My Papa's Garden

7 P.M., and I stepped out of the shower with damp hair and a light body for once. Something then possessed this city girl to step outside into the seeming wilderness of the garden my Papa tends with an enthusiasm approaching ecstasy.
He was watering the plants and asked me if I wanted to try. His voice is light and casual, deep and reassuring, but something within it, a kind of straining longing, tells me that he wants me to say yes. I had homework to do and not a lot of time to do it in, but once again, (the same) something stayed my feet and I drifted towards him thinking to myself that I would wet a few plants, he would get mad at me for not doing it well and it'd be all done. Finished.
He did come close to yelling at me at times. He paid attention to detail a lot and whenever I missed out a couple tiny patches of grass he'd insist I come back and water them. He told me how important even the small things were, and not to judge them by their size.
Of course I got pretty pettily upset, since really, he was making me get my hands all muddy and my new pyjamas all wet. And the main thing I enjoyed about watering the plants during his many hours and days away at work was watching the droplets spray downwards when the hose was spraying them not as one shooting length but as a sort of mist. I would aim the hose high in the air and watch them scatter, heading towards their own unknown destination seeping through the hardness of the thirsty soil.
He was getting on in age and also yelled at me when the ground had absorbed the water I'd just sprayed it with and he couldn't remember that I'd already done that part.
Throughout all the berating though, I kept a calm mind and aimed the hose where he wanted me to.
Later we did the back garden and while unplugging this new hose I scraped my hand against the cement wall. I was thinking how he didn't even care, but then I realized that once again, I hadn't let out a sound, an alack of pain. I couldn't blame him.
He loved his garden and was even then rolling up the hose carefully, storing it away.
I sank back on my feet until he came to wash my muddy shoes using those big strong hands that he first cleansed of mud and dirt.
And I knew he kept a special place for me in the garden of his heart. I wanted to tell him I had just realized I'd always wanted to be like him and I'd just realized that - only he was away so much I had forgotten what he was.
I wanted to tell him I wanted to call him Papa again, and I wanted to hug him and disappear in the folds of his sweaty shirt like always.
But I didn't, and just sat there looking at my Papa, man of the soil and of the secret heart.