Chapter 12
Twelve
I’d never really been a morning person.
There always seemed to be something noble about greeting the dawn, a kind of preemptive triumph over the day still slumbering in its cradle.
To rise with the sun, to witness the sky unfurling its hues, to move forward with the entire day stretched out ahead.
Sleepwalking put a damper on that. But since I’d arrived at the Flower Farm, something shifted.
The pull of the night held me in its embrace.
I locked my door each night, barricading it with a chair, but I had yet to sleepwalk.
I felt safe here. My mind did too. And now, I looked forward to the freedom of waking up fresh and ready to start the day.
Such was the case this morning, when I woke and met Tibb behind the bouquet hall for our yoga session.
He was already there, his silhouette etched against the soft predawn gloom.
His arms reached skyward, stretching toward a sun that had yet to cast its light.
His eyes were closed in concentration, his breath a slow rhythm that he released as I drew near.
“Good morning, Leigh,” he said, lowering his arms and inviting me to the mat beside him with a graceful sweep. “How’s your wrist?”
I glanced at the brace now encircling my wrist and flexed it a few times. “Not bad. Better.”
“Good,” he said with a nod. “And what about everything else? Still sore?”
I winced slightly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this sore in my life.”
“Becoming one with your body is about treating it with compassion. Every ache is a call for attention.” He approached me. “Stretch your arms above your head as far as you can, and stand on your toes.”
I followed his instructions, and an ache surged through my arms.
“Do you feel that?” Tibb asked, his eyes tracing the arch of my extended arms.
I nodded, a small wince escaping. “Yes, and it hurts.”
He smiled. “That ache is your body’s way of talking to you, Leigh. It’s saying, ‘Thank you for waking me up.’ When we exercise, we connect not only with our muscles but with our entire being.”
“Yeah…but does the soreness ever go away?” I whined.
“Eventually,” Tibb assured me. “With patience and practice, the soreness fades, and in its place, you find a deeper vitality. Embrace the discomfort; it’s a sign that you are alive.”
“You make it sound so spiritual,” I teased. “But thank you. I’ve never thought about my body like that.”
“I learned to welcome the soreness. The soreness you’re experiencing now is the sign of muscles being torn, but when they grow back, they’ll grow stronger than before. You’ll be stronger after this, Leigh. Much stronger.”
Survival, for me, was deeply tied to my body. Yet I had never truly acknowledged all it had done for me. Despite all that I had endured, my heart kept beating, my mind kept thinking, my limbs kept moving. My body had kept me alive.
“Do you think there’s a difference between living and surviving?” I asked.
Tibb considered this. “Absolutely. It was a difference that I had to learn.”
I stared at him. “How?”
“I think the first step is acknowledging you’ve been surviving and not living. Is that what you think you’ve been doing?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I said, the words escaping me with raw honesty.
“On the farm?” His eyes searched mine.
“No,” I said. “Alive.”
I didn’t know why I admitted this to him, but the words tumbled out without permission.
Tibb nodded thoughtfully and sat next to me.
“Jackie and I lived together for five years before his uncle came and got him. He knew what we had been through. We survived it together, and he didn’t want to leave me there.
His uncle tried to adopt me, but there was so much red tape, and I was aging out soon.
So I stayed. On my eighteenth birthday, I walked out of that foster home, and Jackie was there waiting for me.
He brought me here to have a life, but I didn’t know how to do that.
All I knew was surviving foster care; I had to learn how to live. ”
“How did you?” I asked.
Tibb let out a soft laugh. “I think I’m still learning.
But I think it’s not about getting through the days but savoring each day, each breath.
Think of it like this: When you’re surviving, you’re running on autopilot, never quite tasting the sweetness of the journey.
But when you’re living, you’re feeling each heartbeat. Life is a gift.”
“It doesn’t always feel like a gift,” I said as we continued our stretches, me reaching a little bit farther than before, feeling my muscles loosen with every stretch.
“It’s easy to get lost in surviving. But to live is to be conscious. To walk through a field of flowers and stop to feel the softness of each petal, to inhale the perfume of each blossom.”
