Tomatoes
My father is in the garden, wearing muddied cut off jeans. Trying to grow tomatoes like every year, he's tilling soil for nothing, digging holes too shallow for anything. Wide brown eyes squint into the sun and I watch wrinkles form as he stoops lower and lower.
Three weeks ago we buried my grandpa, and I imagine my dad in the graveyard turning over earth like a mad man, mumbling “Not yet. Not yet,” into his dirty hands.
Sweat slides down his tanned skin while the dog bounds across the yard, chasing the invisible. And maybe my dad is too, collecting misshapen green tomatoes year after year. His face sags and like a mask of age it says, “I’m old. I am so old.”
I can hear it from the porch where I’m comfortably cool, sipping tea and wishing I could lend some youth to him, whose shoulders curl in and fall forward. Is he thinking of his three sisters? His three daughters? His one successful tomato?
The orphan works, and I can see him in his suit that Sunday. Teeth chattering in the cold church, damp trail on his cheek, no gleam in his eye...
He hasn’t found grandpa among the fruits and weeds and comes back into the house. Silent, tomatoless. I push cold water into his stiff hands and understand that this is how it will be for a while.
He’ll grow deformed tomatoes, I’ll fill up battered notebooks, and we’ll both know what it feels like, waiting for your father to come back to life.
