It was spring when my daughter turned four. She suddenly became obsessed with planting things. She dug a hole in the backyard, buried a strawberry hard candy inside, and tended to it with her tiny watering can every single day.
On the first day, she ran over to me. “Mommy, I planted a candy!” I nodded. She asked when it would grow. “It might take a very long time,” I told her.
The next day, she went out to water it again. Her pants were covered in mud around the knees when she came back. I said nothing, just took them off and put them in the wash.
It rained on the third day, yet she still headed outside with her can. I watched from the kitchen window. Rain soaked her hair, but she held the can high and watered the patch of dirt carefully.
On the fourth day, she invited me to plant one too. She promised to share half of her candy harvest with me once it grew. I smiled and agreed.
She woke up earlier than me on the fifth day. She put on her shoes and went straight out to the yard. I stood by the door and watched. She knelt beside the hole, poked the soil with her finger and shifted the dirt around, as if searching for something. For a second, I almost told her the truth. Candy doesn’t grow. But she was looking at the dirt with so much hope that I stayed quiet. She never dug it up though. She stood and watered the spot once more.
She did not mention the candy on the sixth day. I thought she had forgotten all about it.
On the seventh afternoon, she ran inside from the yard and held out her palm. There was the candy, its wrapper damp and crumpled. “It doesn’t want to grow,” she said.
“You can eat it then,” I replied.
She peeled off the foil and popped the candy into her mouth. Her cheeks puffed out. “It’s still sweet.”
That spot stayed empty afterward. I never planted anything there, and neither did she. From time to time, I would glance at the little hole. Nothing ever grew there.
Later, a neighbor’s cat scratched at the dirt and smoothed the hole over. But I always knew exactly where it was. For a long while, every time I walked past, that small spot felt different from the rest of the yard.
