Before I moved here, I tried to make sure I remembered Mother's Day. We -- my brothers and I -- generally got her something or at least acknowledged the day. I wish I could remember what I actually did for her on Mother's Day for each year she was my mom. I wish I could remember the stuff I did for her, but I can only remember what she did for me.
This diary is about one of the things she did for me.
When I was a kid, we grew our own vegetables in the summer. We were in North Carolina, with its long growing season (and not evilly hot summers, like in Texas). My family was really poor when I was young. My brothers escaped a good deal of that poverty since we lived near my maternal grandparents for most of their childhoods, but I remember being on food stamps. I remember government cheese (the commodity, not the post-punk band). I remember this weird conversation from this era between my parents. The WIC program or whatever assistance program let us buy certain food only let us get all-purpose flour, not self-rising. My mom told my dad that she needed a flour sifter.
My dad shrugged. "Ask your mama for one."
My mom looked down. "What am I gonna tell her, why I bought all-purpose and not self rising?"
It seems so odd now, since I never buy self-rising flour. It was a class marker when I was a kid, though, apparently, at least to my mom. But that's not what this is about. This is about growing things, our own things.
We always rented. We were often just one month ahead of eviction, if that. I lived in about ten different houses before I graduated high school, in one of two different towns. Okay, that's not exactly true. I was born in Greensboro (0-6 months), then we moved to Liberty (6 months-2 years), where my dad's family was, then to Wallace (age 2-6), where my mom's family was. Then back to Liberty (ages 7-8), then to Wallace again (9-18).
At every house we lived in, my mom took over the landscaping. Where possible when we lived away from my maternal grandparents, we had a small vegetable garden. My mom grew summer squash and green beans and cucumbers. Probably other things as well, but what I remember are fried "squish" (squash cut long-ways, then floured and fried, so they look like fish), and cucumber pickles with bits of dill in them, and my mom canning green beans and getting burned from an exploding mason jar.
When I was a bit older, in that 9-18 age range when we were living in Wallace near my maternal grandparents, we helped my grandfather with his garden. His garden was damn near a prepare-for-the-apocalypse, forget-the-grocery-store plot of land. He grew just about any vegetable you can think of, and some you probably never heard of (I still don't know what the edible gourd he called kershaw really was -- my grandmother sliced it, fried it, and sprinkled sugar on it). My brothers and I were required to help in this garden, along with my mom and grandparents.
We learned how to put chemicals on the squash plants to prevent worms, and how to dig potatoes, and how to cut okra, and when beans and field peas are ready to pick. I shelled butter beans until my thumbs were raw. I know how to snap beans for cooking, and I know to wait until after the first frost before harvesting collards. I know that field peas can be snapped like green beans, or shelled like butter beans depending on their age. I also know that field peas are good for the soil and that they fix nitrogen better than just about anything else you can grow in a garden plot beside your house.
I also know how to freeze and can and give food away to those who need it more.
I hated those lessons when I was a kid. I hated how itchy okra and squash plants made me. I hated shelling beans and peas. I hated eating the same friggin' vegetables meal after meal after meal. There are only so many days you can eat stewed squash with onions until you just want to shove it all down your grandmother's sink disposal (what she called a Dispose-All).
In the back of my mind, though, I knew that every pod of okra and every hill of potatoes and every five-gallon bucket full of zucchini that I picked and prepared was a meal my mom didn't have to find the money for.
There was a different side of it, too, though, and that was the sheer joy of putting a tiny plant -- or, even better, a seed -- in the ground and letting it make food. I didn't recognize that when I was an asshole 13-year-old. But those lessons stuck.
I also didn't recognize then that I'd want to know how to prepare and preserve all that stuff, but I kept enough of it in my head that I recognized the instructions to my pressure canner when I read them.
That stuff -- that lore -- is in my bones, in my mitochondrial DNA. Passed down from mother to child, and now, in my tiny suburban yard, I grow vegetables. So far, I've planted radishes, carrots, shelling peas, snow peans, and field peas (also known as cowpeas). Soon, I'll plant pole beans, tomatoes, jalapenos, and -- in memory of my grandfather's excess and my grandmother's zucchini bread -- at least one zucchini plant.
Somehow, through the heat and itchiness and raw thumbs and aching back, I learned to love to get my hands dirty. I learned to love to see the stuff I put in the ground grow and produce something amazing.
And not just vegetables. In every house we lived in, my mom planted flowers. Even if we were there for just a few months, she planted something. She did it for me, too. In every rental place I lived in (since my ex, at least -- she avoided my ex), she visited and created a flower and/or vegetable garden. When I lived in Asheville, she took me to Home Depot and bought tomatoes, jalapenos, and flowers. When I lived in Durham, it was just flowers for the front garden. When I lived in Wilmington, we added cucumbers to the tomatoes and peppers and flowers.
And here, near Boston, she visited and planted a climbing rose, a hydrangea, a butterfly bush, day lilies, and two small beds of annuals. The perennials are still growing like weeds. And since then, on Mother's Day, I've replanted her annuals. Marigolds, salvia, dusty miller, and this year, lobelia. I sat there, digging in my own dirt, and I remembered her doing the same, dragging her oxygen tube through my yard, obviously causing herself pain, but determined to make stuff grow.
