I wore a sleeveless sundress up to my garden this evening. Typically, I wear my yoga clothes or a bathing suit top, but I had gone down to the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament earlier and had my dress on still when I decided at dusk to go pick some tomatoes. I picked a lot of tomatoes and folded my skirt up halfway to hold them all. I walked happily back toward my house, holding my dressful of tomatoes. As I reached the door there she was, very briefly, smiling back at me from my reflection in the glass: My grandmother Williams. I went on into the kitchen and put down my hull, and then stopped a moment to remember the woman who taught me how to garden so many summers ago.
It was her last summer she was living here on Earth, although none of us had any idea at the time. The summer of 1979, I was 10 years old and my dad's mother, Grandma Williams had to have cataract surgery. This was at a time when it was still an actual surgery and not a laser procedure and she was not allowed to stoop or bend for 6 weeks, so I was recruited to stay with her at her house and help her. It was ideal for both of us. I got to get off of the farm and spend the summer "in town" and she didn't have to wait for my mom and dad to come over to be able to do things.
One of my biggest jobs would be to keep up the garden that had taken the entire backyard since my grandmother's farming family moved to the city in the early 1900s. I was no stranger to helping with the garden. I lived on a family farm with my parents and cousins, but also helped my grandmother pick mostly green beans and apples to this point. She also had the whole family hike miles into the woods with her each summer to fill milk jugs full of wild blackberries for her to preserve and to use in cobblers in addition to what she grew. This year though, I would do all of the weeding and staking and picking so that my grandmother's eye could heal.
Each day we would make our way down the sloping property from the house to the garden. As we walked she, as a former teacher would tell me the name of each flower and tree in the big yard and quiz me. I remember her telling me to get any of the bright tomatoes before the birds saw them and would be attracted to them. She would hold out her skirt of one of her cotton sleeveless dresses and I would bend for her and fill it with tomatoes. I can still see her in her blue one with white polka dots with her two bobby pins holding the white bangs of her curly short bob off of her forehead. Her voice has faded a little from my memory, but I can still see her face clearly, looking down at me from her almost 6 foot height and her beautiful blue eyes and sweet smile. I have been thankful these last 35 years especially for that last summer that was just me and my grandmother, and maybe never more than today when I realize, that even though she died at the beginning of September 1979, she visited here briefly to remind me that it is not because I am becoming a middle aged Southern lady that I have felt this compulsion to grow tomatoes, but because I am Pauline's granddaughter.
