What Shapes Us

I was haunted all summer by a fractured, but clear memory that has stayed with me for 40+ years.



I'm four, maybe five. It's summer. I've come to the favorite place in our large backyard in Boise, Idaho - my mother's garden. The memory begins here, in her garden, as I'm walking between the jungle of tomato plants that tower over me, pushing the branches away from my face. I feel a little like the men who stumbled upon the pyramids in Egypt - I'm searching for treasure. I step deeper into the jungle and I find the biggest, reddest tomato I have ever seen. I have to use both hands to pick it from the vine, and time freezes for a moment as I contemplate whether I should eat the tomato, warmed by the sun and sitting in my hands, here and now, or step out of the secret, quiet jungle to enter reality and find the salt.



I bet you can guess what I did.



I began attending school soon after, and my involvement in my mother's world promptly ended. I never enjoyed the magic of her garden again, even though she gardened all through my school years. But the memory of that tomato, that tomato warmed by the sun and so huge I had to use both hands to hold it, has lingered with me, pestering me to grow my own tomatoes. And somehow it never happened . . . until this past summer.



Steve made a planter for me, I filled it with dirt, and I planted a number of plants, but it was the tomatoes who spoke to me. I actually went out in the mornings and sat in the grass next to the planter to stare at those tomato plants. It made me happy. I waited for the flowers, and when little green peas began peeping from the dried buds, I was thrilled. It seemed to take forever for those little peas to grow into green tomatoes, and even longer for them to turn red. I was waiting for the day when my fractured memory could breathe again, almost forty years later.



It did finally come, multiple times. Faxon enjoyed many of those rebirths with me, as he is the only one of my five that enjoys a fresh tomato, warmed by the sun, and picked from the vine to be eaten immediately. Because as in the fractured memory, I didn't leave the jungle for the salt. I ate the tomato, right there in the garden.



Today, I looked at my garden and realized it was time to let it go. The last tomato was picked and eaten just before it began raining. The season has ended. The plants need to be torn out.



I'm already anticipating next year's garden. What seeds - of plants and of memories - will be planted next season?