A Weed Garden In Madison

When I first arrived, I tried to adjust. One of my earliest lessons came in the garden. I admired a skinny and elegant bright green plant with sunny blooms that looked like fireworks. A relative standing nearby corrected me without hesitation: “It’s a weed, you idiot.”

That moment has stayed with me. It revealed something about the culture I had stepped into. Beauty and worth were already decided. To see something differently was not treated as curiosity but as error. And this did not come from a casual observer. She was a scientist, established and confident, someone whose career had been built on translating research into funding. She was not an exception. She represented a type I would meet often: credentialed, certain, and quick to dismiss.

At first, I went along albeit seething. I stayed within the safe spaces of conversation. When dialogue moved toward discomfort, I allowed silence or avoidance to close it off. It felt necessary to adapt if I wanted to belong. Sometimes I went apeshit and let them know my inner thoughts unfiltered.

Over time, the pattern became clear. I was the one adjusting. Others reserved the right to withdraw whenever engagement crossed into territory they did not want to enter. I saw it most clearly when I said I was not troubled by a police car burning during the protests. Her response was immediate: “Oh, you’re one of those.” And with that, the conversation ended.

What I came to understand is that this culture runs on selective engagement. Certain topics are welcomed. Others are ruled out. Certain expressions are embraced. Others are marked for removal. Progress is measured by how well comfort is preserved, not by how much is risked.

That lesson has been useful. I no longer confuse accommodation with kindness. I see boundaries for what they are, and I no longer reinforce them. What began as a correction in the garden became clarity. And now I tend what I was told not to admire. A weed garden, and it is beautiful.