Diary of a gardener - Time
How do you use your time? The past week my thoughts have been distracted by the memories of my great aunt. She passed away four months ago. This week she would have been 90 years old. I think of her often, sometimes daily because I have surrounded my space with items of hers. My great aunt was someone who created space for everyone. She exuded love and acceptance. She was a caretaker, an amazing cook, a fantastic listener and gave the best hugs. Her passing was not a surprise. In many ways it was a relief as her mind and body were failing, she was unhappy and in pain. The aunt I knew as a child and adult was no longer there, most of the time. There were moments when she gave us comedic relief and she still gave the best hugs. There was not a person who met her who did not love her. She was well known for many reasons, her cooking and homemade pickles were one, but mostly just for the incredible human being she was. I have had to come to grips with her passing, although, in my head I thought she would live forever. There are people in my life I know will pass away and I have resolved that in my heart but losing her was a different kind of loss. I do not think any of my family expected her to pass away first from our aging family. But life had other plans. She was ready and she told me that long before her earthly demise. I was not ready.
My great aunt helped my great granddaddy, her brother and her husband plant the biggest garden my child-like eyes had ever seen. It was an acre or more of corn, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, and other vegetables. Picture a massive garden, with the backdrop of an apple orchard and strawberry patches to the sides. Next to the strawberry patch was a homemade tombstone made by my cousins and I for the family dog, Horsefeathers, who I think lived well beyond any life expectancy for most dogs. My aunt canned, dried apples for dried apple fruit cake, froze vegetables, made jams, and pickles. Oh yes, the pickles. She had enough food to always feed an army. She fed armies of men often. Men who farmed the land surrounding their property. Men who worked tirelessly stripping tobacco, raising hogs and gardening to peddle food at the farmers markets.
She always made space for her family and anyone else who stopped by on a Sunday afternoon. You may have caught her breaking beans. If you have never broke beans I highly recommend it as it passes the time very meditatively. There she was on the screened in back porch, with an oscillating fan blowing on her, but I promise when you drove up in the driveway she will have said to you, “well, I declare it’s so good to see you, now get on in here and don’t let the bugs in”.
After her passing I brought back to Florida from Kentucky many of her belongings. She did not have children of her own. My dad and his brother were her children and my two cousins, and I were like her grandchildren. We have her memorabilia now. I learned things about her I did not know. One of the most precious items I found was her high school valedictorian speech from 1952, handwritten found in the bottom of a small Lane cedar chest. When I started to read it, I felt like I was in one of those movies where you are watching someone read a letter but instead of reading it aloud it is read in the writer’s voice. I could hear her voice. Her writing was incredible for an 18-year-old. Outside of my family no one has shared her speech and I prefer to keep it that way, but I want to share a snippet of what she wrote that has changed how I think about time. The wisdom she bestowed on that old, tatter paper and kept for 71 years hidden in a chest only known to her hit me like a ton of bricks. It made my heart burst wide open repeatedly as I read it over and over trying to capture her a young and beautiful woman with the world at her fingertips.
She wrote “Impressions, too, vary with the individual because we did not all hold ourselves rigidly to the best usage of time. We all had the same amount of time, and we all had the same sand to walk upon to make our imprints; so, thus far, adding equal appreciation we set forth on a broader road tonight. Let us from now on, since we are graduates, guard our time more carefully and utilize more of our odd moments in fruitful activities. They say success depends upon the proper use of time and its by-product, odd moments. We learn to judge a person by the way he uses his time. It matters not how gifted or talented or wise a person is, if he fails to use his time in developing his abilities in useful services, the world will not account him great. We are all dealers in time. It is the one thing we all possess in common.”
With your “odd moments” how do you choose to spend them?
