My very first lessons in gardening came from my father. More than a book or any actual experience in the world, my Dad is the one who taught me how to begin. It didn’t start with the plants themselves, it started with the earth: the land and the dirt beneath our feet. Before we even thought of heading out to the garden center to procure any living items, Dad showed me to prepare the bed for planting. 

Tilling and toiling over his vegetable plot, he worked the soil skillfully, painstakingly removing every stone or unwanted piece of detritus, until it could be raked through cleanly. He turned over the top layer of upstate dirt into something of deep richness, making the hospitable space for roots to take hold and flourish. He dug in manure and fertilizer, showing me how to enrich the ground and prepare the proper home for good root growth. I learned patience there and then, and the importance of preparation.

By the time it came to actually planting, much of the hard work had been done. What came next was the careful process of planting, and how it differs from plant to plant. He taught me the technical things specific to tomatoes, like how to plant a tomato’s stripped stem sideways in the ground so more roots would grow and it would have a stable structure. He taught me to pinch out early side shoots, allowing the plant to focus its energy upward. He taught me to carefully tie a tender young stem to the support it needed early in its journey, and then to release it when it could stand on its own. Later in the season, he would show me when and how to harvest the ripened results, twisting them off and leaving them on the sunny windowsill of the garage until perfectly red. 

I would take these lessons and apply them to our flower beds – vegetables weren’t as pretty or frivolous as flowers – as that’s where my interest resided. I didn’t see it then, and maybe he didn’t either, but he was actually carving out a way of showing me how to survive in the world. Not in any literal way of feeding myself with homegrown vegetables, but in teaching me that the path to anything good and worthy was in working slowly in service of the end goal. I learned not to hurry things, to take my time and invest diligence and care in every endeavor, being patient and careful, and properly preparing without rush or haste. 

When fall and winter came, the tomato patch wilted and crumbled and fell back into the earth. The wire supports stood forlornly bare, the remaining metal exoskeletons of what they once held high against a summer sky. And every spring, Dad would clear the plot, begin the soil preparation, and start all over again – a circle of life that generations had done before him. 

Yesterday would have been my Dad’s 93^rdbirthday. He came up just short of that milestone, but we honored him with a Filipino dinner last night. It’s a small consolation, but a consolation it is, and it reminds me how he is still here in some way – in spirit, in laughter, in memories, in food, and in family. Our year of marking firsts without Dad has begun – first with my birthday, and now with his – and I’m finding comfort in still celebrating these dates. It brings him back to us, in a strange way. I thought I would be sad or upset by it, and there is an element of missing him that pervades these days, but mostly I’m happy for the reminder of him. Missing him is tangible evidence that his spirit remains strong, that his presence hasn’t dissipated. It’s strange the way some pain provides proof of significance and import – an emotional badge of honor that indicates love was here – and more importantly that love is still here. 

In some ways, our little celebration didn’t differ from the usual dinner gatherings we had for him – my Dad was never one for gifts or hoopla or celebrating one’s birthday with bombast or excitement, and he’d have been the first one to escape from such attention immediately after dinner was finished. He didn’t even need his favored lemon meringue pie – sometimes I felt he was humoring us more than himself during birthdays and holidays, and the older I get the more I think I understand his ways. 

And so our year of firsts continues. Slowly, and a little unsurely, we are finding our way. 

Back in the fall of 1995, my father graciously gave me the go-ahead to find a place to live in Boston – something that would suit me while finishing out college and beginning whatever line of work I would begin, and which would also serve as a landing space for when the family visited the city. Within days, I had set up visits with a real estate agent, and within a couple of weeks we’d located our current place on Braddock Park. 

Because of that, Dad had always been the impetus and charge behind me finding my home there, and I remember him visiting once when I was working at John Hancock, when we stayed in the condo and had a weekend together. Of course he was present for when Andy and I got married in the Boston Public Garden, and told everyone of how I had found the condo for them as soon as I get off the phone from him giving me the go-ahead. That was the last time I was in Boston with him, and I’m so grateful we have that happy memory. As I readied to return to the city for the first time since his death, I wondered if I would still feel that connection. 

For Labor Day weekend, I had promised to take the twins to Boston, and it felt right to have them with me – they are in ways both literal and figurative the seamless continuation of my father – his blood runs through their veins and the memories of their childhood carry him through to this day. They also provided a happy distraction for me: it’s impossible to keep an eye on two thirteen-year-olds who more often than not are going in different directions, and still be pre-occupied with missing my Dad. On our first night, we went to bed fully spent and exhausted from a day of walking. 

In the early hours of the morning, right before I woke up, I had a dream.

I was at my parents’ old house while my Mom was out. On the side porch, an early Christmas present had arrived for me – flowers and a Betty Buckley doll – the random and bizarre details that let us know it was only a dream. Slightly confused about the gift, I left it there so Mom could think that I was still surprised. I went back inside and heard someone in the downstairs bathroom.

Looking in, I saw two people – one facing me and one with his back to me. The man facing me was my father, in his much younger years – hair entirely black and brushed back in his usual style, and without the glasses that would become a mainstay later on. He was talking intently but happily with a gray-haired man whose back was still to me, until he turned around and I saw that it was an older version of my Dad, the way we knew him as adults. 

I rushed in, confused but happy that somehow he had returned. I started crying immediately, and reached my arms around both of them. And then something that has only happened to me once in all my life occurred again in what I then fully understood to be a dream: I physically felt his arms around me. He held me there as I sobbed.

My crying was messy now, and I was hysterically trying to tell him how much we missed him and loved him. Still, I felt his arms enclosed around me, tangibly and physically embracing me and somehow letting me know that he was here. I asked him to please watch over us, especially Mom, and kept crying. 

It must have been my wailing that woke me up. I felt for my face, rubbing the actual tears away. Through my hazy, tear-stained vision, I saw a double figure move off into the distance like some floater that sometimes moves across one’s gaze. At first I was devastated by the realization that it was only a dream, and then I was comforted by my Dad’s arms around me, still here in his own way, still loving me, still silently supporting us and letting us know he was ok. 

This was my first trip back to Boston since Dad died, and I had been unsure if I would feel him there. While he was integral in purchasing our condo and he visited a handful of times, I only have those few memories of him being there with us. Yet on this first night back, this is where he chose to visit me. A sign that this was still home. 

On the morning that we were set to depart, Emi called me over to the window. A cardinal had landed in the tree in front of the condo. I watched its scarlet feathers as she remarked that Lolo was visiting. Smiling softly, I knew that he already had.