A memory today in honour of my mother Shirley who would have celebrated a birthday today, if she had not died twelve years ago.
When I was growing up, my family had vegetable gardens. Not just at home, where the vast majority of the yard around the house had been converted into gardens full of tomatoes, green peppers, eggplant, okra, beans, and several other veggies. We also rented two other plots of land outside of the tiny town I grew up in. One we called Ericson's because it was on the farmland of an elderly farming couple called the Ericsons. And one was called the Plot.
The Plot was even further from home than Ericson's plot, and we usually went on the weekends.
We would get up early on the morning and pack up the car with shovels, rakes, jugs of water, and rags to wipe our sweat. We would ride out to the countryside to spend time under the sun pulling weeds, watering plants, harvesting the vegetables and inevitable sweating! There were seven people in our family at that time, and the vegetables from all these gardens went a long way in feeding us, even through winter, when we ate veggies that were canned and stored in the summer for the cold months.
Working in the Plot was hard work. We sweated and got filthy. Our bodies ached from crouching to pull weeds, our backs ached from carrying heavy buckets of fresh veggies and jugs of water. I was the youngest and remember working here even when I was 5-6 years old, sweating alongside my older siblings. I will not lie and say that I loved working out there. But I can honestly say that I have good memories despite the hard work. And at the centre of those memories is my mother.
My mother was a matriarch like one reads about in novels whose legacy spans generations and inspires courage. She had had a terrible childhood - filled with fear, death, rejection, depression. She was a strong woman who hid most of her emotions, having learned that they could be used against her. She loved her children as fiercely as she had wished she could have been loved. She viewed the gardens we worked in as cornerstones of her ability to provide for her family. We were not rich growing up. We were not very poor either. But there were many times when we ate literally only what we harvested from the gardens and what food pantries and our family's small income could provide.
But she also knew how hard it was for us to work in those gardens. She knew we watched the neighbourhood kids who lazed and played their way through the days, riding their bikes, watching TV, playing games with each other. I mean, we played and had games too. We read more than anyone in our neighbourhood, owing partly to the fact that when we were young, my mother literally threw the TV in the front yard (I was in my 20s before we got another one, and by then, the only child at home). We had many hours of free time when the work was done, on rainy days, in the evenings when it was too dark to see the gardens. But Mom knew anyway that the work we did was hard and often a little boring.
She tried to make things fun for us when we went to the Plot. She used to pack ice water in Coleman coolers. Sometimes we had lemonade. We had sandwiches and sometimes chips. There were always fresh tomatoes to be sliced and had with salt and pepper sprinkled on top. And we took breaks where we would lay in the shade of trees and feel the breeze on our bodies, cooling us.
But there was one special tradition she had, and that's the memory I have for today. I have no idea when this tradition started. She would bring a bag of Jolly Rancher hard candies. And every so often, she would call us from our work and hand us each a candy. It helped with our thirst because we would suck the candy and our mouths would not feel so dry. And it was a welcome treat. We all had our favourite flavours, I guess. Mine was the watermelon candies, followed by the green apple. I also liked the grape and orange flavours, though the cherry was my least favourite.
I can still remember hearing her call us over to whatever task she was doing, pulling out that bag of candies and doling out those bright, smooth rectangles of sugary goodness. We would run back to our work, a smile on our faces, the flavours bursting in our mouths. And we would go back to work while carefully sucking that candy, making it last, knowing that even if the work was hard, even if other kids were playing, we were helping ourselves.
We were helping feed our family. We were helping feed families at our church when we took our produce to them and gave it away. We were building muscles and earning scars. We were creatures of sun and wind. We learned to appreciate breezes that cooled our sweat and water than washed our dirty bodies. We knew that food came from hard work, not from cans or neat stacks in the grocery store.
And we knew a mother's subtle, quiet love in her thoughtful gifts. To this day, though I rarely have Jolly Rancher candies - indeed, I hardly can find the candy in India where I live now - when I unwrap a smooth pink watermelon candy and pop it into my mouth, I am transported to a time that was simpler though still hard. And I know that those hours under the sun helped make me who I am. And through all my memories runs a woman who also helped make me who I am.
