“I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.” 
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

When starting my first garden, I couldn’t get the old spade to make a dent in the ground.

Each jab into the hard-core earth jarred my shoulder. No yielding.

I found the spade rusting under a pile of ‘one-day-useful’ junk in the back shed. Someone’s warrior garden tool.

A few more sharp jabs, angling the spade the way I saw my father do, and a splinter of soil cracked.

I looked at the spade. And it at me.

One of us wasn’t cut out for this job.