The Garden in Edgewood, 2024—current.

Chan Ting was one of my mom’s former patients. Before I learned this, his children Sivchristen, Peter, and Salina and her daughter Sophia, were already good friends of mine. Gardening is a popular tradition for many Cambodians, particularly elders like Mr. Ting, who has a plot next to Salina at the Edgewood Community Garden. A reclaimed parking lot behind Edgewood Highland Elementary School, the garden is a few minutes from my current home in Cranston, Rhode Island, where the majority of Cambodians live. Every year, since Sophia was small, the Tings have tended to their plots. Without my own grandfather, I look to Mr. Ting as what my grandpa could be like, and I look to Sophia as the younger version of me.