Happy birthday, Mom.
When I was growing up, my family had vegetable gardens. Not just at home, where the vast majority of the yard around the house had been converted into gardens full of tomatoes, green peppers, eggplant, okra, beans, and several other veggies. We also rented two other plots of land outside of the tiny town I grew up in. One we called Ericson's because it was on the farmland of an elderly farming couple called the Ericsons. And one was called the Plot.
The Plot was even further from home than Ericson's plot, and we usually went on the weekends.
We would get up early on the morning and pack up the car with shovels, rakes, jugs of water, and rags to wipe our sweat. We would ride out to the countryside to spend time under the sun pulling weeds, watering plants, harvesting the vegetables and inevitable sweating! There were seven people in our family at that time, and the vegetables from all these gardens went a long way in feeding us, even through winter, when we ate veggies that were canned and stored in the summer for the cold months.
Working in the Plot was hard work. We sweated and got filthy. Our bodies ached from crouching to pull weeds, our backs ached from carrying heavy buckets of fresh veggies and jugs of water. I was the youngest and remember working here even when I was 5-6 years old, sweating alongside my older siblings. I will not lie and say that I loved working out there. But I can honestly say that I have good memories despite the hard work. And at the centre of those memories is my mother.
My mother was a matriarch like one reads about in novels whose legacy spans generations and inspires courage. She had had a terrible childhood - filled with fear, death, rejection, depression. She was a strong woman who hid most of her emotions, having learned that they could be used against her. She loved her children as fiercely as she had wished she could have been loved. She viewed the gardens we worked in as cornerstones of her ability to provide for her family. We were not rich growing up. We were not very poor either. But there were many times when we ate literally only what we harvested from the gardens and what food pantries and our family's small income could provide.
But she also knew how hard it was for us to work in those gardens. She knew we watched the neighbourhood kids who lazed and played their way through the days, riding their bikes, watching TV, playing games with each other. I mean, we played and had games too. We read more than anyone in our neighbourhood, owing partly to the fact that when we were young, my mother literally threw the TV in the front yard (I was in my 20s before we got another one, and by then, the only child at home). We had many hours of free time when the work was done, on rainy days, in the evenings when it was too dark to see the gardens. But Mom knew anyway that the work we did was hard and often a little boring.
She tried to make things fun for us when we went to the Plot. She used to pack ice water in Coleman coolers. Sometimes we had lemonade. We had sandwiches and sometimes chips. There were always fresh tomatoes to be sliced and had with salt and pepper sprinkled on top. And we took breaks where we would lay in the shade of trees and feel the breeze on our bodies, cooling us.
But there was one special tradition she had, and that's the memory I have for today. I have no idea when this tradition started. She would bring a bag of Jolly Rancher hard candies. And every so often, she would call us from our work and hand us each a candy. It helped with our thirst because we would suck the candy and our mouths would not feel so dry. And it was a welcome treat. We all had our favourite flavours, I guess. Mine was the watermelon candies, followed by the green apple. I also liked the grape and orange flavours, though the cherry was my least favourite.
I can still remember hearing her call us over to whatever task she was doing, pulling out that bag of candies and doling out those bright, smooth rectangles of sugary goodness. We would run back to our work, a smile on our faces, the flavours bursting in our mouths. And we would go back to work while carefully sucking that candy, making it last, knowing that even if the work was hard, even if other kids were playing, we were helping ourselves.
We were helping feed our family. We were helping feed families at our church when we took our produce to them and gave it away. We were building muscles and earning scars. We were creatures of sun and wind. We learned to appreciate breezes that cooled our sweat and water than washed our dirty bodies. We knew that food came from hard work, not from cans or neat stacks in the grocery store.
And we knew a mother's subtle, quiet love in her thoughtful gifts. To this day, though I rarely have Jolly Rancher candies - indeed, I hardly can find the candy in India where I live now - when I unwrap a smooth pink watermelon candy and pop it into my mouth, I am transported to a time that was simpler though still hard. And I know that those hours under the sun helped make me who I am. And through all my memories runs a woman who also helped make me who I am.
Happy birthday, Mom.
No comments:
Post a Comment