The Potato Story
I first posted this thirteen years ago on the blog.
My father died of liver cancer on March 14, 1992 (Sat, 9th of Adar II, 5752). I offer this post in his memory.
In 1993, as the first anniversary of my father's death approached I was
quite inconsolable. My family was still grief-stricken; my father
provided a lot of the emotional glue that held the family together. He
was a very kind, gentle and sad soul who derived what joy he had from
his wife and children.
I felt the need to mark that anniversary by drawing on several different
traditions -- burn a yahrzeit, build an altar, place stones on a grave,
make an offering of his favorite things (photographs of his loved ones,
mystery novels, food). So, an elaborate blending of multi-cultural
ritual was conceived, and in the center the yahrzeit burned for 24 hours
to mark that awful day. Roger and I took a dozen roses to the Capitola
Wharf at Monterey Bay (where my father's ashes had been scattered), and
tossed a rose in one by one and recited out loud how well my father was
loved and remembered.
The following day, after the yahrzeit had burned out, we disassembled
the altar and put everything away. I took the food offerings and buried
them in the yard. It was the beginning of a closure of sorts.
Roger and I jumped into spring that year the way we always do. Lots of
flowers and vegetables to plant. I typically do the flower gardening and
he does the veggies. Our yard faced Monterey Bay with one of those 180
degree views of the entire expanse. There is a narrow public footpath on
the bayside of the house, where lots of friendly people walk by on
their way from the cliffs down into town and back again. There were
often bike-riders, families, sweethearts, people walking dogs, and late
into the night revelers from the nightspots below. People always
commented on our garden, and we had conversations about the flowers and
vegetables nearly everyday.
That summer everything bloomed and fruited as expected, but an errant
potato plant showed up in a border bed reserved for flowers. We were
quite intrigued by this and tried to imagine how a potato came to be in
that part of the yard. We assumed some passerby, with a bag full of
groceries had inadvertently dropped it there or one of our gardening
buddies was having some fun with us. Maybe it had been there all along,
and conditions were now perfect for it to emerge. We could not find an
acceptable explanation. How ever it came to be there, we harvested it
one day, and had a wonderful breakfast of new potato home fries and
poached eggs. And that was the end of that.
In winter of that year, as my father's birthday approached, the gnawing
sadness returned, and I missed him fiercely. My siblings and I had
decided we would honor our father on both his birthday and the
anniversary of his death every year. So, on December 19th, I created the
altar again: photographs, novels, his favorite foods, and a yahrzeit
candle. After the 24 hours of observance had passed, I looked at all of
those offerings and wondered what I would do with them. I would put the
photographs back in the albums, the novels back in the bookcase, and the
food offerings (carrots and potatoes) I would bury in the yard. And
that's when it struck me: I had buried the potato in the flower bed. It
had been from the plate of food offerings I'd made on the first
anniversary of his death. I was stunned by how deeply I had buried that
memory along with the potato. Not even the potato plant itself could
coax to consciousness the memory of my actions.
Now, the planting has become part of the tradition. Every year in my
father's memory I plant potatoes. Sometimes they are standard russets,
sometimes yukon gold, or new red, or yellow fin, and once it was a
lovely bunch of peruvian purples. Tomorrow, I will be planting potatoes
again.
PS-- The yahrzeit candle is burning. The potatoes have been planted. It
is 2013, and I know all these years later that love lasts forever.
And now it is 2018, and we will be planting potatoes tomorrow. Love does last forever.