Tomato Season

And fruity iced tea

Somehow we got to tomato season again.

Not that I grew any this year - I was way too scattered and all over the place for a garden. The weeds got so bad I feared the Gardening Police might come for me in the night. The local She Thing kindly tidied up the yard and prevented any landscape-based consequences by the authorities. But a generous friend with a big garden handed me a box of veggies yesterday and loaded it into my back seat. I could smell the end of summer filling my car as I pulled away.

Marcel Proust wrote “À la recherche du temps perdu,” and translators argue whether that means in search of lost time, or in remembrance of it. Proust was a monied, eternally ailing, asthmatic, dilettante social climber with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. He held one job in his life, which he never attended, and moved out of his parents’ house only after they died. He was gay at a time when that was illegal and acknowledged only with a wink, yet had numerous lovers, many of whom happened to be attached or engaged to his women friends. He wrote books, and journal articles about religion and politics, published them, and society responded to what he opined.

I don’t know where my car keys are. I can’t remember many, maybe most of the events of each decade of my life, and even if I could, it's probably best that I don’t. I struggle to write anything at all some weeks. Relatively able-bodied, residing not in my parents’ home, and living alone and single, my love life can best be described as “in remission.”

So I’m guessing whether one is searching or remembering depends a lot on how one has spent one’s time.

A year ago I watched all the tomatoes fall back into my garden, letting the rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels feast on what I couldn’t stomach or bother to pay attention to. I was ten weeks into the hardest year.

My son was not sure to survive each day. A couple of chosen family members, welcomed into our home and hearts for a decade and more, had obliterated trust and decency. At the same time, the organization I’d led with dedication severed my employment, by text, without cause or explanation. In a blink I was cut off from the community and water cooler chit-chat I’d relied on for daily human interaction for more than fifteen years, sitting alone in my office behind a computer screen. My retirement was a known goal for the following year. I’d have written them a check for the chance to leave early if they’d only asked.

Cancer visited people I love. One of my closest friends lost an arm to it. Two more would lose everything by July. 

In January I went to Buffalo to say goodbye and help one friend die. I returned to Boston to begin the work of managing a family member unable to care for themself, and enormous steps were needed, still ongoing, to wrest a life onto a viable track.

A cherished friend decided there was too much going on, I guess, and became lost to me.

My trusting, giving father was badly swindled, and I had to move him as the swindlers remained in place. His health was declining, his spirit was fading, so I found a new home for him with smart neighbors and a nice vibe. Still, he suffered.

In early spring I escaped to Cape Cod for some coastline peace and stumbled upon a house that called to me like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Small and cozy, unlivable but someday a perfect home for me and my dog to take walks from, write from, to make soup in the kitchen as she got her fair share of the goodies, with the windows open wide. To make new friends in.

The Beagz was there always. She slept against my legs those agonizing nights on the couch at my son’s house. She scrounged for dropped crumbs at my father’s place as I pored through paperwork discovering what had been done. She was a soft, quieting anchor beside me as I cried for sick and lost friends. She was there all those hours in my office as I worked, and she danced at the door, happy and game for the long walks I needed to understand the career and path I’d known had suddenly ended. She was with me for all that, and for so much more through the years leading up to our walk-through together when we found the house in Provincetown. She died the day before it became ours.

I took writing classes online, met some wonderful people, went to Portugal on a writing trip, wrote some really bad stuff and some not-so-bad stuff. I read books and then would be unable to read anything at all for months at a time. I engaged in TikTok therapy, mindlessly scrolling as dancers, singers, cooks, and gossips crowded out the icky stuff. I started a Substack.

Noah Kahan’s Stick Season has a lyric that bounces through my head sometimes when I’m feeling sorry for myself:

I’ll dream each night of some version of you

That I might not have but I did not lose

It’s taking me a while to find my feet, I’ll admit. Some days I’m downright footless. But more and more I’m understanding the view from where I’ve landed. There’s a lot to get used to and learn to live with, or without. Some losses were huge. Some hurt but were not losses at all, really. It just took a while to realize that. A few good friends remain, and some new friends offer hope that there are possibilities to come around corners I can’t yet see.

And somehow it’s tomato season again. 

The goods from my friend’s garden: Beet greens with butter and salt; summer squash with onion, garlic, and basil; cherry tomatoes; beets with balsamic vinegar

There’s a distinct aroma to a ripe tomato. It doesn’t have the brightness of a citrus fruit or a berry, or the tang of an apple, or the freshness of a cucumber. Tomatoes have a dark, deep, earthy smell that pulls you in and grounds you.

The critters will have to fend for themselves this year. I’m not giving up my share.

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Morning Teaistisms

It’s also the height of fruity iced tea season. The deck here is usually too hot to even approach at midday, but today is cooler, and the mango-passion fruit iced tea with watermelon is ridiculously good while sitting in the sun contemplating the tide.