2001-04-09

One time, when I was a proud second grade student at Seth Boyden Elementary School, our annual Mother's Day plant sale was the event I waited for. Because, for the first time, I would be able to buy more than potted plants for indoor usage. It would be the first time I could spend the five dollars or so my dad would give me on something we could grow in the ground. We now lived in a house.

We lived in apartments until that year and then finally purchased a large lovely green house with a backyard to grow whatever we desired. I bought my mom a few strawberry plants and still remember paying 50 cents for two small plants in their soft, thin plastic containers. We planted them near the trees and watched them grow.

And they grew, spreading across the plot of soiled land edged against the grass. They showed up in the lawn, mowed down before getting too large. They invaded the perennials and popped up in the spaces reserved for the annuals. They spread and spread, some 25 feet into the neighbor's vegetable patch. My 50-cent investment had become the predominant feature of our gardens.

I remember summer evenings outside watering the gardens while my mother made hamburgers or hotdogs on the grill. The live smells of damp earth and smoky barbecue, looking for ripened strawberries and vegetables. When there was a large bright red strawberry that easily came off of the plant, I would wash it in the hose water and bite it. They were slightly sun warmed and the juice dripped onto the grass.

One summer the war against the strawberries occurred, as my mother and neighbor pulled and cut back to reclaim some of the earth the strawberries had taken over. The raspberry plants I had bought that year were finally able to thrive, my mother began adding more plants to where the strawberries had been and a few plants remained, slowly spreading but watchful eyes kept them in check.

Since then, the trees have been removed and the area was converted to a large 10 by 30-foot garden with silly stone statues included. We dug holes, planted flowering shrubbery bordered by smaller plants, scattering wild flowers to fill in the spaces. For a weekend, we made a new garden and for about a month we weeded all the dandelions and other unwelcome guests.

And then the fire I've alluded to happened and the garden had debris in it, it had weeds in it as we moved to a temporary home, the garden was no longer a garden but a mess of flowers and whatever could get its roots in. We lived in a house last summer where we did not plant flowers; we did not have little jelly jars of pansies on our kitchen table or vases of daffodils in the hallway. We honestly could care less about where we were living. There was no watering or weeding; there were no summer evenings with strawberry juice running down my chin.

Finally, after the summer had past, the fall slipped by and the winter grudging lived through, we returned home. Coincidentally, 17 years to the day that my parents signed the deed to the house. Our house is not finished, I am now living in somewhat of a construction zone.

We painted for days, room by room dragging our drop cloths through the house until there was nothing we could do, it was left to the questionable contractor. The shingles near the window where the fire started are still charred; the sun porch has no windowsills. Each day a little more gets done and we our house becomes the home I love.

I stood outside, marveling at being home, at being resettled in the place we had all looked forward to being and saw one little strawberry plant. Among the large patch of garden, where bulbs were sprouting up against the hay-like dead grass and weeded neglect, there was a little strawberry plant. Behind me was the pile of empty boxes, dry wall ends, and so much trash that I think of Fresh Kills, the largest man-made mountain of trash in Staten Island that was recently shut down. I realized there was one thing I could do besides move boxes around endlessly that are waiting for rooms to be done before they are unpacked.

And I have begun to tackle the garden, starting with the rose bush that had a vine-like weed wrapped into its thorny tangle. I pulled weeds, cut back long shoots of stem, cutting my hands like they haven't been cut since I lived with a cat we called Bitch Kitty at Barnard until my mother suggested I use gloves. I pulled up grass, placed earthworms that came up with root balls back into the ground. I trimmed the rose bush into some that will once again have the large pink flowers I like to cut short and place in shallow vases.

I worked dirt under my fingernails and felt alive, I felt part of the house I loved again. As Spring begins to announce itself in little ways like the chestnut tree which budded overnight, I began to fall back into what I remember being. Long months waiting to be home, being caught in a transitional zone where nothing changed: I did temp work, quit temp work, looked for jobs, went to see apartments over and over since last May. I became more severely moody than actually needed in being Tara. I became highly frustrated and excessively intolerable.

And I just wanted to move onto the next step of my life, my shit-25-is-next adulthood with heating bills and work gossip. I chopped the rose bush back and remembered my life as I wanted it to be and as it should be. There is something about the home you grew up in, the home where you discovered the world as you know it and being able to be in that home that reminds you of who you are.

I am inquisitive as a found a long ago chopped back branch where ants had moved in, and cut it open until I found the fat queen, 3 times the size of her loyal servants. I am organized as I attempted to make some sort of neat shape to the edged of the lawn near the bush. I am strong as I pulled vines wrapped infinitely deep. I am kind as I resisted the urge to squash creepy bugs crawling under rocks.

I fell back into myself, no longer feeling the frenzied urge for my life to not be what it had presented itself with. I felt at home, not just with the happy structure behind me but with my life, what it is, how it has been and what I am doing next. The ancestor of my first strawberry plant showed me the perseverance of life and they way things are.