Three Pieces by Gregory Wells

Magic comes from finding myself clean again a long time. After all my psycho-therapy, and cleaning out of my psycho-attic; after all that time and psycho deductibles, and sneezing in the afternoon psycho dust, and when it all clears and my relationship is still failing, I run into my Uncle Rick at the Price Chopper when he is buying kitty litter, and he tells me that he found the coolest place to work on himself and his Recovery.

            “You still not drinking, hunh?”

            “Yeah, Gregory.  But even more exciting is the Recovery Center.  There’s a bunch of meetings, and great people there, and it feels like they need some more energy.  I heard one lady in the front room say the computers are down again.  Well, I know computers.  So I worked one afternoon on the two old desktops, and they were so thankful.  The lady said ‘You worked magic.  Thank you.’  But it wasn’t magic at all, Gregory. It was just me looking on a good place to work on being sober and then I gave what I could.”

            “Sounds like Magic to me, man.” 

            My uncle smiles and nods.

            At the Granite-Cutter’s Union Hall In Barre, on a summer’s evening we gathered for an end of the year celebration of Writer’s For Recovery program. For a year folks in recovery from Alcohol and Drug Addiction gather weekly with a facilitator to write creatively and support each other’s writing. The Writers for Recovery program is cleansing and healing, simple and profoundly liberating; a brilliant creation of Northeast Kingdom artists Gary and Bess.

            I found, more invented a parking space beside a row of small SUV’s, compact cars, a saggy truck with a black bag of fragrant garbage and a gray Volvo station wagon.  Leaving my windows open to vent my own blossoming ambiance of apple cores and yesterday’s milk container, I looked at the clock on my flip-phone and shook my head. Late, just like my dad.  I had promised myself when I was a kid…Never mind.  Go in, Greg.

            I was expecting them to be started already, expecting them to be seated in rows with a speaker at the front, expecting them to turn around and look at me, expecting that I would mouth I’m sorry and that the silence would make me feel guilty. Instead the grand hall was flung with odd and regular couples standing, a man in glasses, a table with a sign-in sheet beside stack of books.

            I opened a cover and looked down the Table of Contents and found my name, Gregory Wells, page 46.  I looked up to see a woman smiling at me, and I know that I found the right place.

            “I almost doubled the size of this garden, Anne.  Gonna grow a double row for the food shelf! I used to struggle so hard in the spring to turn over the ground with a pitch fork, pull weeds with roots and soil clumps, and then my back was hurt for a day.  After, I had to go through with a rake, and only then I would have a garden to plant seeds.  Mound up rows for potato chunks, and make the rows fine enough to pant brown seeds, and hope and wait for rain.  Then notice a line of tiny green.  Look at it now, Annie.  Look at how much tilled soil there is!  I can grow a row of food for them because Trump is cutting funding.

            Later, when we are having tea in the shadow and the bugs are just coming out, Anne says “I was thinking about how you are now two years after your divorce, how your ex-wife never wanted you to have a tractor because, well, for whatever reason.  And now look at that, twice the garden for you, and you can grow potatoes for the food shelf.  You are doing well, Greg.  It is like a fresh start.”  She swatted a bug on her neck.