Rose Garden Refuge

By Sarah Brennan

I remained on the bench until it was no longer cold, long after my breathing regained its normal rhythms, and my tears had stopped flowing. Around me the garden was calm and quiet, but my mind still raced. I kept replaying the three days in March when my world changed. 

The teachers knew it was coming, but the announcement signaling the implementation of shelter in place orders over the school’s loudspeaker caused my heart to skip a beat. A classroom full of students turned to me with fear and apprehension in their eyes. They sought answers I didn’t have. 

In the early hours of Sunday morning the phone rang. Again, I knew it was coming, but wasn’t ready. My Uncle Eddie was dead. His battle with Parkinson’s was over, and it was my responsibility to tell my mother that her brother was gone.

A quiet campus awaited me Monday morning as I prepared to reinvent how I taught. My principal found me, “John is dead. The cancer.” My mind flashed to our time in India together years before, and for the second time in two days I wondered if it was for the best. Soon after the loudspeaker echoed in my empty classroom. “Pack up what you can, after today the campus will be closed until further notice.” 

I stood up from the bench in the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden, inhaled deeply the scent of roses in the air and began to walk. Morning dew still clung to the grass and tickled the tops of my sandaled feet as I meandered between beds of roses that were starting to bloom. Flowers of yellow, pink, purple, red, and white lay next to their shiny green leaves.

I turned down a path and found myself face to face with a woman. She wore the same pandemic outfit as I, stretchy pants, and a comfortable sweatshirt. Startled, we both stopped midstride, not sure how to proceed. Covid was in the air, and we dared not get too close. Somehow, lost in thought, I had missed the presence of another person. 

“Morning,” we said in awkward synchronicity as I took a step back and then another, the loser in a slow-motion game of chicken.

I dreaded leaving the park and returning to my apartment. It’s five and a half acres, 200 varieties of roses and open space were a stark contrast to the chaos of my life. My living room was now my classroom. My desk was a card table with a tablecloth thrown over a half-finished jigsaw puzzle of the Sagrada Familia, and my computer rested on top of a Spanish cookbook, an Italian cookbook, and one about Hearst Castle. My bathroom was the only place where school wasn’t visible. 

March turned into April, then May, and life was anything but normal. It became my morning routine to rise, dress, walk past the Rose Garden on my way to coffee, and then slowly make my way home through the garden before beginning my day of distance teaching. As the months passed, I watched as the colors of the roses changed, and new flowers emerge. I sought out my favorite varieties, the multi-colored Double Delight, and the lush, thickly petaled Good as Gold. I stopped to smell each new rose, seeking out the most fragrant. There were thousands of plants to choose from and it lived up to its designation, an America’s Best Rose Garden. 

My morning routine became my afternoon routine, without the coffee. Walks in the park were my escape. A time to step away from the computer screen, away from the dozens of emails waiting for me, away from the students and families looking for guidance on how to navigate the unknown terrain laid out before us each day. A place to push aside the overwhelming sense of dread and exhaustion that lay just below the surface of news briefings, and death counts for just a moment. 

I came to the park sporadically as a child growing up in San Jose, but never felt quite at home. The space, revitalized by the creation of the Friends of the Rose Garden in 2008 is nestled in the aptly named Rose Garden neighborhood, is surrounded by stately homes and well-manicured front yards. As I child I associated the park and the neighborhood with being rich. I wasn’t wrong, but at this moment in time I embraced the park as my own. 

California’s mild fall allowed for groups of friends to gather in large circles, each with their own mugs and snacks-socializing while social distancing. Children stood in spread out rows all in white for martial arts classes in the evenings, and yoga mats dotted the landscape as impromptu classes sprung up on weekends. I never joined but would sit with my cup of coffee and text with my aunt. She wove stories about faeries living in the roses and how Uncle Eddie would have thought it was all nonsense. I would laugh and send her a picture of the nearest rose. 

The start of the new school year was even harder than the initial shutdown. I questioned my abilities as a teacher daily and wondered how I was supposed to help my students and their families when it felt like I couldn’t get anything right. My weekly newsletter always ended with notes on child behavior, coping strategies and a reassurance for parents that however they were managing, it was enough. I never felt like I was doing enough. 

One morning a note appeared in the chat of our online class. “Ms. Brennan’s face looks like she was given three dumpster trucks of work, and then they were crumpled and shriveled by a tornado.” I started laughing, if only to hide the tears. I didn’t stay to record another read-aloud or prepare the bags with supplies for the upcoming science experiment or rewrite another lesson for our online platform; I went to the rose garden. 

The roses were in full bloom in the warm afternoon sun. I made my way between rose beds, kneeling to focus in on a particular flower. I adjusted the image in the viewfinder, checked for exposure, moved a little to my left to frame the rose as I desired, and click. My world became the petals, the leaves, the stem, shadows, and light as everything else seemed to disappear. This I knew how to do. 

I felt a shadow fall across my face. A man in a green vest stood near me, “The light is really good if you come in the morning.” 

I looked up, smiled, and agreed. “It is, and I usually photograph in the mornings, but I needed to get out of my classroom and away from my computer screen.” The words Master Volunteer were embroidered on his vest. He held a bucket filled with dead-headed roses in his hand. He was one of the dozens of volunteers who help at the garden to keep the plants healthy and pruned. For a period in the spring the garden had been left untended, and the roses over-grown, but not anymore.

***

It’s been two and a half years since I rediscovered the park. It has flourished, and even grown in popularity in that time. The founder of the Friends of the Rose Garden, Terrence Reilly still heads up community pruning events in the winter, and volunteers like Christian Paquet spend hours pruning and weeding to maintain the park. 

A recent rainstorm has scattered the petals of the remaining flowers all over the grass, and rose hips are growing across the garden. The leaves are turning brown and soon the plants will slip into winter dormancy. This January Terrance, along with volunteers like Christian, will host the annual winter pruning. This year, I won’t just walk past on my way to coffee but sign up to help. 

Time has softened the painful memories of the past few years. I smile more and when I visit the park it isn’t out of desperation, but rather because I want to. The days are chilly, but the garden is still a place for an afternoon walk or a morning run. I look around and see that the park is busy, but not crowded, and recall a snippet of my conversation with Terrance, “visitorship continues to be really big, because people experienced the garden maybe for the first time and know this garden will always be there for them.” 

Sarah Brennan is a traveler, photographer, educator, and aspiring writer. She often writes about travel and believes that every journey contains a story that should be shared. She is a novice writer who is exploring her own abilities with the written word.