Washington College Magazine
Down the Garden Path
By Trams Hollingsworth '75 M'96
Whatever became of the alumni director whose inner child balked at the frenetic pace of modern office life? Trams Hollingsworth gave it up to follow nature's rhythm.
When I came to work for the College in 1987, the Alumni House was a low-tech operation. Mackey Metcalfe Dutton '51, Carolyn Athey '93 M'97 and I hunted and pecked out our Reunion brochures on typewriters. Then we cut and pasted our text onto folded paper and ran, usually barefoot, across the lawn to the copy machine in Bunting. We did have an "intercom system" in the office. We yelled up and down the halls and ran, usually barefoot, between each other's desks. We made each other laugh. We laughed a lot back then.
After a few years the Alumni Office got computers. These came with e-mails—first from Bunting and then from Boston and Bangladesh. Things like Reunion brochures and Board reports that had once taken days to produce seemed to take no time, so we could do it more often. Then came cell phones so we could work from our cars and showers. The psychological side effect of all this timesaving was a chronic sense of urgency. Which one of the 90 e-mails or 19 voice messages awaiting us each morning might have real impact on something really important? The answer, I gradually realized was, none. Mackey and Carolyn and I, and a growing staff at the College, were in constant communication with each other and the wide world. But we didn't run into each other's offices as much. And we didn't laugh as much.
Then one sunny Saturday morning I was at my desk writing a Board report when my computer bombed. Again. So I took out a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen and I wrote my letter of resignation. Then I called a friend who works as a gardener and asked if she would give me a job. Then I called my hardworking husband and asked him what was more important— my sanity or my paycheck? He granted that I could choose to keep whichever was most important to me.
For the last six years I have worked in other people's gardens. There are still some deadlines. Pre-emergents must be broadcast before weed seeds germinate; peas must be planted before it gets too hot. Like Birthday Ball and Reunion, there are seasonal events for which we plan, they happen in a burst of activity, and then we do the follow-up work. When that first blade of green daffodil stabs through last year's limp brown leaves, I know that soon there will be eight-hour days of green everywhere. This is more thrilling than a compliment from a stranger, more rewarding than any pay raise. In a while there are fields of daffodils. I am on my knees, face to face with them, in perfect quiet. When the blooms fade it's my job to pick the dead heads so they won't detract from the next garden event. Timing is everything in garden design, but oddly there is no sense of urgency in any of it. Mistakes can be pure pleasure. A rain shower can be the only vacation I need before I'm eager to get back to work—hauling mulch, placing stones, untangling a hose, studying the difference between the trespassing weed and the prized cultivar (because beauty isn't always a clue), photographing the black butterfly on the yellow petal, and then picking the beans our clients often share with us for supper.
At the end of each day I am usually so dirty that I have to leave my clothes on the back stoop before I head through the house. Always there's a message or ten blinking for my attention on the answering machine between me and my shower. I sometimes wonder if any of these messages might have a real impact on anything that's really important. But now I know that phones and computers don't have that power. Sun and rain have that power. After my shower I'll check my messages, then maybe run down the road to see a friend. I'll laugh a lot.
When Trams Hollingsworth isn't in the garden, she is treasure-hunting at the Crumpton auction.
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