A Mother’s Love
Mom was a fantastic cook. She grew up in the days before fast food was a thing and families still ate at home and even around the table sometimes. That being said she knew her way around a kitchen. Some of my favorite meals she would make were fried chicken with all the fixins’, brown beans, fried potatoes, and one of my very favorites was her goulash (ask me about the goulash story later). Most of the time we had vegetables with our meal occasionally fresh out of our own garden. Yes, Mom loved having a vegetable garden with tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and sometimes corn. (To this day I love, Love, LOVE fresh, home-grown tomatoes and can eat my weight in them when they’re in season.) Let me tell you, though, that garden didn’t dig itself and it wasn’t small.
Thinking back I can’t tell you how nice it would have been to be able to use a tiller. It would have made such quick work of tilling up our garden each year. Granted, I was way too little to handle one but surely, we had a neighbor who could have helped us out. Regardless, that garden was getting dug and my brother and I were the tillers. If you haven’t had the privilege of digging up a garden with nothing more than a shovel you should count yourself blessed. I’ve done my share of gardening and can tell you that it is hard work for a young boy or a grown man. From a young boy’s perspective, it seemed like torture at the time. Turning over the soil, pulling out the weeds and grass, and breaking up the clumps so everything was nice and smooth and ready for planting. This was no small garden either. It seemed massive at the time and it probably was every bit of 500 to 600 square feet. I know what you’re thinking, what boy doesn’t love playing in the dirt? The key word of that thought is “playing” and let me tell you there wasn’t much playing going on. We dug and dug, and dug some more until we had tilled up by hand that entire garden. I don’t remember for sure, but I will go out on a limb and say we slept well after that. Mom made sure we ate good that night, got all cleaned up at bath time, and had nice bunk beds to sleep in. I drive by that little house every now and again. It didn’t seem it at the time, but it was so tiny. It had a small kitchen, a small living room, and two small bedrooms separated by a small bathroom. I probably could barely stand up straight in the house now because of how low the ceilings were. For however small the house was it sat on a huge lot and back in the northwest corner sat our little garden. I don’t know how she did it but all these years later I still like to plant a garden, I still love fresh tomatoes, and don’t even mind to dig in the dirt. I’m convinced some kind of brain-washing was taking place because it’s amazing how something that seemed so agonizing when I was a kid has turned into something that I love to do. I will say that I prefer to use a tiller if at all possible.
Digging up gardens seemed horrible at the time but now I think back and have to smile. She may not have known it at the time, maybe she did, but she was teaching her boys to take pride in their work, to value small things, and certainly to work hard. She was equipping us with the tools we would need to make it. For whatever amount of work she had us doing I can promise you there was lots of playing going on too. As only a mother can she figured out the balance between allowing us to play and be kids and teaching us with her words and actions those lessons we needed to learn about responsibility and work ethic. And for all of it I am grateful!