GREEN GENES

My maternal grandmother loved her gardens. By the time I was 9 years old her peony, rose and iris gardens, vegetable gardens and orchards not only caught my attention, but drew me into a deep fascination and new way of being in touch with cycles and process. I am only now beginning to understand…

The first awareness I had of Grandma’s magical world occurred in April 1959. She was a brittle and cantankerous woman with practically everybody. I was scared of her. For some reason, that day, I stopped by her house. I was out on my Huffy seeking adventures that the safe little Kansas town made possible.

I could tell Grandma was home because I could see laundry flying on the clothesline against the blue spring sky filled with big white fluffy clouds. I parked my bike by a series of buckets that lined the garage. Later I found out that the buckets were there to catch rainwater for her plants.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. When I yelled out, “Grandma”, she called up from the basement and told me to come down. I had never been in the basement at my grandparent’s house before. I felt the dark dampness and a significant drop in temperature as I descended the stairs. I remember swallowing hard and feeling a tightening that was taking over my tummy.

She was bent in two, leaning over hundreds of tiny pots and trays of dark, rich dirt. “Watcha doin’?” was all I could get out. She twisted around in her cotton-print dress and snorted her reply, “planting.” It wasn’t a friendly “planting” but I assuaged my desire to run back up the stairs by reassuring myself that my mother and aunts had grown up to be adults with this woman and probably, I would too.

Then out of the darkness, she extended her hand toward me. Her body was still bent over with her head down. She didn’t look up. Some tiny seeds dropped into my trembling hand. I had received my initiation into her world. I’m not sure if anyone else in my family ever got to enter her gardening universe, but I know the lessons I learned in her domain turned my life upside down.

It took us hours that day, and several others, to plant all those seeds and place the pots carefully on little shelves she had built in front of the windows around the dank, stone basement. We worked in silence, which felt to my nine-year-old self like an ancient, sacred ritual. I followed her lead and because she offered no words or direction that told me what to do or how to do it, I became adept at watching.

Every day I found myself descending those stairs to be with my new master and her plants. Sometimes she would run her hands over the tops of the little green shoots and talk right out loud to them. She would tell them that they were wonderful. Beautiful. She said things to those plants that apparently never occurred to her to say to her own children, or grandchildren.

When school let out for the summer, I found that I wanted to go to Grandma’s as soon as I got up every morning. I didn’t try to explain this impulse to anyone, because I didn’t understand why it felt so important to me. There was just no place else I wanted to be.

One morning I arrived to find my grandmother outside, leaning over a flowerbed surrounded by all our little pots. She didn’t look up when I came into view but handed me a funny-shaped metal tool with a worn, wooden handle. I got down on my knees beside her and began to imitate what she was doing.

We transplanted the sprouts into the ground all morning. At five minutes to noon, she suddenly stood up straight and literally ran into the house. I followed her, a bit bewildered and perplexed. She pulled off her sweaty, dirt-covered frock and slipped into a clean, starched dress. This, she covered with a full apron with hand-embroidered flowers on the pocket. I wondered if handy-work was her wintertime garden, and if I would be old enough this winter to learn how embroider flowers on my clothes?

She stirred the soup that began bubbling on the stove. She took cold cuts and cheese out of the refrigerator and placed them with quick precision onto a turquoise plate. Beside the meat she put a pile of carefully counted pieces of thick, white, spongy Wonder Bread. She was moving so quickly around the kitchen that I slid under the table to keep out of the way.

Just as the teakettle whistled and the coco clock struck noon, my grandfather walked through the door. He sat down at the table without a word and began to make a sandwich. Grandma served him with grace in silent, slow motion. It was as if she had been in the kitchen, suspended in the same position he’d left her when he departed for work at eight. It was as though we hadn’t been outside digging in the warm earth all morning.

At five minutes to one, our secret intact, we both watched my grandfather pull out of the driveway. Before the back end of Grandpa’s Chrysler was even out of sight, the dirty clothes were back on and Grandma had her hands in the earth again.

These gardening years lasted until I grew up and went away to live my bigger, more complicated life. It’s funny how every winter I find myself looking to embroidery my feelings and stories into flowers on clothes or towels. When spring comes, just like the bulbs poised underneath the last snow, I feel something awaken in me. The old magic flows through me, and I can’t wait to get my hands into the dirt. I watch the flowers in my own gardens break through the earth, bud, blossom, and fall away. What wonderful gifts my grandmother shared with me! Feeling the cycles of life, and learning to tend life with love fills me with sheer delight, day after day, season after season, year after year.