Growing Things

My mother is a grower, a grower of children, of plants, of faith. She has always nurtured those around her with kind words and a helping hand. In my youth, she always had plants, from giant elephant ears in huge pots that are older than me to aloe vera in small pots that soothed sun kissed skin. She would work endlessly in garden rows weeding and watering. I loathed it. I would lay in the sun on the deck of our pool and watch her puttering in the heat and think she was a crazy person. She was always trying to get her children to help, to find the joy in the planting of something and watching it grow to bear fruit. I would whine and pout and trade any chore to not have to venture the few steps to the garden for any reason. It was always there and yet I cannot recall any time I willingly ventured into it. I cannot recall anything she grew other than tomatoes and that, only because she would make homemade salsa.

Growing up in small town Texas, my only thought when I graduated high school was to find the first city and live the urban life and so I did. I ran hard and fast to those city streets where delivery men would bring you everything from pizza to pharmacy items, where a car was superfluous and the train took me everywhere I needed to go. There was noise on every corner and the pace was swift. Patience was neither a virtue nor a necessity as rushing was a part of the game. The only gardens I passed were well groomed borders outside high rises and apartment buildings. Concrete replaced grass and no tree was older than me much less older than three generations. My few attempts at adding potted plants to my urban dwelling, proved fruitless. Actually, I could kill them at quite an alarming rate. I once killed a cactus and an ivy, so I gave up the art of growing things, much to my mother's chagrin.

Once my oldest daughter came of school age though, I started seeing our apartment life through her eyes. I started asking those questions of the right school, where would she ride a bike, where would she run? The answer was inevitable. I happily gave up the urban life for that corner of the world next door to my mother. Returning to small town Texas took something of an adjustment. In the city, you never made eye contact. People who did were either crazy or selling something, so when I walked into our local grocery store and the entire check out counter turned and smiled and said, "Hello", I jumped about 3 foot high. I had forgotten what it was like to be welcome, to be an individual instead of just another number in a long line.

There were other adjustments. Patience here, is a virtue and a blessing as the pace is set not by clocks or deadlines, but by conversations. There is no running in and out of the store. Here, people do not let anyone pass without a hello or at least the nod of their head. Traffic, well, what little traffic there is, is not in any hurry to get anywhere. Missed lights are just that, missed. You simply wait for the next one.

I found myself on several acres of land but what to do with it, so last year I decided to plant a garden. Oh horror of horrors, I was becoming my mother. So I consulted books and the Internet and bought the appropriate tools and began to cultivate a small area for tomatoes, squash, onions, carrots and watermelons. I also had cantaloupe, pole beans and cucumber. My mother that grower of growers came to see my progress. She seemed fairly pleased but underneath her brave face I know she said a silent prayer for each plant as she foresaw their doom. My previous track record as her guide, she believed I would soon prove to be a mass murderer. I couldn't blame her really. I mean, a cactus, really, who kills a cactus?

So every available hour, I spent weeding and watering. What I found though was that it wasn't the work I had once thought it to be. These tiny plants were in my care and how could I let them be suffocated by bull nettle and dandelions or let them grow thirsty in the Texas sun. It wasn't any different than the same nurturing I would never deny my children. My children who unlike their selfish mother, found such pride and yes, joy in the growing of things. Some days they beat me to it. They would check each plant and make reports on new blooms, new baby watermelons, where the bull nettle was trying to take hold. They would walk the rows with me and ask questions and give their intriguing theories on how the sun and water could make anything grow."Just like us, huh, mom?" Yes, I would say, just like you.  We harvested squash, we made salsa from our own tomatoes and onions, we looked desperately for any type of watermelon recipe to keep up with our production.

The planted garden though, brought our attention to the other things growing in our yard. We found blackberries, figs, and wild grapes. Again, the google searches ran wild for recipes. My children happily smashed grapes and figs for jelly, but even greater was that I realized that google did not have all the answers. It was like my mother who had been there all along came into focus. I finally had something solid to share with my mother the grower. She spent several afternoons, with her grandchildren and sure gel, ladling hot fruit syrup into Ball jars. She would step outside and smile at the garden I now lovingly tended. I wonder how many times she giggled at the irony.This year we planted bigger. The planning beginning well before the winter ended as each child was allowed to pick their own plant. One chose a tomato plant called a Lemon Boy. It produces these almost neon yellow fruit that are just as yellow on the inside as on the outside. Each day my son would travel to the garden and talk to the plant like it was one of his best friends. He would notice each new leaf, each bloom and when it bore its first fruit he was like a dad in a delivery room, flushed with pride but not sure what to do. Today, I rushed to harvest tomatoes, jalapenos and chilies before the rain forced me inside. I spent the rest of the afternoon canning my harvest. My mother does not have to come this year to show me how it's done, she simply enjoys the fruits of my labor.

She looked at my garden the other day with a wistful smile. "What are you thinking?" I asked. "I was just trying to picture what the land looked like before you started this beautiful garden. It's funny, but I can't remember the weeds." She said.  There my friends is the lesson in joy, in growing things and in life. Once you make that step, that joyful step towards something new, something passion demands whatever it may be, the ugliness you left behind becomes vague and indistinct. It was there in your past but now, all that remains is the beauty.

My mother is a grower. A grower of children, of plants and of faith. Her faith was the one I did not see in my youth. Her faith that her children would one day be a grower as well. She did not know what we would grow, but she knew we would. Her children have brought her 12 grandchildren so far. We all live very different lives in very different ways, yet I see her in each of us. Our passion for education, our faith in our children and in my new love of growing things. It is a simple joy, to harvest what one has planted, but no less a joy. It is a joy that I pass to my children as my shocked mother has passed it to me. In my search for those human connections, I found one very close to home. My mother has taught me many things as mothers do, but this simple joy of growing things, I will treasure, always.