Dear friend,
My garden, while more adequately trellised, organized and tended to, has only produced a fraction of the harvest it did last year. The summer before, I would go to the garden daily in August to try and gather all the plump yellow, orange and red tomatoes before they fell to the earth and became compost. I started bringing plastic containers of them to potlucks and dinner parties in hopes they’d be eaten in time. Well into the start of winter, I’d take out bags of frozen cherry tomatoes and watch them thaw and burst into bright pasta sauce while it snowed outside my kitchen window.
This year, the long stems have less flowers. The few green tomatoes that bud remain small and hard. So far, I’d estimate I’ve gather less than three dozen tomatoes that were ripe enough to eat. Another gardener a few plots over had to uproot all of her tomato plants in July — taken over by a rare but fatal leaf curl disease.
On Sunday, while socializing after a work day at the garden, a woman not much older than me, showed me her small plot. She identified the various green plants she’d been tending to. Noting the produce that had not blossomed this year she said, “It looks like no tomatoes this year.” She tossed out the sentence with a casualness that caught me off guard. Spoken so calm and at peace, as though she’d missed the bus but knew with great confidence that another one was coming soon.
I’ve always loved stories and storytelling. As a little girl, I used to read voraciously. I’d spend much of my free time at the library searching for a book to live inside of for a while. There was something so lovely about the way that an entire world could fit between a glossy front and back cover; that a few hundred pages could grasp the most unwieldy emotions. That the chaos and uncertainty of life could be tamed through plot; romanticized by imagery.
As an adult, I find myself often searching for grounding narratives. Trying to understand what roles someone plays in my life and what role I play in theirs; if a moment is the ending of one story or the opening scene of another. Unconsciously, I’ve been trying to play my part well for years. Believing that with study and hard work the chaos of life might make sense. Might be made small and soft enough to hold in my hands.
Perhaps the great heartbreak I’ve experienced this year isn’t about any particular person. It’s not the tomatoes that didn’t return or the job that proved more demoralizing than inspiring. It’s all the stories that I’d invested in each. The stories in my head and my heart that had been crafted and nurtured with such loving care. The plots and character traits, climax and conflicts that were all meant to come together and create something contained and beautiful.
When I was seven or eight years old, I had a summer babysitter who would encourage my love of stories by co-writing with me. On sheets of wide ruled notebook paper, I would write a dozen pages or so in pencil, carefully tearing out the sheets and offering them to her as the first chapter of our book. She would spend time writing a few more pages in her gorgeous grownup handwriting and return them to me. I’d find my beloved character doing something unexpected: Having an adventure, making a meal, encountering a new person that hadn’t existed in my imagination. In this way, I would come to know my protagonist more. Would write in dialogue and plot points that would end up in places I had never anticipated. I’d receive my babysitter’s carefully written pages back with surprise but always acceptance. A peace and excitement about who the character was becoming.
It has been a much harder practice learning to extend that kind of whimsy and curiosity to myself. To my own life. To not see the collaborators that are constantly shaping my life as threats or unruly teammates, but to embrace each addition as a better and truer kind of art. To believe that the often painful impressions still create a more honest and vibrant life than one I could have created alone.
Of the few tomatoes that have come to life, most of them are from seeds I dried at the end of last summer. Another gardener was on her way out and had a container of tomatoes unlike any I’d seen before: an ombre purple that faded into a rich red. She offered them to me and I took them, delighting in their beauty. When I bit into one later that evening I fell in love. A few days after that, I sliced one or two of the tomatoes open and carefully removed their seeds washing them clean with water, drying them on a paper towel and wrapping them in cling wrap to try and plant the following year — this summer.
I think about all the hands that have tended to those seeds over the years. The knowledge that lives in them and continues to survive in difficult conditions. I think about the ways I’m connected to the woman who gave me those tomatoes, absentmindedly. How the story that led to these sweet fruits resting in my hand is bigger and more dynamic than I can ever understand. Even the story I’m telling here is a packaged little balm, helping me make meaning of the things that don’t make sense.
Some years, the air is gray and the fruit doesn’t ripen and this is what the universe has to offer but the story doesn’t stop. The labor is not in vain. The plot twists that make me side-eye my collaborators —- the sun, the air, a lover, a friend — can invite a deep despair or resentment. Then I remember that there have been many summers and there will be many more.
With love,
Jas