“You’re telling me to stop and smell the flowers?” I said, smiling.
Tibb smiled back. “Exactly, but also that.” He pointed a finger at me.
I looked around. “What?”
“Smiling, laughing.”
Whether it was because of something Luke had said in the field or some warm exchange like this one, the smiles kept showing up.
They arrived without the guilt. Laughing too.
I wasn’t used to that happening, being in a place where a smile broke through.
But it had been happening more and more since I had been on the Flower Farm, and I didn’t mind.
I had slowly discovered that I liked it, the warmth of a smile on my face, the way my heart lightened after a good laugh, and the reaction of those around me who noticed my smiles.
“I haven’t always had a reason to smile.”
“Do it anyway. Be present in every moment. Only then will you start to enjoy yourself.”
His words hung in the air like a promise. Doubt still crept along the edges, but the idea captivated me. I stretched once more, savoring the deep sensation of my muscles. Every move felt like a gentle nudge from the brink of consciousness, urging me closer to a long-awaited awakening.
I left Tibb and rinsed quickly under the lukewarm stream of the outdoor shower.
My mind raced with anticipation: Breakfast awaited.
The thought buzzed through my head like the hum of bees around the garden.
I was finally going to cook, and I needed time to do it just right.
I padded into the kitchen, the house quiet, punctuated only by the distant sounds of Tibb’s shower.
Jackson and Luke were still in their rooms, the morning still theirs to waste.
I opened cabinet after cabinet, drawer after drawer, gathering the ingredients: sugar, baking powder, milk, and eggs.
White Lily flour. A small smile tugged at my lips as I held the flour in my hands—five years away from this, and I was still sure of the measurements.
Still knew the perfect oven temperature for baking biscuits.
Still remembered that cold butter was preferable over margarine.
What was I going to do with this strange new life?
Cook. The thought of it excited me. Cooking had always been one of my responsibilities at home, but unlike so many things, I felt an ownership of it.
It was one thing that belonged to me, that I could control; one thing I could make right, even when everything else felt wrong.
Stepping back into the kitchen felt like an act of redemption.
Sharing two meals with them was the barest attempt at connecting, a shallow dip into the deep waters of belonging.
I wanted to do more, something real, something beyond a gesture, something to show them my gratitude.
Years ago, in the simple act of transforming raw ingredients into something, I found my voice, my place, when I thought I didn’t have one.
And now, as I gathered ingredients, my hands moved with intent.
I wasn’t just making biscuits. I was assembling something fragile, a bridge perhaps, putting something together that had been broken, something I didn’t know how to fix with words.
I’d fold an apology into the mix, seasoning my regret with the only thing I knew how to give.
I measured several cups of flour into a mixing bowl, the white powder falling like snowflakes in slow motion.
I reached for the cold butter and cut it into the flour.
Though it had been a while, my hands remembered, moving with a practiced grace, finding the rhythm of this simple step.
It’s funny what you remember and what you forget.
But the body knows, retains its own memory.
The fork tines worked their way through the butter, breaking it into pea-size pieces that mingled with the flour.
Ms. Byrd had taught me how to cook a decade ago, days after our first interaction with Deacon Ridley.
Ms. Byrd knew there were lean and troubled times in our house.
She had eyes; she could see. She had ears too.
She knew that Mama left it to me to care for Lila, for the family to eat.
But she did not harbor any judgments against Mama or Daddy.
She had been married three times and divorced three times.
She had no children of her own, though she’d tried, but her heart brimmed with maternal love that she sought to nurture.
We became her unofficial daughters as she taught us the lessons that had slipped through the cracks at home, which included imparting her culinary skills to me.
Nearing seventy, Ms. Byrd had a head full of long white hair, and high cheekbones seemed to sculpt her face into a permanent smile.
She stood a short five foot one, but with a charisma that elevated her a few inches.
In her trailer kitchen, surrounded by flour, I stood with my hands coated in white while Ms. Byrd hovered behind me.