Red, ripe and so tasty, fresh off the vine where they ripened in the hot sun, they called me to them. I came, so eager, with the salt shaker from the kitchen in hand. They were so big it took both my young hands to grasp it well enough to pick it. My teeth breaking through the taut skin brought seeds and juice pouring onto my face and down my shirt. I would stand in my mother's garden and eat my fill adding only a touch of salt to brighten the deliciousness. Late afternoon sun, filtered through the walnut trees, gleamed off the shiny red skins pointing me to the next luscious fruit. Tomatoes waiting to be plucked from the thick green vines lovingly staked up by my mother's hands.
Memories that stay with us all our lives bringing us a sense of joy, connection and belonging, are treasures to be cherished. I grow tomatoes every year to continue to claim that wholeness and sense of self that I learned from my mother's garden. She worked hard to care for us as children. I was the oldest of four children. My mother had the privilege of working at home while I was growing up. She was what we now call a "stay at home Mom". It was not the rarity in the fifties that it is today. Many of us "Baby Boomers" had the experience of having a mother at home when we came home from school.
I say my mother worked from home though she did not have a "job" that paid her a regular pay check. Her work paid the family in so many ways, things that money can not buy. The love she put into the garden she grew for us to enjoy, the clothes she sewed for us to wear to school proudly, the dinner she had on the table when my father came home from a long day at work bonded us as a family. We were not just six people of varying ages living under the same roof struggling to get through the day. That is not to say that there were not hard times. As a young mother, with one baby, no car and only some spare change as capital, she walked me in the stroller. She invested in some flour and butter. She picked apples from a neighbor's tree. My mother taught herself to make apple pies. These were not just any apple pie but ones that would put Marie Callendar to shame. Once she had perfected the process she made small apple tarts that my father would sell at work to his colleagues.
Much has changed in the world since my childhood. The list of technological changes is extreme. The social and societal changes are fairly extreme as well. Raising a family on one income is no longer easily attainable for the average family in the middle income range. Single parents and step-parents are more common than happily married, never divorced, couples raising their own children. Raising children is much more of a community affair now than it was, given the increase in pre-school and infant/toddler daycare programs for the working parents. For many children today and their parents, growing a garden and experiencing the joys of summer harvest, first hand, is unknown.
In the interest of sharing a connection to the earth and its bounty with my grandchildren as well as the neighborhood children, I will continue to grow tomatoes. I myself was a single mother and my own children did not have the joy of a summer harvest in their backyard. I want to make sure that my grandchildren can come visit and experience the love!
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