Of Tomato Plants and Old Bedsheets

After nearly 10 days straight of staring longingly at my garden as it basked in the hot, humid July weather while I waited in air conditioned comfort, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Heat wave or no heat wave, I needed to get out and do something. I needed to get my hands dirty, to feel the earth gritty under my fingernails and smell the pungent scent of tomato vines, cut grass, and marigolds. With the shed key in hand, I unlocked the shed, scaring a gigantic skink that had somehow evaded Pierre’s expert hunting skills.  I rolled out the old-fashioned push mower and mowed the grass among the raised vegetable beds. I could barely get the lawn mower around the tomato beds. Large stalks flopped out of the beds, tomatoes dangling precipitously near the mower blades. I headed back to the house and without thinking much of it, grabbed an old sheet from a pile we have folded in a box in the basement to use as rags and drop cloths.  I settled onto a chair on the front porch with Shadow and Pierre by my feet, a little breeze tinkling the wind chimes, and an old sheet to cut up to use as ties for the tomato plants.

Someone had already hacked off a corner of the old sheet, probably to use as a rag. I smoothed it out on my lap. It felt cool and a scent from long ago wafted up. With a start, I recognized the scent, the linen closet from my childhood home, detergent and soap.  I looked more closely at the green and pink plaid sheet. It was from my parent’s linen closet.

I remembered that sheet.  I remember peering down at my sleeping mother, the sheet pulled up to her chin, whispering, “Mommy, I don’t feel good. I want to stay home from school.”

I remember that sheet flapping on the back laundry line. My mother had a peculiar habit of whistling through her teeth, the sound even more strange when she had a bunch of clothespins in her mouth while she pinned sheets to the line.

I remember countless times folding that pink and green plaid sheet with my dad, helping him neaten up the linen closet after my mom died. He was actually better at folding sheets than I was, but somehow when he pushed them onto the narrow shelf in the linen closet they’d all bunch up and some would fall off and on top of the vacuum cleaner and we’d have to start again.

How old is this sheet? I wondered as I held it out to judge how long a strip of cloth I could get out of it. Cloth strips are the best for tying up tomato plants. My grandma taught me that.

The pink and plaid had spots so worn I could see through it, the cotton polished like velvet.  If I was whispering to my mother that I didn’t feel well and didn’t want to go to school, and the sheet looked new…I was probably 9, 10 years old? Which would make the sheet at least 20, 30 years old.

It is on its last bit of life, that pink and plaid sheet.  I tied up the tomato plants last night with parts of the old sheet.  Strips flutter from the recycled tobacco sticks my neighbors gave me to use as tomato stakes. The long, sturdy, solid cloth connects me to my past, my present garden to the past that nurtured me. Like the tomato plants setting down deep roots, it reminds me of the place that helped me set down my deep roots, roots strong, straight and true.