This week my family and I, and a friend, fixed-up a pond on our property. My great-grandfather built the tudor-style home we live in, and designed the grounds as well -- he even designed the mailbox. All over our land are patches of bamboo (that he planted), walls, statues, rocks he had placed, and ponds. One of which was over-grown and had fallen down a bit. So we turned on some tunes, and all of us jumped in, starting to pull ivy and thorns out, rake leaves, and discover pieces of rock from the wall.
I don't like to wear gloves when I work outside. I like to feel the grit in between the cracks in my hands. The dirt under my finger-nails. The vines sliding along my palms as I pull them from the Earth.
My great-grandfather may have built the pond, and he may be gone, but his blood is in me, and my siblings, and my mom. And his great-grandchildren were down in his pond on that Thursday, pulling it back from the vines that entangled it.
Soon, maybe we'll be able to re-fill it. Swim in it maybe? Play music in it? Eat food in it? Who knows? So many possibilities from an empty hole in the ground.
--Hudson
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