Bounty

Photo: Vince Lee

Day 1463 – Day 1481

I’ve had a pretty good life.  I’ve had impressive achievements and rubbed shoulders with impressive and really cool people.  I’ve had the chance to travel through Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.  I’ve had plays produced, writing published, and paintings shown in galleries.  By all accounts, I’ve had a really good life.

But this year, a dream that I have nurtured all my adult life finally came true:  I grew my own food.

This may seem like a kind of nerdy or simple dream-come-true, and one that is on trend with the millennial crowd.  But, it is a quiet and deeply soulful dream I have had since I was in my twenties.  There was more to the dream, but anyone who has known me for any length of time and with any depth will know that I have longed to return to my roots and be One with the earth in a very deep way.  This doesn’t mean I’m a country girl.  I’m happy to grow food in a city.  I simply wanted to grow my own food. Both of my sets of grandparents were farmers.  I am the first of my family to live in New York and London and to have a master’s degree from a world class Ivy League institution.  And yet, what stirs my soul is to work in the garden to satisfy my needs, with organic methods that harm nobody and that help our pollinators and planet.

Were I to really return to my roots, I would be making my own cheese, carpets, knits and clothes.  But there is something so incredibly grounding in eating all organic vegetables that I grew in my 200 square foot plot.  Over the summer, I’ve bought vegetables only twice: onions, potatoes, carrots and garlic because I had not grown them.

Each of us has a symbolic language unique to ourselves that help us make sense of the world.  A symbol will mean one thing to me and will mean very different things to you.  One of the most potent symbols in my lexicon is the tomato.

When I was growing up, my mother loved tomatoes.  I loved tomatoes.  And when I visited my Russian grandmother, one of the very few words I learned was the Russian word for tomato.  Tomatoes symbolised summer, the garden, being in the kitchen with my grandmother, and a simple delight for my mother.  Whenever we travelled, mom would put tomatoes in the cooler to snack on.  It was a bit of home we took with us, wherever we went.  And so, tomatoes are a comfort food that remind me of my mother, and my grandmother.  Tomatoes, rather than borscht, are really the quintessential symbol of my heritage and lineage.   Saving seeds is a way to carry on the tradition and preserve our living history.

Anyone who knows me well will recognize that the symbol of the tomato infuses my life with meaning.  When I returned to Canada, I asked my long-time friend, TCBC how successful she thought my repatriation would be.  I am aware, and have been aware for some time ,that the statistics on successfully repatriating after living one’s adult life elsewhere are grim.   Her response to my question was:  It depends on how deeply you plant your tomatoes.   And, after the third love of my life – with whom I shared the dream of growing our own food  – dumped me without explanation, we eventually embarked on the process  of reconciling.  Just as I was beginning to let him into my life again, I dreamed that he was serving my tomatoes to others.  While, consciously, I was not aware – or would not admit to myself – what that dream meant, at least my unconscious mind knew.  I take a petty and perverse pleasure in the knowledge that while he was spreading his seed elsewhere during our reconciliation, his own first-garden’s tomatoes died from lack of care.

Tomatoes are a potent symbol for me, of love, trust, security, home, family and contentment.

This year, I have more tomatoes than I can eat.  I eat tomatoes every day, and I may not even get through these tomatoes by next year, if I can or freeze them.  I have given away tomatoes to family and friends, and the food bank, and still, I have a veritable bounty.  There is no way you can compare organic tomatoes, fresh from the garden, to those that are sold in the supermarket or even at the farmer’s market. Maybe I’m sentimental, but I believe that you can taste the love that went into growing your own vegetables.  And, if you can’t, perhaps it is just the sense of pride that flavours them.  Given that I have a sensitive immune system, there is deep self care involved in eating my own organically and longingly grown vegetables.

I understand why Thanksgiving and the festival of appreciation and gratitude coincides with the harvest.  I find it difficult to put into words the feeling of abundance that comes from harvesting a grocery bag full of food every couple of days from my own garden.  And, there is security in freezing food for the winter.  It strikes a primal chord that harkens back long before my grandmother’s time, when survival really was about keeping warm, having shelter, water and enough food.  We are so busy with the latest trends and hippest restaurant and wanting the coolest holiday that we can easily overlook the simple gratitude of having our survival needs met, and the accomplishment of having met them with our own labour.

This has been a lifelong dream come true and for that reason, the success of my garden this year has been perhaps the achievement I feel most profoundly, gratefully,  and joyfully.

My tomatoes took root.  This does not guarantee that my repatriation will be a success, or that I will never have another broken heart.  But, it is an accomplishment that positions me within a strong tradition of survival against the odds and with self-sufficiency.   It shows me that I can achieve not only things that are pretty cool, but things that I dream of doing – cool or not.  It may be late in life to learn that lesson, but not all of us have been raised to believe that we actually can or should achieve our dreams.

Along with my tomatoes, I have planted that seed.

Photo: Sergei Pesterev

For what are you most grateful this week?