She had been planting the summer garden with her mother since long before memories were fixed in her mind. This year she would sew the seeds herself, going carefully row-by-row just as Mom had taught her. She wanted to make her proud. Some nights she would dream about gardening as a young child, when her father would have been there to help out. She would wake slowly from those dreams, trying desperately to hold onto them, looking to them for clues, never really sure if they had grown from memories or if they were fabricated by her mind as a way of filling in the holes.
Planting season always started with the tomatoes; probably because there was no real effort in growing tomatoes. They just seemed to have a way of springing back to life on their own, no matter how long or how harsh the winter. It was as if they had a story to tell — one that trailed off in dreamy thought as the crisp autumn leaves brushed by, and then came back to life mid-sentence upon the smell of freshly cut grass and the hum of lawn mowers. “Like Nanna” she thought, looking over to watch her grandmother swing lazily in the old hanging rocker, quite obviously lost in thought.
She longed for that time – the time before memories – when she might have helped her dad place the cages around the tomato plants after she and Mom had finished thinning the overgrown clusters of seedlings; when her dad would water the magical seeds she had planted in the holes that Mom dug.
“Magic,” she thought. It never ceased to amaze her how those little bland-colored seeds could materialize into the most beautiful collection of plants and flowers – the yellow trumpet that gave birth to the zucchini and the deep rich purple of the voluptuous eggplant.
Slowly it started to mist – the gentlest of sprinkles that she only noticed because her face started to feel damp and the loosened ringlets around her face began to stick to her skin, no longer tickling her each time a breeze blew by. “Daddy.” A memory. The hose. “Stop daddy” she would giggle. “Richard enough” her mom would say as she pushed to her feet and smoothed the damp tendrils away from her face.
“Sweetie, would you be a dear and pour me some more lemonade?” Her grandmother’s request broke the reverie. “Sure Nanna. Let me just wash my hands.” The pitcher sat closer to Nanna on the swing than to the girl in her little patch of garden, but she was always happy for the chance to join Nanna on the oversized rocker. “Tell me a story Nanna.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time when your dad was a little boy and he wanted to go fishing in the bay with his friends? Grandpa was out of town for work, so he wasn’t around to help and your dad didn’t have any bait or a pole. He and his friends hatched up a plan to grab muscles from the jetty on the ocean side and hang them from string over the bay wall. Unfortunately by the time they collected all the muscles they were too tuckered out for fishing and decided to save those smelly things in a bucket in the backyard. Oh my, did I have a surprise when I opened the kitchen window the next morning to let in a little fresh air. That boy — he sure was something….”
“Oh Nanna – don’t tell me stinky fish stories. Tell me beautiful stories, like the time he stood outside mom’s window with the tulips he cut from your yard.”
“Oh Sweetie, you know that story so well you could tell it yourself. Go run along and check on that garden of yours. Those vegetables aren’t going to tend themselves and I believe we’ll be quite sorry when August rolls around and there’s no zucchini pie or fresh cherry tomatoes for the salad.”
And so went the summer — a series of daydreams and interwoven stories over sips of lemonade; the two of them rocking side-by-side, with the inches between them marking a generation in time. Occasional glimpses of a single tear on Nanna’s cheek – “I do believe it’s getting warmer by the minute” she would say, pretending it was perspiration that needed to be wiped by the little white handkerchief. “It’s been a while since you’ve tended that garden. Why don’t you go check on those tomatoes?”
And off the girl would run, four or five times each day, to make sure that the garden hadn’t revealed any new secrets in her absence. Eventually she would go with kitchen bowl in hand, ready to grab up any newly ripened offspring the garden had to offer. First the zucchini that she liked to pick young — “Perfect for grilling” Nanna would say. And the cherry tomatoes picked last, placed gently on top so as not to break — the warm red juice of the newly ripened fruit to be carefully guarded, and later savored.
This year’s harvest was an extraordinarily good one. Fed by the food of deep thought and tears of love shed by a girl who blossomed into womanhood in the company of her tomatoes.
Thanks for reading through to the end. As I’ve mentioned, I’m much more comfortable in the world of nonfiction, but sometimes it’s fun to play in a different medium. If you’d like to check out more of my fiction, hop on over to Annie, or The Gift of Losing the One. For updates on new fictional stories, you can visit my fiction writing sandbox, or to learn more about my nonfiction writing project, hop on over to the Call for Submissions page.