What a girl wants.

My sister and I were looking at a fine afternoon of, you know, yardwork. I grabbed the shovel and looked around for the other. "Oh," she said. "I returned it to Matt." I looked at her, blinking. Only one shovel? How will we perform the rituals at the heart of our family? What will bind us, if not several hours of moving dirt on a beautiful crisp afternoon, the sisters working like dogs, the nephews playing along with toy shovels? With only one shovel, the other sister might... rest.

She said the oddest thing to me, right before she drove home from cleaning my porch. "Meggie, let's not have any more work weekends for a while." I knew the term 'work weekend', but the rest of the sentence was new to me and strange. Trees, bulbs and retaining walls don't plant themselves. I fled that confused household, with fewer shovels than able-bodied adults, and came back to Sacramento. I have my trusty shovel, a recalcitrant sprinkler system and a new plot at the community garden to turn over. The universe is back to its natural order.