I don’t think I’ve ever expanded on Weeds and her grandfather in surrender, beyond what’s in the fic itself (“he taught you to feel the earth beneath your fingers, to care for flowers,” chapter one, collision. “Raised in (a) quiet town, amid your grandfather’s garden,” chapter three, afternoon light. “You’re a florist, with your own little store in the heart of a busy city that you moved to—after your Grandfather died,” chapter eight, surrender.) There’s more of him, in the one-shot collection that I keep promising (“I wish you could’ve met my grandfather,” you admit at last. Your hero frowns, his face soft even as those sharp eyes of his dart over your face, trying to gauge how you’re feeling, what cue he needs to take), but for the most part Grandfather is the garden bed the flowers of our story grows in: he’s there, he’s foundational, but he’s invisible for the riot of colour we see.
My dad died six months ago. Whereas Weeds’ grandfather is described by her as gentle, my Dad was not, lmao. He was a passionate man who’d lived many different lives by the time I came into the world but like any person who raises us, he was foundational to who I am today. He heard all my story and fanfic ideas before I even started writing them; became my test audience for some of them (not my target audience in the slightest, but was interesting perspective because of that). He was bemused by my interest in bittersweet or tragic endings (he thought life was already hard enough as it was, without adding to it). He was funny, and incredibly charming and could play a mean guitar. When he and my aunts and uncle were younger they would be the ones singing at parties; they knew how to entertain.
I’ve done nothing in the six months since he died. I’ve just spent the time to myself. I go for walks; I sit on the couch by the livingroom window and soak up the sun as the birds sing to each other outside. I take photos and I vent whatever compulsion I have for creating into making silly little moodboards, or posting on instagram—which I’ve returned to after archiving in 2020, after I really got into writing fic under this account. I don’t talk about my Dad to anyone. He was his own person, a living universe unfurling in on itself until he died, and now he will just forever be a memory. The foundational garden bed to whatever grows from me now.
I’m moving soon. From my childhood home here in the country to the city, where there will no longer be the greenery I’m used to, or the same birds. Harder yet is leaving this place knowing that once I’m gone it will change: landscape, people, anything. Everything. Sometimes I try to imagine myself as one of the girls I write—what I would want for her, as she’s caught up in her sadness and the fear of change, not knowing how wonderfully things were going to work out for her. It’s easier, I think, when you’re the author; when you’re writing it. You’re omniscient. You see the beginning and the ending and everything in between. I’ve imagined an entire lifetime for Weeds—from when she was being raised by her Grandfather, to the life she has beyond that childhood, to the end. Everything she goes through has a meaning; not because it had to happen, but because it happening created new paths and choices she might not have had or made without them. Whenever she goes through something hard in the fic it’s okay—because I know the good things that are waiting, past them.
It’s hard to have that same confidence when it’s just for yourself, and you’re limited by the constraints of not seeing the past and present and future all as one continuous loop, lmao. I don’t find it comforting to talk to myself like I’m one of my own characters. I miss my Dad and I miss my home and I am worried that nothing good will ever happen again. But I guess that’s what gives the stories we love and the lives we lead their power, huh? Sometimes things are bad. Sometimes things are hard. Sometimes you move to the city and you open a flower shop and a superhero gets thrown through the glass.
Maybe there will be a flower shop in the future. Maybe there won’t. They seem stressful to run, lmao. But the one thing I am sure of in this life, now and always, is that I love telling stories. I will start up with the fics again soon, and we’ll have our ending to our trilogy… and maybe learn one or two new things about Grandfather Garden, and the person he was even as he acted as a garden bed for Weedsie. 🫶🏽🪟🌿🍵🎐
