When I let my dogs out this morning, I could see their breaths on the cold air. It's 35 degrees in Fort Worth this morning. YAY!! That's what I call January in Texas.
My favorite zen thought from my zen calendar this week is:
How could the drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
The best tomato I ever had came out of the rocky hard soil of Polk County, Arkansas, from "Leroy" Sanders garden. I had many "best" tomatoes out of his garden. His tomatoes inspired me to become more than I was (in this instance a gardener for a season). His kitchen, and there was a difference between his, hers and theirs in this family, was stacked high with ripening and rotten tomatoes from July to September. When I visited in June, he would always pick a couple of still pinkish tomatoes prior to my visit so that they would ripen in time for me to sample. It always made me want to come back in July--a successful technique for those who would like for me to visit more often . . . He didn't do this with everyone who visited his house; I think it was just me because I had told him so many times how much I loved tomatoes that he just planned for my visits. He was 65 or more, I was 29 or less; he was an ex-Navy cook and a feed store clerk, I was a college student and a social worker. He was my boyfriend's dad and then my father-in-law, I was from "out of town" and usually "out of sorts."
The skin on those Arkansas tomatoes is thick and bitter and the tomato is better if you peel the skin off. The tomatoes are substantial and meaty enough to peel with a dull paring knife. We would sit at his kitchen table, him drinking coffee and me drinking soda in a plastic cup overfilled with icebergs of freezer burned ice, eating one tomato after another, smoking cigarettes and telling stories. I loved that.
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4 comments:
Thanks for sharing that story. Made me both want to eat one of those tomatoes, and meet "Leroy". I am looking forward to our next trip to Arkansas, even though it won't include either of those things. I appreciate the detail of your stories, like drinking soda out of a plastic cup. Looking forward to more stories and I have one of my own that I will "comment" soon.
When Steve and I lived in China we tried tomatoes with sugar on them. You slice the tomatoes and sprinkle sugar in them and it makes a sweet and cool dessert, especially good on a hot day.
dad says:
I wept at the quiet simplicity of social worker and tomato grower
sittting together in his kitchen. weeping is good.
I love your reflections and the fact that something as simple as avocados and tomatoes are significant and emphasize the importance of the small things that populate our lives and give them texture and give us memories, even rocks and stones, which are among the things I love.
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