was cutting vegetables and had some particularly good scraps. "The worms would have liked this," I heard myself muttering, there at the kitchen sink.

Richard's worm bins are in balance now and his worms, previously trying to escape everywhere and waving little white flags, are happily processing decaying food and living in harmony with their surroundings.

I had cleaned out my homemade bin and laid a little bed of straw and newspaper, into which Richard generously scooped four handfuls of his red wrigglers. I kept the previous batch in my living room for the last eight months, without incident or odor or flies, but I decided to keep this batch outside as a bit of an experiment with the hopes of making a bigger worm bin if this goes well.

As I was leaving, I noticed Richard's fig trees, planted a year ago almost to the day. They are settled into their spaces and starting to fill out and grow taller, and I realized that my still-potted fig tree was bound and trapped and doomed to a life of never realizing its potential unless I planted it. But trying to break through the hard, red, Georgia clay to dig a deep enough hole to plant the fig tree had proven to be too hard for me.

"You need a pick ax," Richard stated, and headed for his garage. He came back with a large, heavy tool and put it in my hands. I immediately crumbled under its extreme weight.

He wrinkled his brow a bit and suggested, "Choke up. Ya' gotta' choke up."

And so I dragged the tool to my car, brought it home and dragged it to the yard. I choked up on it as if it were a way-too-big-for-me bat from so many years ago, from when I tried to participate at my brother's baseball practices before I found a team of my own, and I swung that thing over my head and into the previously-unrelenting ground. And the ground moved like nothing, as if it were simply sand and I were digging a castle. I swung the pick ax again, and again, and again, more bits of earth displaced, the hole deeper and deeper and deeper, seemingly effortlessly.

I dragged the fig tree across the yard and planted it in the hole, straight and tall and secure, and imagined one day ten years from now when the tree would be big and lush with drooping branches that make harvesting the sweet fruit extra easy. And as I carried that pick ax back to the car, with one hand whereas before I could barely hold it with two, I wondered how many of us are bound and trapped and doomed to a life of never realizing our potential, simply because we don't have the right tools.

I thought of the worms, how I had freed them, and how I was raising the next batch that I would inevitably one day set free as well. I thought of the fig tree, and how I had freed it. And I wondered if perhaps, today, with the help of a pick ax, I had freed myself just a little bit more as well.

Previously Bound and Trapped