The Stone Garden

Delray was a small town back in the sixties where I grew up, located on the east coast of southern Florida, north of Boca Raton. We lived on 2nd Avenue. . .a main street that ran north and south and one mile from my house was my high school. We were just small-town people with small-town lives.

I noticed a new girl in school one day and after talking with her I learned she just moved from England with her parents and two brothers. They lived only eight blocks from me. Elaine had freckles from head to toe and beautiful red hair. She was fifteen. . .only one year older than I was. In class, Elaine invited me over to meet her family and to study. I told her ok, not really knowing what to expect. They were the usual concerns of a teenager meeting the parents of a friend for the first time. That same day after school, Elaine and I walked past my house straight to hers carrying an armful of school books. She was a girl that spent time studying, whereas I did not. I wondered why anyone would move to this unknown town all the way from England. Why not the larger cities that were near? Ft. Lauderdale or Palm Beach? But I never asked.

Their heritage fascinated me. So did their accent. They were a happy, friendly family that made me feel welcome when I would visit. Everything about them was different and anything different caught my attention. They owned a Weimaraner dog with an insatiable appetite for cigarette butts. If the ashtrays were not kept empty he would eat every cigarette butt in them.

I strongly sensed that this family was 'searching.' Particularly Elaine's mother. I felt this town was not where they wanted to be and I must have been right because not long after, they packed up and moved away. I lost the friendship of this wonderful family and never saw them again. That was my first experience with the English and I have loved them ever since and yet, even as a child, I occasionally sensed how things 'felt,' whether it was the people I was with or the atmosphere I was in. . .as if I caught a glimpse into their heart for just a moment.

 But this story is not about the town I grew up in, nor is it about this English family. . . .It's about the Stone Garden.

On one peculiar afternoon, I was at Elaine's house and wanted to leave sooner than usual, yet, I was not in a hurry to get home. When I left I took the same route down 2nd Avenue but for some reason I walked slower that day. . .I walked cautiously. I began to pass a home that I had passed hundreds of times before. This house was no different from the countless number of others that lined this main street. I had no idea who lived there, but I stopped and turned as I stood on the sidewalk to face it. Whatever I sensed could not be seen from the front, because it wasn't the house itself that drew me. . .there was something behind it.

At fourteen, I was old enough to know not to trespass into someone's yard. I didn't know why the need to be there was so strong, and I couldn't help but to follow its call. I walked into the yard heading toward the side of the house and had to go around a large tree that blocked the backyard's view. There were no gates to keep me out and when I reached the back I stepped into a stone garden. A statue stood at the other end of a small ill-kept pool. As strange as it may sound, I was glad to see it was not sparkling clean. The leaves and petals scattered on the bottom, on the water's surface and all over the ground gave it the beauty it deserved, like the appearance of a place old and long forgotten. A 'Garden Of Flowers And Stone' I used to call it. A place of peace and safety.

I could not keep my eyes off her as I slowly walked around the pool. When I approached her, I reached out to touch the statue that constantly watched this garden. I touched her face, her hair. . .her hands. I saw the faint smile that never left her and I closely watched her eyes. "What do you know?" I asked quietly. "What have you seen?" That was not a strange question for me to ask. Even now, on occasion, I will walk through a cemetery and wonder who the people were as I look at their names, see the date of their birth and death, and figure their age. "What do you know?" I will ask. "What have you seen?" Cemeteries hold graves with people steeped in history, and stories about their lives I will never hear about.

I looked around at the flowers in this garden. There were roses, gardenias, hibiscus and other flowers I didn't know the names of. I walked back to the opposite end of the pool where a stone bench was. I sat and just stared at her for a very long time. I did not think. I 'felt' and I listened. For some reason it was quiet back here. The traffic from the main street didn't reach this garden. All was silent and at the same time so much was happening. You had to hear it in the air. You had to feel it as I did to understand it. This garden was from a different place and time. Nothing here was new. Not even its beauty.

On many days after school I would come back to the Stone Garden to sit on the bench and just listen. I did this for nearly two years. Sometimes I would hear a man's footsteps in the house but he never came out to ask me who I was or why I was in his yard. I believed he knew why I was there and that I needed to be alone. He never bothered me and to this day I could not tell you what he looked like.

Oddly enough, I was the last child to spend time with her here in the garden. Age took many things from me and the Stone Garden was one of them. When the house was bought by new owners, the statue was gone and the garden was never the same. Apparently, they were not able to listen to her history as I did or understand her age-old beauty. Eventually I left home and a few years later, I married and moved out of state and have not been to Delray since.

And what of the statue you may wonder?  Well. . . .she is watching over a new garden somewhere in this new century. She will always have her place in time and she will always beckon another child to her. One, who knows that there is more in the wind than just the breeze. A child that will pass by as I did unaware, but has the eyes to see and the ears to hear her. . . . when she calls.

Cheryl Taul
© Copyright May 9, 2001