Apart at the Seams by Marie Bostwick

land could become anything I chose to make it. It was a clean slate, an empty canvas.
    I could enclose it in white pickets and put in pathways of gray-white gravel or stepping stones and nested masses of moss that divided the space into identical and evenly placed beds, a tidy garden where flowers grew in orderly, color-coordinated rows, a sensible garden where no weed would dare to sprout. Or I could cut green branches from the saplings in the woods, then bend them and tie them and turn them into rustic trellises and archways covered with twisting green vines and flowers shaped like bells and trumpets. Or I could create a garden with no beds at all, no paths, no structure or reason, just one blue folding chair placed in the center so a person could rest and think, or rest and not think, as the sun shone down on a sea of brilliant wildflowers in blue, purple, orange, and pink, carelessly sown as I walked barefoot over the warm, soft earth, scattering seeds across the welcoming soil with wide and generous sweeps of my arm, leaving them to grow as they willed, leaving it to nature, knowing there are no ugly flowers.
    Or, if I wanted to, I could grow vegetables: green beans and zucchini and peppers, and cherry tomatoes so small they could be popped whole into the mouth and so delicious they would never make it into the house because I would eat them while I stood in the garden, picking them from the vines and crushing them against the roof of my mouth, releasing sun-warmed juice that tasted like summer on my tongue.
    I could grow lilies and pansies and carnations and irises. I could grow herbs or lavender. Or sweet-scented roses. Who cared what Dan Kelleher said about it being beyond me? He didn’t know me. If I wanted to grow roses, then I would grow roses. Or peonies. Or anything else that struck my fancy. Because I could.
    Because I could.
    I stopped in my tracks. The tiller, blades still churning, bucked and urged me forward, but I stood where I was, struck by the enormity of that thought.
    For the first time in my life, I was not responsible to or for anyone but myself. My parents were dead. My children were grown. My husband didn’t love me anymore.
    For different reasons and at different times of my life, the truth of those statements had brought me to tears and despair, made me feel empty and alone. But there was another way to look at it.
    Empty. Alone. I’ve always associated those words with anguish, confusion, and, in some sense, failure. But if emptiness is a void, isn’t it also the state that precedes fullness? Is it not a moment of supreme anticipation, the season of preparation when there are no rocks or roots or weeds or impediments before you, only bare earth and possibilities? And if being alone forces you to stand apart, doesn’t it also separate you from the responsibility of bowing to the opinions and expectations of others?
    For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to please or answer to anyone but myself. I was empty. I was alone. I didn’t belong to anyone.
    What a relief.
    A relief? Had I actually said that? Even in my own mind, had I actually allowed myself to think that the potential ending of my marriage was cause for relief?
    But at that moment, it was true. Why try to pretend otherwise?
    I pushed the tiller forward again, erasing another strip of green under the blades, trying to sort things out, to sieve out the guilt and see my feelings as they were instead of how I thought they were supposed to be.
    For as long as I could remember, I’d had to worry about pleasing my parents, trying to live up to the expectations and role they had assigned me from birth. Then about being my children’s mother, making sure they ate properly, brushed their teeth, learned to say “please” and “thank you,” knew that I loved them, believed in them, was always ready to go to bat for them. And then being Brian’s wife, loving him, supporting him, trying to