The Garden on State Street

How the tomato taught me soil can transcend grief

I always put the tomatoes in the ground this week in June. They are begging to root themselves, and I dig a deep hole, pluck their lower leaves and drop them into the warm soil one by one. Soon tomato pruning season will be upon me, and my hands will become permanently stained from the “tomato tar,” no matter the scrubbing. This residue protects the plants’ leaves and also covers me in the unique smell of tomato in its prime. My shorts, hands, clippers, and even my hair smell of the earthy, vibrant, and acidic scent of the plant that began the process of healing my grief and helping me discover my truest self.

Every time I run my hands over a tomato plant, I am transported to my childhood. I recall my pink cotton shorts and light-up shoes that bring joy to any five-year-old. My long brown hair trailed behind me and tangled in the wind blowing from the calm spring-fed lake I swim in during summer on the northwest coast of Michigan. Giggling and running carelessly, I could feel the leaves of the veggies brushing me while I ran through the rows of my grandfather’s garden on State Street in downtown Harbor Springs, Michigan. With each pass through the rows, a new scent erupted alongside the undertone of the sweet smell of warm earth.

Even now, I can see my grandfather standing, smiling, and shaking his head at me, with his glasses and dark hair he had even late in life. His smile and wrinkles deep set into his face to show he spent more time happy than angry. He was glowing to watch me wander the rows of his one-acre garden, which was his other pride and joy besides me. My parents would drop me off to spend the day “helping” him many a summer between the ages of three and six, and the memories from those days have been etched into my mind in a glowy haze. 

Even in my mid-thirties, I remember it all so vividly. My grandfather would offer me things to try as his dirt-covered hands held them out to me. He would give me freshly harvested green beans that snapped without much force or a cherry tomato that burst in my mouth with sweet, acidic tones that felt like the sun erupting. I would help him harvest bushels of tomatoes planted in perfect rows so my grandmother could can them for winter.  

One hot summer day when I was five, he caught me eating the tops off of his broccoli. Seeing me crouched in the row, he laughed hard, rubbed my head, messed up my hair, and told me to move along. A loving way of redirecting me. After we finished our work, we would head inside and eat saltines with butter and homemade strawberry jam. We hid from summer’s heat in their dark kitchen. My tiny legs swung as I sat in the wooden chair at the dining table, patiently waiting for my snack. Every time he set down a plate of crackers with his dirty hands, he would tell me how this was his favorite snack, which also became mine over time.

I’m not sure he realized how much he taught me during those days just by virtue of who he was and what he did. His daily work in the soil taught me how to care for what the earth gives us and the importance of hard work. Watching him grow his veggies taught me to make the most of what we are given and the value of living simply. When he pointed out the tiniest details of the plants, he showed me how to see beauty in everything and everyone. In those early and tender days, his impact on my life was so significant that when I eventually had my son, I knew he would carry my grandfather’s name.

Those days didn't stay glowy and beautiful. The year I turned seven, the garden didn’t grow. The acre lot that usually lay ready for seeding a new growing season went fallow. That year as winter’s final days breathed into our lives, my grandfather’s life slipped from his body before the snow had a chance to melt over his garden. It was too soon for us all. The late winter winds left our lives with a deep void that would never be filled. Cancer is never fair, and this time it was no different. 

I remember it all as clearly as the days in the garden. Watching my grandfather fade from the earth in his bed at my grandparents’ home while my parents grieved impacted me deeply at that young age. Everything in my life changed when his soul left us. It took me years to understand how deeply his loss affected my young self. Just after his spirit left us, my parents’ whole life shifted as if his leaving was the puzzle piece that held everything together. That year, my parents also lost their business. With much uprooting, they chose to restart our lives across the country, far from anything familiar to me. I moved to a new state and a new school. There were new accents and cultures that were so different from the sleepy northern coastal life I had known. 

Being older now, I understand why my parents made the choices they did, but it felt like my life was collapsing at the time. My little bubble burst as a young child with the loss of my grandfather, who was like a second father to me. I remember it all so clearly, from the day we laid his body to rest on a cold gray Spring day as I watched my grandmother clutching the flag marking the years of service he gave to our country and the bagpipes playing to soften the sounds of her sobs. Then days later, in my grandparent's now-heavy-feeling home where my grandfather took his last breath. I patiently played as my mother did the work of sifting through my grandfather's things for my grandmother. I remember I peeked around the corner and watched my mother fall to her knees in grief while gathering his clothes from his closet in the bedroom I played in so many times just months prior. The light felt different that day as I watched my mother do tasks my grandmother couldn't emotionally handle. Those moments are still frames of life that were part of the changes that culminated with a packed moving van later that year that moved us to a place that felt entirely foreign compared to our small-town life on the Lake Michigan coastline.

In a new place, I struggled to find solid ground amid my grief and for years as a child. I struggled to reconcile how life could contain loss and still offer security. I would always feel my best back in Michigan, near the freshwater coastline, where everything was whole.

