I’d been waiting all week for Saturday, not because it’s the weekend; retired people never know what day it is, but rather it was the one day of the week with nothing written on the calendar. It was the day I’d saved to clean the garlic.  All those bulbs carefully arrayed on trays to dry and cure, waiting for me to pay them some attention.

Like having kids, putting seed into the ground is just the beginning. Come to think of it, growing garlic is a bit like having kids. You plant it in the fall, and there’s no sign of it until months later; the snow melts and within days little green points start to emerge. Something’s going on deep in the earth. Fast forward to early August and the plants tell you it’s time by turning their lower leaves yellow. Dig it or pull it, whichever works best, and you’ve got a nice pile of garlic bulbs, fresh and moist, dirt clinging to its long roots.

Now, some 10 months after planting, with so much in our lives changed forever (oh yes, he’s changed for sure) the newly-born garlic awaits just as it has every year. Twist off the hard stem, peel off the dirty skin to reveal the faintly purple-pink membrane covering each clove, and trim away the wizzled up roots. Do it 150 times.

It’s the kind of task that begs for companionship. The barn radio, volume up loud, isn’t much help. On a normal afternoon (every such afternoon of our lives) he’d be sitting on the step, caning a chair, the easy conversation making both our tasks effortless, hands busy, minds engaged, hearts content.

Yes, I’d planted 150 garlic cloves last fall; if Wally was in the garden that day I can’t see him. Probably not. For most of the summer the footing there was too uncertain for his still-wobbly legs, and by fall his attention was elsewhere. Maybe the day I was pushing garlic deep into the soil, he was struggling up the tangled path to Frohock’s summit after the monster maitake mushroom, wobbly legs be damned.

I’d been watching for him for years, maybe all our lives together. The Saturday morning fights that marked our middle years generally ended in his flight up to Stevens Corner and left me slightly panicky. Would he come back? Listening for his car pulling into the driveway after work, peering into the darkening woods on a November afternoon, scanning the empty Beach parking lot for his truck while hoping he was just out of sight at the dumpster. Always that tick of anxiety if I didn’t know where he was. Afraid he could disappear on me if I wasn’t vigilant. In the end my vigilance had nothing to do with it. He did it all on his own, up and disappeared when he was ready to go.

In fact, up until the night he died, he always came back, usually right on time. I gave him more reason to worry, nearly always arriving home a good hour after promised. I don’t know why I did that, deliberately showing up late enough to find him anxious.

Still, I had other ways to say I love you: handing him the sweet heart of a celery head or the tiny gnarled leaves at the center of a garden lettuce. Giving myself the fried egg with the broken yolk. You do that for someone you love. Now the good bits are mine, though it’s not much of a victory.

He fed me, too. The blue butter dish he gave me one Christmas brought me to tears this morning. He always remembered what I wanted; he was so happy to give it to me.

I’m 73 years old and still learning what love is.

“She never thought she deserved it,” was how a man explained his late-in-life, second-chance marriage to me the other day. Coming together with adult children, ex-spouses, aging parents and finding a loving marriage has been the gift of a lifetime for these two.

“We always take the week of our anniversary and go somewhere together,” she said, celebrating the miracle of their marriage.

A friend told me recently about coming upon the letters he and his wife exchanged before they were married. She’s been gone several years, but those letters brought her back in a way he hadn’t anticipated. He even felt some regret at not responding then with more understanding. 50 or more years ago.

We always touched, held hands, linked fingers; how those touches, electrifying when we were young and learning our way around each other, changed to tenderness, comfort, security. I watch other couples now, openly, frankly, seeing the way they are, some literally in touch with each other, while some seem to practice avoidance, much as the same poles of a magnet repel.

Today, Aug. 28, school starts for incoming CHRHS freshmen which includes my oldest granddaughter. Every parent, certainly every grandparent (who feels the swift passage of time even more acutely) asks “how did this happen so quickly??” Wasn’t it just yesterday that her father was telling her how many sleeps before the first day of kindergarten, and she could hardly wait? Safe passage through this next phase to her and her classmates, and to all starting new adventures this fall.