Harry and the Garden of Eden 

   I knew a man named Harry whom everyone thought was the neighborhood grouch. He cared a great deal about his lawn and didn't like dogs and children running through his yard. One afternoon one of the neighborhood dogs convulsed and died, and his owner took him to the veterinarian, who said the dog had been poisoned. Another dog died a few days later and that dog's veterinarian said he had been poisoned, too. People immediately thought Harry had done it. Parents warned their children to stay away from Harry's house, and not to let their dogs go near his property. Someone asked Harry if he had poisoned the dogs and he said no -- that he had put out rat poison to kill squirrels, but nothing that would make a dog have a convulsion and die. A few days later when Harry went out to water his flowers, he found someone had cut his garden hose up into several pieces. After that, Harry kept pretty much to himself, and the dogs and children stayed away.

   A few months later the civic association was having a fund drive to put trees and shrubbery around the neighborhood, and Harry was one of the people I was assigned to canvass. To my great surprise and pleasure, he was cordial and talkative. After writing a generous check, he asked me to stay for a drink -- and more out of curiosity than anything else, I agreed. We went out into his garden, which was splendid, and I admired what he had done.

   Harry beamed with pleasure and told me something astonishing. "I look on my garden as a miniature Garden of Eden," he said. "Doing this gives me an idea of how God must have felt creating the world. I nurture and water the flowers, and prune back and destroy and remove the weeds. I make some places dark and others light, and some dry and others wet. I control the insects, the moisture, the fertilizer -- everything." I was so surprised I was speechless. By the time I could think of asking him how could he keeps out Japanese beetles, black spot, and crabgrass I was on the way home and wondering if I had been talking with a crackpot or a genius.

   Actually, Harry was probably neither. He was most likely a naive innocent who thought that whatever it was he did in his garden would make the world a better place. If he could root out a weed or protect an azalea from the red spider mite, he was beating down Satan under his feet and establishing a little bit of Heaven right here on Earth. At least that's what I thought at the time. Now I know better.

   I've always thought everyone should have a Passion, something unrelated to work or school or everyday life, something that would let us escape the common and ordinary. A Passion that would lift our spirits and renew our vision: something that would give us a new and refreshing experience. I have been lucky enough to have had several passions. Some of them have been coin collecting, rose and orchid growing, tropical fish, calligraphy, photography, and singing in a choir. And I've used them all up. Now I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the Civil War, but I find it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for it. But at least it's something to keep me from getting bogged down in the nuisance de jour.

   And so maybe what Harry did in his garden was his Passion, but I don't think so. There's a small difference between a Passion and an Obsession, and what it is, I think, is whether you own it or it owns you. When I was going through my divorce I decided I would invent the recipe for The World's Best Pecan Pie. Restaurants from all over the world would call asking for my recipe. Chefs would beg me for my secret. People with tears in their eyes would line the streets wherever I went and thank me for making something so beautiful, so delicious, so breathtakingly fabulous they could die at last, knowing they had encountered Ultimate Perfection. But actually making up recipes and baking pecan pies was the only way I could stop thinking about my divorce. When I was trying to decide between brown sugar or white, or dark corn syrup or light, or sour cream or sweetened condensed milk, I wasn't thinking about attorneys, accountants, custody battles, alimony, child support, visitation rights, or the breakup of my family. I had something to think about that I could control, and I could stop thinking about things that could control me.

   A few years ago I finally made what I think is the best pie I've tasted. Modestly, I call it Mystic Sweet Communion Chocolate Pecan Pie, and it is so good whoever tastes it will be in love and charity with his neighbor for at least ten minutes. And now, I don't make pecan pies anymore. I make Key Lime Pie or Walnut Pie or Fresh Blueberry Pie, and the intense desire to create The World's Best Pecan Pie is gone - or no longer necessary.

   I don't think Harry was the one who poisoned the neighborhood dogs, and I don't know if the neighbors ever realized he wasn't as evil as they thought he was. I do wonder, however, if he ever found his own Garden of Eden and found it no longer necessary to try to build a new one.

E. Noel Preston, M.D. is a pediatrician in solo practice in Peachtree Corners. 6063 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 202-A, Norcross. (770) 448-1553.

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