Several times this morning I asked myself why. I was kneeling in the moist black soil smoothing out two long rows of dirt and patting them flat on the top. The biggest part of putting in this garden has been the chore of pulling out the roots of St. Augustine grass, so thick the tiller would hardly go through it – the man I paid to come till it up probably lost money on that job. And I'm still pulling up grass. Every few days I do one more row, tossing out the pieces of metal and tree roots, the occasional trinket from a long-ago Mardi Gras, pieces of an action figure toy – headless and one-legged. Today I dug up a metal match box car.
I smiled as I rinsed it off – a Gremlin – a different color from the one I used to own, the one I paid full sticker price for – even though my friends told me not to buy it. My Gremlin was Wild Plum, a couldn't-miss-it-purple color that my new husband hated so much he sold the car while I was out of town flying a trip. Forged my name and sold my car because he didn't like the color. We'd only been married a few months. Should have told me something.
That was more than thirty years ago, and it still makes me angry. I was an airline stewardess when I bought that car. Back then being a "stew" was a good job, and one of the only jobs women could get. Nurse, teacher, stew, or secretary – take your pick. Not much else was available, and being a stewardess was considered by some to be a "glamour" job, especially after a book called Coffee, Tea, or Me came out. My grandmother Susie shoved a copy at me a few months after I had been hired and said she'd just read it. I think there was a "Hmmppffhhh" sound after that, but I could have been imagining it.
I wonder if she read the part about the "Mile High Club." They made that up, near as I can tell. Anyway, I knew a couple of girls who were ex-stews. They told me I'd be good at it. I asked them what a stew did, besides fly around. Turns out I was good at it, mainly because, like my Daddy, I'd "never met a stranger." I loved to sit in a restaurant in some strange city for hours writing in my journal, observing the people, or sketching the scenery from my hotel window. On longer "layovers" I'd check out the art galleries, or find a great bookstore to browse. I'd watch what books people read and sit in the aisles and talk to passengers on longer flights, about where they were from or what they did for a living, politics or the recession and the ending of the Vietnam War. I learned much more from that job than any school could teach me.
In some ways I have always resented the idea of the prevailing opinion – the consensus – the "in" thing to do, the "cool" car to buy. I know I resented the idea that you "couldn't do something". Like "you can't make a living as an artist." "You should major in education, and be a teacher – there's always a job for teachers." "You shouldn't live alone."
Doing something just because it's the thing to do never worked for me. Doing something because I would be good at it – now there's a different subject. A teacher once stopped as I was sitting with a few other friends watching the cheerleaders practice, and she said "Susan, you ought to try out for cheerleader." Me? I'd never even thought of it, but I did try out, and was happy being a cheerleader for the last three years of high school. I took piano because I was good at it, but I wasn't good at practice. I wanted to be an artist because I was good at it, and I didn't worry much in high school about making a living – that was not going to be necessary, because I would get married and have children and paint while they were napping. I guess that's what I thought. I really don't remember thinking about a career at all until my mother died and my father lost his business and his self-esteem and I had to start thinking about money.
I tried art school, but it was the late 60's and Haight-Ashbury and Abstract art and nothing about it made any sense to me. So I quit, and went to Atlanta on a bus and interviewed for three hours with a Delta Airlines personnel officer. When I called my daddy to tell him I was going to be a stewardess, "You'd better come home, you've lost your mind," was what he said. But in the end my family was proud of me. Even my grandmother. And that's saying a lot.
I started an interior design business at the urging of some friends – they said (you guessed it) "you'd be good at it". For five years I was very good at the decorating part, not so great at the business side of things, but I learned to be good at that also. After my divorce ended my design career, I took my Honda in for service one day, and the sales manager hired me to sell cars. I was really good at that, probably because no one was expecting a female car salesman. (I learned that only idiots and stewardesses pay full sticker price for a car.)
It seems like the things I do on my own I question so much that I sometimes talk myself out of doing them at all. Like planting a garden. This is a spring ritual for me, and what happens more often than not is that I think about doing the garden, imagine what I'd plant, look at the seed catalogs, make trips to the garden center, visualize how wonderful it would be to see the fruits of my labors. Then I'd find an excuse not to do it this year- ensuring that NOT having a garden AGAIN would go on my negative account – the things I haven't done or have left undone, as the confessional puts it. Many things can be left for another day, and it won't be too late. Putting in a garden isn't one of them. You have to do it when the time is right or wait till next year.
So, this morning, I smoothed my two rows of mounded black dirt, adding two bucketfuls of manure – the non-smelling kind, and I thought of my grandfather. Both my grandfathers, the one I knew and the one who died before I was born, were both farmers and sons of farmers. The package of Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans said "Since 1897", so I'd guess this is the same variety they planted back then. I counted out twenty or so of the brown seeds and dropped them in a little water to soak while I made one last pass over the two rows. My grandfathers would not have believed that you could buy rolls of black fabric to spread between the rows to keep the weeds down, just like they couldn't have imagined buying manure in yellow plastic bags – odorless manure!
