“It’ll be good for her,” he said. “Good for all of them. The energy in the vortexes can revitalize and reboot you-- bring out your creativity.”
“I think I’m in love,” I blurted out without thinking.
“Yeah?” he replied. “And I think the Pope’s Catholic, too.”
I laughed. “That bad, huh?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at her,” he said. “I’m just wondering when you’re going to put a ring on it.”
“Jimi would be quite disappointed in you, quoting Beyonce,” I said.
“Nice deflection,” he replied.
“I’m a professional,” I said.
He laughed. “Alright, point taken. But, I want you to know, son, I’m really proud of you.”
I blinked in surprise. “Thanks, Dad.”
“No, I’m serious,” he said. “Your mother and I have a certain way of seeing life, seeing the world, we have our own set of values. When we decided to have kids, we had a specific parenting philosophy, a way we wanted to raise you guys. We want you to be free thinkers, artists, and we wanted you to stand up for what you believed in, and make the world a better place. And, I guess we had a certain idea of what that looked like. And we didn’t understand when you had your own ideas. Which, I guess that’s on us, we wanted to raise a free thinker, and we got one. But, I see you, and I see what you mean to this town, and... geez... what you did for Harmony... and I realize, you’re doing exactly what we always hoped you’d do. Making a difference and standing up for what’s right. And that makes me really proud, and your mother too. She brags about you all the time.”
“Does she really?” I chuckled.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You would think she doesn’t have any other kids.”
“I thought Phoenix was the golden child,” I said.
“Phoenix is the baby,” he began, “and always will be, but he has yet to find his place in the world. But, you know who you are, and you’re out there kicking ass.”
“Well, thanks, Dad,” I said.
Neither of us knew quite what to do in the aftermath of such an uncharacteristic outpouring of emotion. So, he flipped on Jimi to fill in the space. Finally, he pointed up the street to a place called Wade’s Garden Center.
“How about we stop up here?” he asked.
“You’re really going to do the garden, then?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”
“Don’t you want to research it all, find out what you’re getting into?”
“Nah,” he said. “Your mother and I had one in the eighties, before you kids were born. We used to eat out of that garden every night. I know what to get.”
We went inside the garden center, and I had to admit, I was kind of into it. I’ve never owned land, I didn’t even own the small plot I lived on. But, a garden, a sense of coming back to the earth from where we sprung, awakened a primal sense in me. I didn’t ponder it long, though. I got drawn into a conversation with Wade, the shop’s sixty-year-old owner.
Wade was sufficiently impressed by the recent second coming of Jimi Hendrix, but more impressed with loading up my dad with every instrument and tool that had been introduced to the gardening industry in the past forty years. We did end up needing that trailer hitched to the Jeep after all.
Later that night, Vicki and I reconvened at the cottage.
“How were the vortexes?” I asked.
“I’m starting to see why you’re jaded and cynical,” she said.
I laughed. “That bad?”
“I think I’ll stick with my culturally appropriated pseudo-Hindu exploration,” she said.
“I like that one,” I said. “It’s the one with the Kama Sutra.”
She laughed. “It’s sad that your entire concept of world religions is based on sex.”
“I guess I should base it on Jimi Hendrix, then,” I said.
She laughed. “I don’t think there would be much of a difference.”
“You’re right about that,” I said.
So, with the aid of our digital canonical text, we turned out to be quite devout followers of our new religious persuasion, even without the tea.
I awoke early the next morning, and after a sunrise jog, picked us up breakfast from a taco stand near the house. I arrived back home, and Vicki and I lounged in bed over eggs, tacos, and coffee. We hashed out the day’s schedule.
“We have the interview at The Herald,” she said as she glanced through her phone.
“Matt sent me an e-mail,” I said. “Prep questions.”
“Ohhh,” she said. “Prep questions.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a video interview, so they want to do it with as little editing as possible. They sent over the questions ahead of time, so that we can come up with good answers.”
“That sounds ominous,” she said. “What are they going to ask? Have you ever had an infectious disease? Do you believe in aliens?”
I took a bite of my taco and got a mouthful of fluffy eggs, cheese, and spicy potato pieces wrapped in a soft tortilla. Pure bliss. I set it down, wiped off my fingers, and then pulled up the email on my phone.
“It looks like...” I paused as I skimmed the questions, “he’s got it divided into topical sections. The first section is all about education and that kind of thing.”
“This is so weird,” she said. “I’ve never been interviewed.”
“I haven’t, either, not like this anyway,” I said.
“‘Then he asks about some of our specific cases,” he said. “‘Talk about Horace Uvalde’s murder case. What made you take that on, and how were you convinced he was innocent?’”
“Geez,” she said. “How do you answer that?”
“‘From a technical perspective, how was it challenging?’ I don’t know,” I said and tossed