Years later, after I had become a mother, my mom and I sat in a restaurant on a wintery day similar to my grandfather’s last day 30 years prior. Something led us to talk about him, and while tucked in a booth in a brewery in northern Michigan, we cried together. My son, who carries my grandfather’s name, slept in my arms as we openly talked about losing my grandfather for the first time in my adult life. We mourned that my son would never know him but felt gratitude for the memory he would know. 

That day over beers and fries, I felt we tilled the land that had laid barren from grief in us. For years, we had left the memories of him untilled and barren in hopes that the unspoken would heal us, but at that moment, we opened the earth and brought oxygen to the soil so new seeds could be planted. We unearthed something that not only healed us but connected us that day. Later I realized how similar we were to the fallow garden left behind after my grandfather passed. For years, we had left the memories of him untilled and barren in hopes that the unspoken would heal us, but at that moment, we opened the earth and brought oxygen to the soil so new seeds could be planted. Sometimes I wonder if the people living there have any idea of the life and memories that were birthed amongst that soil.

Months later, my husband, son, and I moved into our home in Northern Michigan on the hill we call home now. I finally felt I had come back home, and the moment the sun revealed the earth after the winter, I knew I had to build my own garden. It wasn't just for me, though. I wanted the garden for my son to show him how soil can heal and connect us in more than what it places on our plates and the meals it will provide.

That summer, after a lot of hard work, we built a garden, and I planted my first tomato plants after many years of missing having soil to call my own. At the time, I didn't fully understand why the garden was so necessary for me to feel at home until I held that tomato plant in my hands. The acidic and floral scent filled the air. As my dirt-covered hands set the plant deep into the ground, the smell rushed me through my past; all I could see was my grandfather smiling at me. I instantly felt at peace in the northern summer sunlight. For the first time in a long time, I felt held in a way I hadn't felt since I was a young girl.  

Later that summer, I pruned my tomato plants while I stood in the garden under the rising full moon. The only sounds were the crickets singing to one another and the cooing Morning Dove perched on top of the house. The air was warm, but there was no wind. I was barefoot, and my hair was still wet from a dip in the lake. Standing there pecking away at pruning, I thought of how safe I felt, as if nothing could ever go wrong. At that moment on that still night, I felt a breeze move and rustle through the giant pines near the garden, and then it rustled the corn, and finally, it encircled me. Only a garden in August can offer a rush of smells like these ones: Basil, tomatoes, and marigolds all wrapped around me at once. I knew right then I wasn't alone, and I never would be while in the garden. It was then I realized the garden held something no place ever could: my connection to my grandfather. My plants and this garden would always be where my grandfather would be with me. In fact, I realized that he was always there, just waiting for me to come visit among the oily leaves of the tomato and the chalky stems of sprouting broccoli.  

Those tomato plants grew abundantly for us that summer and my son spent many days picking and biting them while the seedy red juice ran down his still round and soft cheeks, just like I learned to love tomatoes from my grandfather. Growing those tomato plants, I spent many days healing the grief from my childhood. Every time I wandered the rows of the garden that summer, I felt it brought me closer to my grandfather and, little by little, back to myself, whom I had been trying to return to for years. 

All I could ask daily was how plants can transport us like this. How can it connect us to those we love and have lost? How can plants tell stories even in their silence? How can the smell of a plant unfold such healing?

Now years later, I find myself with my son by my side in this abundant garden, holding a basket my grandfather made that my mom passed on to me. We gather handfuls of cherry tomatoes in the basket, and the smell of the warm earth fills us up. Even now, I can feel my grandfather with me. I wonder if my son feels him too unknowingly as well. How can't he? 

Whether my garden is a collection of pots or an acre lot, my grandfather lingers in the wind that blows through the plants rising from the soil. I can sense his presence when I am dirty and smell of the earth. Unsurprisingly this is where I feel the most myself and at home. When the broccoli grows tall, I always think of biting it off from the flowering stalks and seeing him smiling and shaking his head still. He is always there with me in every corner of my garden; he never truly left. I just had to find my way back. 

Someday my son will ask about his middle name, and I will tell him all about the man my grandfather was and how he always gave to those he loved, cared for the earth he was given to tend to, and the way I still can feel him in the garden every day. I will tell him that people we love can always be felt in the wind and places we had connected with them most. All we must do is be willing to meet them there and be present. I will tell him the story of discovering this for myself, hoping that one day when my time comes and he longs to be with me, he will also find me in his own garden floating over the cosmos.  

So this year, as I set those tomatoes into the ground and I find my hands turned dark from the tomato tar and soil, I see my hands just as I see my grandfathers. My hands are tanned and wrinkled now from the sun. As I gather the discarded branches from the tomatoes, fresh and alive still, and I lift them to my face and breathe deeply as I close my eyes in the summer heat. If I am lucky, which I usually am, I still see his smile in that garden on State Street. He's got dirt on his pants, his hair jet black, and he's asking me if I am ready for some saltines with butter and jam.