Summer Reading

What does an English teacher do in the summer? She reads, my friends; she reads. In gray November when my spirit's weary from school politics and my eyes bleary from reading plot summary, I need to remember the deliciousness of this moment, turning my face to the memory for warmth. Even though I have plently of projects waiting for me, none of them have to be done just this moment. This very moment is mine, all mine, for reading. There will be time tomorrow for the sorting of boxes, for the organizing of papers.

Each night I make a list of what I'll accomplish in the morning: attack the pile of bills on the counter, deconstruct the various piles of stuff still waiting for my attention after our garage sale, scrub the bathroom surfaces until they gleam. Beginning any one of these projects would make my husband smile. If I feel more studious, I could design my courses for the fall semester, read up on composition theory, write the great American novel.

I begin each day with the best intentions, but before I know it, I'm snuggled into my comfy chair with my book or my Nook in hand, lost to the world around me, sliding fast into uncharted territory. As I begin to read, I can feel the pages rising up, enfolding me, pulling me in. I am no longer.
One of my brightest childhood memories is of the West End branch of the Carnegie Library. I still associate calm and well being with stacks of books, perfect rows of alphabetized titles. Even now, a visit to Barnes and Noble is high on my to-do list, where I can sit for an hour or two with a mug of coffee and a pile of new books to consider. When I leave, all is well with me again.

During my childhood, there was only one answer to the question "Where's Jill?" I was in my room reading, of course. I resisted every attempt to move me outside, causing my parents, I'm sure, to worry about my single-mindedness, my unexercised pale freckled thighs, but their own weighty preoccupations surely allowed them to be grateful for their youngest child's ability to make herself invisible for long periods of time.

The usual kid things didn't have a hold on me. Chasing balls, swimming, hiding and seeking were all second hand choices; instead, I devoured books. I think my parents were happy when I finished the last book in my stash because I was forced to go out for more. On those days, I took an excursion to the library. Armed with a canvas bag, I would walk the two city blocks to the bus stop, waiting on the corner with anticipation. A short bus ride dropped me across the street from the nearest branch of the Carnegie Library, where my older sister worked as a library assistant. My sister's job offered me priority status over the average library card holder. Bored with the selection in the brightly painted Children's Reading Room, I greedily sought new territory in the off-limits adult section. Judy ignored the age code on my card, allowing me to borrow anything she didn't consider too "racy." She also overlooked the six-book limit, using the number of books I was able to carry as my personal cut-off. I overfilled my bag, when the head librarian wasn't standing at the front desk, and I'd cradle several more books in my free arm, making my trip back home on the bus more of a physical struggle than the outdoor games my parents wanted me to play. Some days I was lucky to coordinate my library exit with my sister's quitting time, the ride home making my day perfect.

I'd learned early that books could shelter me. Almost everything I knew to be true could change on a dime in my household, and so I became a rather cautious child. It was easier to live within the rhythm of words and the refuge they spun than to wait anxiously, sucking in my breath through my teeth, waiting for a moment when things might snap. I would sometimes emerge from my books temporarily in the midst of my actual life, often blinking furiously at finding myself back on Clairhaven Street.

I still run away to my books. In the summer, I read hungrily and nearly indiscriminately ...stopping short of science fiction (my apologies to all those whose allegiance belongs to crusaders from another realm). This summer, I've visted Oxford via The Discovery of Witches, toured Paris through the first Mrs. Hemingway's eyes in The Paris Wife and entertained a decidedly different Paris through Mr. Hemingway's eyes in A Moveable Feast. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane took me to both the Salem of 1692 and 2009, and I followed Frank Lloyd Wright and Mahmah Bothwick Cheney through their love affair in Chicago to their tragedy in Wisconsin as I turned the pages of The Women and Loving Frank.

You must excuse me now, dear reader. My books are calling me. I'm off to post-war Bosnia with a restorer of rare manuscripts named Hanna (People of the Book). Just think-- it's only July!

Tomato Whispers

My youngest daughter and I leave through the front door, our flipflops clopping on the cement to our car. "Rachel!" I call out in my batallion commander mom voice.

"What?" She stops short, her head turning to look back at me.

"Did you say hello to the snapdragons?"

She casts her gaze over the mottled pink and yellow curves of the snaps. "Oh, Mom. You know you are one of those crazy plant ladies."

"Tell them, Rach."

"O.K. Hello snapdragons," she begrudges.

"No. Tell them nicely. Thank them for living in our front yard."

She rolls her eyes and tosses a few words at the flowers before climbing into the car, laughing at her off-the-rocker mother, but I know that later in life when my children conjure me around the table, they will cherish this craziness about me.

