{INCH BY INCH...}

..row by row. Gonna make this garden grow...

We picked our first garden veggies this weeked; namely a very large and lovely cucumber and a zucchini! Josh really enjoys taking care of the garden...and so do I! Next year, we are going to expand quite a bit, build a greenhouse and begin my plans for a big BIG English garden. We have about 2 acres of backyard (and about 40 of woods; preserved pinelands) so there is plenty of room to have a wonderful garden. I want Josh to have a beautiful back yard to run around and play in, complete with all kinds of little nooks and hiding spots, overgrown trellises and arbors...lots of places to retreat to when you need a moment to find some peace.

My pop-pop's yard was like that and it was a wonderful place to grow up. I want to give that to Josh...and eventually, one day, to my grandchildren.

 

This was how I remember my Pop-pop's garden. By the time I was born, he had scaled it down to almost half of the flowers he once planted, but it still was amazing to me as a child; silly pink flamingos and all....

And so, one hot August afternoon while he was out tending his garden, the hourglass of my Pop-pop's life swiftly ran out, and he passed away. A lovely old soul mingled and danced with the frangrance of the late summer flowers, swirled up to the Heavens and disappeared from this earth altogether. His was a life so full, so laden with experience and wisdom and the memories of lifetimes, and yet, it was just too soon for me to let go. I was devastated when he died, but in some small way, happy that he went quickly, his heart just stopped, and he fell to the ground, enveloped by the aroma of scarlett begonias, a cushion of wild petunias and zinnea offering him a final resting place. His light diminished. I often thought that is how he would have wanted it....

I came across some old slides some time ago when I was cleaning out my parents house before it foreclosed. My Pop-pop was very much like me....or I should say, I am very much like my Pop-pop. He scrapped (WAY before scrapping was a "hot" hobby), he organized his pictures, sorted his negatives, everything meticulously labeled and journalled with his tell-tale tiny handwriting. He understood the importance of heritage, of legacy, of leaving something of substanence for the next generations. He wanted me to carry it on because he knew my mom wouldn't.  My Pop-pop left everything to me, even the house because he knew I would value those things, cherish what he cherished, hold dear long times forgotten and carry them headstrong into the future.

But since I was only 14 when he died and really too young to understand what was going on, my mom had the house signed over to her. They sold it, and most of the furniture and heirlooms in it. They didn't even get my Pop-pop a headstone. When I go back to work, I will buy one for him. It's a vow I made to myself to not let his memory be lost, overgrown with grass and weeds.

And, the rest of the things he did leave to me, his coin and stamp collection, old Lionel trains, boxes of early century cast-iron toys, displays that were painstakingly detailed so I would know how they were to be set up again, souveniers from his trips across the country, the crystal collection he brought from England... all were stolen when my mom allowed a neighborhood boy to stay in their home to "help him out."

First she lied to me about Jeff staying there, telling me that he was not living there, he was only "helping out" doing some work around the house. Lied to me because she KNEW I would have called the police and kicked him out myself, a known herion addict and drug dealer, repeatedly in and out of jail; his own mother refused to have him live with her...  It wasn't until one of her closest friends called me and told me she was concerned that I drove to my mom's house and confronted her, asking her WHY would she have him there, why she lied to me, telling her he was leaving TODAY. Once again, she espoused the virtue of the "Christian" way of life, helping a soul in need, confusing helping with enabling. 

I waited for Jeff to come home, and while I waited, I went to my old room, a room he and his girlfriend had invaded along with their innocent baby son. Needles and dirty diapers lay strewn about the room, the stench of unwashed bodies and desperation filled the air, making everything appear dirty, wrecked. Disgusted, I noticed my small, old wooden lockbox peeking out from underneath the pink flowered bedskirt of my brass daybed, the box that contained some of the more valuable coins of my Pop-pop's collection. The lock had been broken and all that was left were some tarnished old wheat pennies. He had taken everything.

Furious and full of fear that the worst had been realized, I ran about my room, checking all my hiding spots for my valuable memories. Gone, it was all gone. Speeding down the steps of my second floor bedroom, falling down 4 steps, I ran down the first flight, then down the basement steps, once more tripping and falling to the cold cement floor, bloodying my knees in the process. It was all gone. ALL the boxes that I had carefully labeled only a few weeks before. Gone, everything stolen. I had taken the time just a month before to buy plastic bins and label everything that was mine so I could bring it to the house where Stephen lived. I had made it easy for Jeff to steal.

