Last year my fiancé, Derek, and I along with our friend, Meredith, started a modest garden plot in a neighborhood community garden on the west side of Chicago. As one who enjoyed and felt confident in my capability to keep houseplants alive, a major step in securing my adulthood, I figured taking on partial responsibilities as a plant sower and waterer in the great outdoors was a natural next step. It should have been fairly simple, right? After all, these days one cannot open FaceBook or Instagram without seeing photos of friends enjoying the fruits of “urban farming”. City rooftop farm to table meals featuring shimmering tomato tarts and pristine gem lettuce salads are desirably abundant.
Although I am not yet a parent, I believe it is not too off base to say that the challenges of growing a garden are akin to the challenges of raising children. Derek and I are planning on having kids in our future, but a year ago, unbeknownst to us, starting our garden became a stepping stone toward understanding those goals. The efforts we put forth to nurture and coax a seed the size of a minute speck into a luscious, fully realized vegetable was a rewarding challenge. Introducing these green lives into the world carried with it the full spectrum of parental feelings, ranging from hope and excitement, to frustration and disappointment. Ultimately though, after the emotional roller coaster had made way for even ground (generously fertilized), we finally experienced the overwhelming feeling of pride. Because, after all, we had learned something about ourselves; something about what we hoped to carry in our future. Here, I have documented our journey into “parenthood”, complete with its ups, downs, and ups again.