A Son"s Harvest
On this scorching, Mississippi-dusty June day in 1989, I had come to my father"s home in Meridian to find - I didn"t know exactly what. Nervously I walked up the ribbon of concrete toward the little red porch, wondering if this visit was a good idea. But I figured that, after thirty-nine years without any contact, we ought to try to find out whether there was anything between us, anything at all. After all, time was growing short; he was eighty years old, and I was forty-eight.
So, I steeled myself, recalling my childhood years at this house where I had lived before my father and mother divorced, and Mom and I moved to Illinois with her new husband. My stepfather had been as good a father as a son could want. But this man standing on the porch was my birth father. I wanted to know him.
I looked at Ples Mae (he spelled his last name differently from mine), marveling at how thin, how fragile, he had become. His newish overalls floated around him, seemingly holding him up, but his handshake and voice were strong as he motioned for me to join him on the porch while his wife cooked a country feast. There we sat, in two green metal chairs, the kind that spring back and forth. We sprang - and talked about what strangers talk about when they"re trying to get to know one another.
"Been a hot one today," I said, wiping my forehead. "Hasn"t been much rain."
"Yeah, I been having to water every day," replied my father.
"I"ve had to water every day, too, up in Washington, D.C.," I said.
Turning to look at me, my father said: "Water? Water what?"
"My garden." We had both stopped springing.
"You mean you"re a gardener, too?"
Neither of us had to say it; we both knew it: We were not only kin - we were kindred spirits.
My father and I went to his garden during that first visit. And on each subsequent visit, we took the same walk. During early times, we talked mostly about the joys and heartbreaks of life in the garden, ranging further afield as we got to know each other better, covering everything from politics to relationships to history.
On one of my early visits, I was admiring his amazing crops: all manner of mouth-watering backyard crops, including peas, okra, cayenne peppers, corn, collards, butter beans, even peanuts and watermelons, their vines twirling from used automobile tires.
Seeing my admiration and showing understandable pride, my father stopped his slow stroll through the deep, narrow space, turned to me and asked, "So what are you growing in your garden?"
I began telling him about my rhododendron, Japanese black pines, azaleas, Japanese maples, bamboo . . . when my father interrupted: "Uh huh, but what do you grow for food?"
"Oh, food. Well, there"s rosemary, thyme, sage, cilantro . . ." With a dismissive chuckle, my father just shook his head and walked away, reaching for a hoe to weed around the corn, a real crop. I knew what he was thinking: My son"s wasting land.
To this day, the memory of that moment brings a chuckle. But, what happened next brought a tear. My father went to his toolshed and came back with a raisin container from the grocery store. Shaking it, he thrust it at me, saying, "Here! Now you can grow some food." The little cardboard box held seeds, of course - pepper, okra, tomato, eggplant, even kernels of corn and some peanuts.
Never mind that any of these crops would overwhelm my postage-stamp-size garden. I brought the container back to the city, and I planted some of the seeds, calling the spot where the pepper and the okra grew the "Ples Mae Patch."
And that tradition continues. Each year, among the rhododendron, the Japanese black pines and all the other ornamentals, there is always a little something to eat. (Tomatoes, if nothing else, because store-bought ones just aren"t fit food.) And each year a fundamental truth also grows: No matter how differently we garden, we all share a connection to the earth - and thus, a connection to one another.
That"s one of the many reasons nothing keeps me out of my garden. And I"m grateful that nothing - not pride or fear of rejection, not even thirty-nine years of separation - kept me out of my father"s garden on that hot June day. The harvest has been priceless. (實現編輯：夏根建)