Tomato holds a slice of life
Lori Borgman | Monday, Aug 17, 2009
The fixation with the tomato plant makes sense
now.
Our daughter whose husband is serving in Iraq
has been reporting to us regularly since the day she tucked it into
the ground.
“I got my tomato plant in,” she said.
“Good,” we said.
It was good. This is the girl for whom picking
fresh produce long meant first opening a plastic bag and grabbing
a twist tie.
“My tomato plant is growing,” she’d say.
“Great,” we’d say.
We had phone reports when the tomato plant had
a growth spurt, when it put forth its first yellow blossoms, and
when it grew big enough to warrant a cage.
“I have three baby green tomatoes,” she said one
day.
“How exciting,” we said.
“What do you think she does on the weekends?”
the husband asked.
“The same thing you think she does -- monitors
the vital signs on that tomato plant,” I answered.
When I suggested that the relationship with the
tomato plant could be bordering on co-dependency, she answered that
her husband left last year when the tomatoes were ripe. “Which means
he’ll be back when they’re ripe again,” she said, with a lilt to
her voice revealing an optimism and expectancy known only to backyard
gardeners and waiting wives.
There are a thousand ways people measure time
when they are separated and, apparently, tomatoes are one of them.
She is praying him home, wishing him home, willing him home, one
green tomato at a time.
“Wonder what she’ll do if something happens to
that tomato plant?” the husband asked.
“I don’t know what she’ll do, but I imagine you
and I will dig up a mature plant, drive it 600 miles west, and plant
it for her as quickly as we can.”
They had been married one year, one month and
10 days before he deployed. There are thousands of other young women
in the same tomato cage with her. They befriend one another, support
one another and measure the time by the “misseds” -- the missed
holidays, the missed birthdays, the missed leaks in the roof, the
missed snowfalls and thunderstorms and, in some cases, even the
missed births.
She doesn’t know if she planted a Big Boy or a
Beefsteak. She doesn’t care. Whatever the variety, it should be
renamed Homecoming.
“One of the tomatoes is starting to turn,” she
says. “He’s almost home.”
The days barely appear to budge at times, much
like trying to watch a tomato actually growing on a vine. But now,
within days, he’ll be back. There will be an end to her signature
sign off by phone as she jokingly teases, “Do you remember I’m alone
out here? Does anyone care that I’m lonely?”
These final days of summer are often among the
most beautiful. The begonias are bushy, the impatiens proud, and
a military transport will soar through the sky and touch down on
a runway.
Like generations before, she patiently waits for
her soldier. She will continue to wait, until the cows come home
and the tomatoes turn red.