Growing up, I learned to tell seasons by what bloomed. In late May after the last frost, my father, when he was well enough, worked a vegetable garden into a patch of ground above our swingset. I'll never again taste a tomato like those my dad produced; all the subsequent tomatoes since have unconsciously lost the competition, second by a large margin. The heirloom tomatoes in the grocery store come close in appearance, irregular bulges and thin brown zippers running through their creases, but their taste is pale and watery.

My father taught me about nurturing tomatoes, ripping old white tee shirts into soft strips that tenderly bound the young stalks that were so easily snapped. He'd handcut the stakes from old wood, sanded to remove splinters. An elaborate wooden frame strung with household twine towered above the rest of the garden like a giant abacus. Peas wrapped their vining tendrils around the string, while the soil below erupted with leaf lettuce, green peppers, zucchini, and, of course, his prize tomatoes. "Get Better Boy plants," my dad would call after my mother and me as we left for the store. Sometimes we could only find Big Boy Tomato plants, which caused my father to worry about the outcome of his crop, but I loved them all the same.

He experimented with something new every year...one year corn, another hot peppers, one year the relatively new cherry tomatoes that could be popped like warm grapes straight from vine to mouth. Nightly, I'd walk up to "pick a salad" for dinner, a long day on my dad's artificial hip causing him to rest in the lawn chair by the kitchen door.

The first years I lived in my own house, my husband and I planted a garden, probably twice the size of my father's, and, while my babies slept, I'd spend an hour hoeing and watering nearly every day. The rewards were large bowls of color, freshness on our plates each night. Sometimes still, I can see the view from our back window then. Down past the peach, apple, and cherry trees we'd planted to mark the births of our first three children, to the right of the second terrace lay the garden. With the window open, there'd be a slight breeze, carrying the faint herby promise of nearly-ripe tomatoes.

When we moved south a bit we lost our terraced back yard, and so we planted tomatoes on the hillside. I staked them with soft white stips of cloth, although I purchased the splintery premade stakes at a garden store. Although I was sure to fill each hole with fertilizer and good topsoil, the plants lasted only two or three days. One morning, I dragged the hose across the dewey grass to find only stubbles, the deer having eaten all but the very base of the stalks.

That year, I listened to other local gardeners as they listed ways to prevent the deer from eating my crops. One suggested Liquid Fence as foolproof, although expensive and foul smelling. Another explained how an outer layer of corn and clover would provide deer with their own garden, keeping them from my plants by supplying a border of sprouting favorites. One listed ingredients on paper for a habanera pepper concoction good for keeping both deer and bunnies away: combine hot peppers in the food processor with water; after straining, add a drop of Elmer's glue and a couple drops of dishwashing detergent--apply often, especially after rain or on new growth.

What did I do? Nothing. The sight of the mowed stalks taunted me. The thought of running out to coat plants with hot pepper and glue after each rain or at the sight of new shoots seemed exhausting. I figured those plants were a small offering to the deer who roamed my hillside at night for having built my house on a piece of land that had once been theirs, once dense with trees.

Most of my gardening occurs close to the house or on our deck these days, although flats of impatiens left waiting on the front sidewalk have been mowed to the quick by hungry rabbits. Figuring that I can protect the growth on my deck, I bring home flats of posies, overpacking each pot according to the rule of three: something high, something dangly, and something full of color and impact. My husband twisted tiny white lights around the grapevine I hung above the door, and on summer evenings. the deck rails blaze with large clear bulbs in red, blue, green, and orange. When I think of my home in the summer, I am on the deck at night, the pitch blackness lit by our fairy lights and the sound of my family's laughter bouncing off of the hillside.

I do talk to my flowers, dreaming that my conversation coaxes deeper pink from vining geraniums, even lovelier circles of lavendar and pale yellow from lantana, and glossier red from begonia petals. The heavy purple plumeria sways in the breeze on its delicate stalk, hopefully listening to my whispers of prayerful awe at its dance. My plants know my secrets, and my reward comes in the form of butterflies and hummingbirds who visit, fluttering and hovering, yellow-winged and green-bodied.

Every summer, I handpick bursting red tomatoes from my friends' crop at the nearby farm. Rich seedy juice runs down my chin. We eat tomatoes every day: tomatoes with olive oil and fresh mozzarella, panzanella, gazpacho, basil and tomato spaghetti, and the best of all--thick cut tomato sandwiches on rustic Italian bread. I haven't found my father in these tomatoes, although I keep trying. Of all the words he took with him when he died, I would like to know what he whispered to his tomato plants as he tamped down the freshly turned earth in our old garden.