Of all the things she did for me throughout my life, of all the things she gave me, that is the most important. Today, with the flower and with the vegetables, I honor her. I miss her more than I can possibly say, and I wish she knew that what she planted continues to grow.
This diary is about one of the things she did for me.
When I was a kid, we grew our own vegetables in the summer. We were in North Carolina, with its long growing season (and not evilly hot summers, like in Texas). My family was really poor when I was young. My brothers escaped a good deal of that poverty since we lived near my maternal grandparents for most of their childhoods, but I remember being on food stamps. I remember government cheese (the commodity, not the post-punk band). I remember this weird conversation from this era between my parents. The WIC program or whatever assistance program let us buy certain food only let us get all-purpose flour, not self-rising. My mom told my dad that she needed a flour sifter.
My dad shrugged. "Ask your mama for one."
My mom looked down. "What am I gonna tell her, why I bought all-purpose and not self rising?"
It seems so odd now, since I never buy self-rising flour. It was a class marker when I was a kid, though, apparently, at least to my mom. But that's not what this is about. This is about growing things, our own things.
We always rented. We were often just one month ahead of eviction, if that. I lived in about ten different houses before I graduated high school, in one of two different towns. Okay, that's not exactly true. I was born in Greensboro (0-6 months), then we moved to Liberty (6 months-2 years), where my dad's family was, then to Wallace (age 2-6), where my mom's family was. Then back to Liberty (ages 7-8), then to Wallace again (9-18).
At every house we lived in, my mom took over the landscaping. Where possible when we lived away from my maternal grandparents, we had a small vegetable garden. My mom grew summer squash and green beans and cucumbers. Probably other things as well, but what I remember are fried "squish" (squash cut long-ways, then floured and fried, so they look like fish), and cucumber pickles with bits of dill in them, and my mom canning green beans and getting burned from an exploding mason jar.
When I was a bit older, in that 9-18 age range when we were living in Wallace near my maternal grandparents, we helped my grandfather with his garden. His garden was damn near a prepare-for-the-apocalypse, forget-the-grocery-store plot of land. He grew just about any vegetable you can think of, and some you probably never heard of (I still don't know what the edible gourd he called kershaw really was -- my grandmother sliced it, fried it, and sprinkled sugar on it). My brothers and I were required to help in this garden, along with my mom and grandparents.
We learned how to put chemicals on the squash plants to prevent worms, and how to dig potatoes, and how to cut okra, and when beans and field peas are ready to pick. I shelled butter beans until my thumbs were raw. I know how to snap beans for cooking, and I know to wait until after the first frost before harvesting collards. I know that field peas can be snapped like green beans, or shelled like butter beans depending on their age. I also know that field peas are good for the soil and that they fix nitrogen better than just about anything else you can grow in a garden plot beside your house.
I also know how to freeze and can and give food away to those who need it more.
I hated those lessons when I was a kid. I hated how itchy okra and squash plants made me. I hated shelling beans and peas. I hated eating the same friggin' vegetables meal after meal after meal. There are only so many days you can eat stewed squash with onions until you just want to shove it all down your grandmother's sink disposal (what she called a Dispose-All).
In the back of my mind, though, I knew that every pod of okra and every hill of potatoes and every five-gallon bucket full of zucchini that I picked and prepared was a meal my mom didn't have to find the money for.
There was a different side of it, too, though, and that was the sheer joy of putting a tiny plant -- or, even better, a seed -- in the ground and letting it make food. I didn't recognize that when I was an asshole 13-year-old. But those lessons stuck.
I also didn't recognize then that I'd want to know how to prepare and preserve all that stuff, but I kept enough of it in my head that I recognized the instructions to my pressure canner when I read them.
That stuff -- that lore -- is in my bones, in my mitochondrial DNA. Passed down from mother to child, and now, in my tiny suburban yard, I grow vegetables. So far, I've planted radishes, carrots, shelling peas, snow peans, and field peas (also known as cowpeas). Soon, I'll plant pole beans, tomatoes, jalapenos, and -- in memory of my grandfather's excess and my grandmother's zucchini bread -- at least one zucchini plant.
Somehow, through the heat and itchiness and raw thumbs and aching back, I learned to love to get my hands dirty. I learned to love to see the stuff I put in the ground grow and produce something amazing.
And not just vegetables. In every house we lived in, my mom planted flowers. Even if we were there for just a few months, she planted something. She did it for me, too. In every rental place I lived in (since my ex, at least -- she avoided my ex), she visited and created a flower and/or vegetable garden. When I lived in Asheville, she took me to Home Depot and bought tomatoes, jalapenos, and flowers. When I lived in Durham, it was just flowers for the front garden. When I lived in Wilmington, we added cucumbers to the tomatoes and peppers and flowers.
And here, near Boston, she visited and planted a climbing rose, a hydrangea, a butterfly bush, day lilies, and two small beds of annuals. The perennials are still growing like weeds. And since then, on Mother's Day, I've replanted her annuals. Marigolds, salvia, dusty miller, and this year, lobelia. I sat there, digging in my own dirt, and I remembered her doing the same, dragging her oxygen tube through my yard, obviously causing herself pain, but determined to make stuff grow.
Of all the things she did for me throughout my life, of all the things she gave me, that is the most important. Today, with the flower and with the vegetables, I honor her. I miss her more than I can possibly say, and I wish she knew that what she planted continues to grow.
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