I thought of my mother's father, whom I called Grandaddy, and knew he'd have been proud of this garden. I smiled. With my finger I poked a hole in the row and planted each seed about three inches apart. I thought about what I'd use for stakes and how I'd tie string crisscross fashion like I'd seen Grandaddy do. Maybe I'll can these beans and put them up like my mother-in-law taught me. Probably I'll give most of it away.
When I had planted the last seed and straightened up, my aching back and flushed red face told me I'm too old for this – but that's a lie. I told myself that this was a waste of time as I'll surely go to the farmers market every Saturday just like I did last summer and buy all the fresh vegetables from the growers who set up there, so why should I be messing with this garden anyway. But then I decided that I'd still like to see what would happen with this garden. Maybe I'll have a chance to talk to some of those farmers at the market about my pole beans, and my tomatoes, herbs and such.
Maybe I'll find that farmer from St. Elmo that remembered my great-granddaddy's farm and actually remembers driving a tractor back from Papa Warley's place one day – they had either bought it or borrowed it, he couldn't remember. I might even drive to St. Elmo and get someone to show me where Grandpappa's six hundred acres were, the "old Warley place", where they tell me all the cabbage was sent straight to New York by the boxcar load. I'll stand there and imagine my father as young boy of eight or nine flying his toy airplane in the fields. I'll imagine my grandfather coming in hot and tired trying to give my grandmother a kiss, and she pulling off her apron and telling him to go on and wash up for dinner.
One week later, and all but three or four of those beans have popped out of the ground. Some are five inches tall already. I am amazed at how vigorous they are, and all in such neat rows. I made a teepee-style trellis that stands about eight feet tall and has five sets of "teepees" supported by a framework of lattice strips at each end and across the top. There are pink sweet-peas growing up the center support pole, and purple verbena at each end. This garden is so pretty already that I just look at it and smile. The marigolds all around the edge are on their second blooms and everything is thriving. I can already smell the pole beans cooking in the pressure cooker. Why aren't those tomato plants doing anything? Does anyone know what you do with lemon balsam?
I have an old canvas painting of my Great-Grandfather Langley that I painted years ago, and I stuck him on a post to guard my garden. He used to sit in his overalls on the front porch and delight all the children by taking his false teeth out. I think he'd be proud of me, too.
Week three. What a mess. The pecan trees have leafed out, stealing half my sunshine, and they have dropped golden tassels all over the garden. The snails are out too. My pole bean leaves have holes in them, and some are turning brown or yellow and curling up. I have spent hours upside down looking at insect damage and thumbing through the book looking up each disease symptom. I have been to the local Feed&Seed and they have sold me sprays and dust and "snail bait" – not good for the environment or the snails. Anyone can plainly see that this is not a money saving venture!
The healthiest plants in the whole damn garden are the volunteer watermelon plants that came up after I threw one out the back door last summer – those darn things are everywhere. Is it too late to put the grass back? Maybe talking myself out of doing things isn't always a bad thing after all.
No, even if my pole beans don't make, or my tomatoes aren't as rich and meaty as I remember Granddaddy's were, it is worth it just for these memories I keep having just from digging up a little bit of back yard. I laugh when I remember some of the other garden attempts, like the year I planted corn. I planted the seed thick because I was sure that only a percentage of them would germinate – they all did, and I spent a month trying to thin the plants out to give them room to grow. They all died in one of the worst droughts we'd ever seen.
That was the year my marriage died too, but it had never had a good start in the first place. That was one of those things I wish someone had talked me out of doing. As I remember it, they did try, but once I had decided to marry I didn't question it again, until it was way too late to revive it. We tried and he tried and I tried, but somehow the conditions weren't right or the soil wasn't right or who knows why but it never did really get off the ground.
It just took twelve years to crash-land, and when it did it was the first of many deaths. I almost died of toxic shock syndrome. Grandmother Susie died next, followed by Grandaddy, and then my other grandmother (I called her Granny) went into a nursing home. My father came back from Costa Rica to die. My cousin was stabbed to death by his girlfriend. My son's godfather committed suicide. After ten years in a nursing home, Granny died.
Six years ago I moved back to Alabama. Nobody forges my name anymore, or tells me what kind of car is "cool," or what job a woman "should" have. I went back to art school and moved into a house built a few years before my father was born. This house has big tall windows, ten-foot ceilings, an upstairs studio, and a front porch swing. .
Ever since my kids left home I have lived alone, except for books and cats. I planted catnip for them and pole beans for memories.
Copyright 2003 Susan W. Hales
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