Nostalgia

Warning: this entry is really sappy and completely unfunny.

When I was a kid, my grandfather had a huge vegetable garden in his backyard. It was his pride and joy--if he wasn't digging around in it, he was talking about it, peering through the kitchen window at it, or just sitting in a chair next to it. He always enlisted my help in its care, and if I helped him pick green beans, I could take some home. There are very few children in this world for whom green beans are an incentive to work, but hey, I was a weird kid. I always thought I was doing this really hard job and being paid well for it, but in actuality, Gaga (husband of Nana, who was previously my Hero of the Day) just grew entirely too many vegetables for two people to eat. So he and I would go outside, and he would sit in his chair while I picked green beans into a basket, mopping his brow with a handkerchief and giving me gardening lessons that I bet he thought I wasn’t paying attention to.

Amidst my parents’ ineptitude for raising children, my grandparents stood in (and Nana continues to, of course.) Gaga cosigned my student loans for college and hung my report cards on his refrigerator. He gave me advice, threatened me when I messed up (seriously, I needed it) and once told Nana that if he weren’t so old, he would have tried to adopt me.

He died three Februarys ago. My heart still aches to think about it. My brother and I both took it hard—he was, after all, our father figure.

This past weekend, I planted my “garden” on my back porch—tomatoes, peppers, squash, herbs, etc., all in pots. When I was finished, I leaned back on my heels and wiped my forehead with my sleeve. And I thought, he would have been proud of me.