In the few days since I had been to my parents house, the place was trashed, cleaned out and everything, all my Pop-pop had left me was gone, taken out of the house by him during the cover of the night and sold at various pawn and antique shops in and out of the area. He worked quickly, time was of the essence knowing I would visit often and notice immediately what was missing. My mother, oblivious, stupid, ridiculous. Thinking she was helping Jeff by giving him a key to the backdoor to sneak in at night so my father would not know... knowing she was doing something she shouldn't because if my father found out he was sleeping upstairs in my old room, he would have killed him... She was so oblivious she did not even notice that the crystal had been completely rearranged in the all glass cabinet, leaving only the un-valuable broken pieces pressed up against the clear doors as a cover.

I spent days and weeks after the incident calling pawn shops and antique dealers in the area trying to recoup some of my losses. A few pieces turned up here and there, but for the most part, it had been moved quickly and no one wanted to take responsibility for purchasing stolen items. After all, they didn't care where the valuables came from. I also spent much of that time on the phone with DYFS and Social Services, trying to find out how this baby got lost in the system, both his parents ex-convicts, known addicts and dealers. How could they possibly care for a year old baby? It was horrific to me to think of what transpired in my old room, under my mother's nose. I was a least, successful in that endeavor; social services tracked the mother down in a crack house in Camden and the child was placed in the grandmother's home.

My mother, once again, had let someone into our lives who would hurt me beyond repair. A pattern that had been repeated again and again until I could take no more. I swore I would not forgive her for this, how could she let him do this? HOW could he steal boxes of my valuable memories right out from under her? HOW could she have not known that they were drug addicts, and were subjecting a little baby to God knows what in her very own home? I had told her to look at Jeff's arm, see the track marks, the tell-tale bruises. She told me she had thought they were mosquito bites. Unbelievable.

So now, the only things I have left now are the few trinkets and knick-knacks that I had already taken to use as decorations. That, and all of his photo albums I had taken early on, worried that they would be damaged if I left them. All that my Pop-pop had left me, all the trains and toys from the 1900's, the heirloom crystal, all the beautiful things he wanted me to have to pass on, vanished, because of her carelessness, The pattern of her selfishness continuing...

It was almost too much, memories of losing my Pop-pop house flooded back.... Those things were all that remained; I clung to those trinkets, and now, they too were gone.

The memories, what he wanted me to carry on, the toys he wanted my children to play with, MY grandchildren to know... all gone. It was too much. I remembered again the house that was to be mine but my parents disposed of a year after his death.

My childhood home....

For awhile, they rented out the house to people they knew. I babysat the 4 onery boys just to be close to my childhood home. Playing in my Pop-pop's garden, overrun with weeds and time, I fought desperately to bring the remaining flowers back. But the boys kicked the precious flowers, stopped the petals, torn down the lilac that perfumed the air with its lovely sweet sceny of ancient moments and distant memories. It was painful to see their destruction. One day, while watering the garden in the back yard, trying to keep the boys from throwing the remaining tomatoes at the fence, one of the boys said,

"Mom told me some old guy that used to live here died in his garden last year. Yeah, right over there." He pointed his finger toward the patio area where my Pop-pop and I had fed the squirrels. Feeding them peanuts over the years had tamed them to where they came right up to our feet and sat waiting expectedly while we shelled their afternoon snack. It was where he told me he would not be here, on this Earth forever, that one day, he would be in Heaven, and would wait for me there, until we could see each other again.....

My heart lept in my throat. The boys began to play "drop dead," taking turns pretending to have exaggerated heart attacks. Cackling laughter as they tried to figure out exactly where he "dropped dead." 

Broken hearted, filled with anger, I aimed the hose full blast at the boys, drenching them, spraying water in their faces, their eyes, up their noses until they no longer thought it was a game and one began to cry. I ran into the house and called their mother, told her to come home right away because I was leaving and I wouldn't be back. I haven't been back since.

And so, it was bittersweet finding his old slides and negatives, neatly sorted, small printed handwriting labeling the events, the days, places of a lifetime ago that no longer exist among the clutter and wreckage of my parents' dilapidated house. A juxtapositon that did not go unnoticed...  the beautiful home, the collections that were to remain in my family, gone.

I have to hold tight onto the memories of him, for that is all I have left. Memories of something beautiful, the lovely garden, the warm home the only things that could comfort me, the only safe haven I had in the welling storm of my childhood.

It is time now to pass that legacy on to Josh. Start planting the seeds of memories that will hopefully grow into something beautiful for him to remember. Our garden. We'll start small and then inch by inch, year by year, together we'll make it grow. I'll hold onto the notion that it would have made Pop-pop so proud that I have a garden and am teaching Josh how to care for it. I know he would bless it, and sometimes, I think I feel him....a warm breeze passes through me and I know he is there, nurturing the leaves, smiling down with the warm summer rain. He is always there with me; gone, but never, ever forgotten.

Comments

[yolanda]

Lovely garden and such a cute little boy.

[Denean]

You never stop amazing me.
Josh is just too cute!!