A Garden Helps Heal a Family

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/nyregion/neediest-cases-fund-garden-hope.html

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On the morning of her scheduled brain surgery, Sheila Young woke up and glanced over at her husband, always the early riser, and was surprised he was still in bed. She nudged him.

But his body was rigid, blood trickling from his mouth. Ms. Young’s speech, frantic and impaired by her brain tumor, was so jumbled that her son had to call 911. When they arrived, emergency responders tried to put her, rather than her husband, in the ambulance.

On that day in December 2006, Ms. Young and her husband, Michael, were treated at the same hospital in the Bronx. Mr. Young, who had bitten his tongue during a seizure in the night, learned he had epilepsy and severe heart problems. Ms. Young postponed her operation, but doctors monitored her situation because of a minor injury she suffered helping her husband from the bed. Waiting at home with her older brother, their daughter, Jada, then 6, worried whether she would grow up without her parents.

About a year later, Ms. Young underwent a risky, 12-hour operation to remove a benign tumor that wrapped around nerves on her face and pressed against veins on her neck. The surgery, while successful, paralyzed the left side of her face.

“I looked like a monster,” she said, adding that her left cheek sagged four inches. “Looking in the mirror, I wouldn’t see myself.”

Mr. Young, who had quit his carpentry job to help care for his wife, was unable to return to work. He underwent open-heart surgery a year after his wife’s surgery.

Family photographs frozen in time line the walls of the apartment. The couple, back to back, in evening dress, smile from the living room corner. Nearby, a teenage Ms. Young in a tweed suit stands with an arm around Michael Jackson in a New Jersey hotel lobby. In another, a 4-year-old Jada in a white gown, the proud winner of a Harlem beauty pageant, stands with her mother. They smile and wave.

After Ms. Young’s surgery, she would not have another photograph taken for six years.

The happiness captured in the family photos on the walls of their South Bronx apartment had faded. The stress of her parents’ illnesses turned Jada inward. She fell behind in school and failed classes.

In the family’s anguish, they found sanctuary in a nearby garden lost to piles of garbage and frequent drug deals. Where others saw blight, they saw potential.

On trips to the lot, the family joined neighbors, picking up trash and eventually clearing the land on East 139th Street to revive the community garden.

Mr. Young filled garden beds with bulbs, dug a pond, constructed storage sheds and built plots for some 20 neighbors to grow their own herbs and vegetables.

Jada, now 16 and typically soft-spoken, changes in demeanor once inside the gates of Padre Plaza/Success Garden. With authority, she can list every plant: “Serrano peppers, squash, mint, collard greens,” she said, laughing. She walked past the bridge and gazebo in the garden and toward a haunted house that was built days before Halloween.

Inside, green cobwebs stretched across the ceiling, ghouls and goblins with glowing eyes swung from posts along the wall and a holographic portrait of a child changing into a skeleton lay on the table.

Her father adjusted cobwebs in the entranceway. He built the entire house in a few days, Jada boasted, adding: “I did the webbing.”

The two, who often work together, transformed the garden for the year-end holidays, giving it a winter wonderland theme.

“It’s not just about teaching people about fresh fruits and vegetables, but about working together to get things done,” Mr. Young said. “It might sound crazy, but this place minimizes negative, outside forces and builds our community.”

The family has seen the healing power of the garden. Weak after his heart surgery, Mr. Young, now 55, rebuilt his strength tilling vegetables and finding a way to use his carpentry skills outside of a full-time job. When his health permits, he still volunteers daily in the garden. Jada took pride in every plant, memorizing all the varieties and building her confidence and self-worth, which has manifested itself in better grades this school year.

For Ms. Young, 55, healing came with visits to the garden in the months after surgery. Surrounded by children visiting the garden, she slowly overcame the fear of looking different. She realized the children did not care how she looked. She now leads the nearby Mott Haven Farmers Market, where she works as a volunteer every Tuesday.

With renewed confidence, Ms. Young got reconstructive surgery and Botox to improve mobility and realign her face. With consecutive operations, covered by insurance, her mouth is slowly untwisting, and she can now shut her eyes naturally. In 2014, she walked into a movie theater in Union Square in Manhattan and talked her way into a part-time cleaning job, her first job since her tumor diagnosis in 2006. There she earns $300 a month.

Still, the couple’s health problems have severely reduced the family’s income. Because of frequent seizures, Mr. Young has not been able to hold a steady job since his diagnosis. Living paycheck to paycheck, they receive $1,439 in Social Security disability payments each month, as well as $168 in food stamps. They pay $418 in monthly rent; the rest is covered by a government-assisted subsidy.

As the Youngs rebuilt themselves within the garden walls, they encouraged Jada to venture out to find other outlets to relieve stress. She joined Black Girls Rock, a youth empowerment and mentoring organization, and sings with Gospel for Teens, an ensemble and arts education program in Harlem.

She also joined Catholic Big Sisters and Big Brothers, an affiliate of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The organization provided Jada with $275 from the Neediest Cases Fund to replace lost reading glasses.

Now, once again, Ms. Young poses for family photos, managing a partial smile. Taped across the top of her bathroom mirror are the words, “My Black Is Beautiful.”

Ms. Young’s doctors recently offered to perform cosmetic surgery, promising to erase the marks of the last decade. But Ms. Young was not interested. “I don’t want to be 10 years younger,” she said. “It took a whole lot of time to get to where I am.”

She wishes her doctors could provide something else. “I want to smile again,” she said.