Love Apple – Noun: A tomato
When someone close to you dies, you begin to look at life through the eyes they no longer have, or you find yourself doing things they loved to do because they no longer can. When I hear music that I know my brother Danny would have liked, I close my eyes and let it sink in, listening for him. I write checks to the Red Cross or give money to the panhandling homeless, because I know Dan, who died in 2001, did and would still if he was here.
My brother Jim was a weather buff who kept detailed daily weather records, photographed and videotaped storms, and volunteered at the Blue Hill Weather Observatory giving tours. Since he died, a month before Dan, I watch the sky more closely. When I see a particularly outstanding cloud formation, I want him to see it too, and I remember the story one of Jim’s colleagues at the BHO told about how Jim first fell in love with cloud watching. He was under one of his junk-box cars, fixing something, and complaining about it when he realized that he could watch the clouds from that position. From that day on he was hooked.
Today I ate a fresh garden tomato for my dad, who died this past November. It was a Big Boy, salted to perfection, just the way he would have liked it. I had practically eaten the whole thing before I realized what I was doing … enjoying it for him. It was sweet, plump, and red, like my dad, whose name was Robert Redman. I remember him sitting in his favorite kitchen chair by the red gingham curtained window, eating with gusto and smacking his toothless mouth. “Don’t you want one of these delicious tomatoes?” he asked me last summer when I was visiting him and my mom. He actually had gotten up at that point and was holding one under my nose in an attempt to entice me. I knew he was trying to pawn it off on me because there were others where it came from, in the patio, in the pantry, getting over-ripe. The boy in him, who grew up during the Great Depression, didn’t want it to go to waste.
“No, I’m not hungry,” I told him.
Today I ate a tomato for my dad. It’s the first summer he’s not here to eat his own.
Post note: You can read the WVTF radio essay I wrote about my dad HERE.
August 26th, 2006 8:53 am
I love summer tomatoes that have been vine rippened. I also like the way you tie in what you see to your brothers and father. it’s very touching and seems to make you’re experience come more alive. Here from Michele’s today.
August 26th, 2006 8:56 am
I have eaten some for my mom too. She loved yellow tomatoes and plain old tomato sandwiches. Those things make me want to talk about her and make sure everyone else knows her too, like ahe is still here somehow. This is the first summer without my mom and the first time the kids started school without her and the first time she wasn’t here for her birthday. People say the “first things” are the hardest to get past Colleen but I’m so afraid of time passing without her that I almost dread the “seconds” as much. Thanks for being so special and sharing your tomato story.
August 26th, 2006 9:04 am
And thank you for sharing that, Amy. Yes, the longer they have been gone, the longer time passes without you seeing them, and so on some level the missing is more. But I think the pain you feel will not be as acute as time passes.
August 26th, 2006 9:57 am
I can hear him now….I miss our RedMEN!!
August 26th, 2006 11:31 am
The ones we love do live on in us. Your post is a perfect example of this.
I like to think of it as the cycle of life.
Keep enjoying those clouds and those tomatoes.
August 26th, 2006 1:38 pm
The way you live your memories is such a special thing. And it’s the reason why those we love are never really gone from us, entirely. I enjoy the pieces of this part of your life’s journey that you share with us. Very much.
August 27th, 2006 1:09 am
Once again you’ve tied wonderful memories in with daily life. AND you have those huge tomatoes too!!! This is my first year to try and grow them and I think the squirrels got the majority. But, I HAVE PUMPKINS!
August 27th, 2006 9:40 am
I love it! I was there eating that tomato with you….My vine is Big Boy, we took a nice one off this morning and I am sure I will think of you thinking of your dad when I slice it!
August 27th, 2006 1:42 pm
I love reading the newspaper at a coffee shop on a Sunday morning.
August 27th, 2006 2:23 pm
Yes, yes…I do that too…for instance, I hate Huey Lewis, but whenever a song of his comes on the radio, I turn it up before I know what I’m doing, and am quickly back to watching Dad wash his car on a summer afternoon.
August 27th, 2006 4:39 pm
It’s been years since most of my losses but there are still so many things…yesterday I ran out to watch a lot of motorcycles pass because my friend Dan would have done that.
August 27th, 2006 7:04 pm
What a wonderful thing to be remembered for–Big Boy tomatoes. Enjoy!
August 27th, 2006 11:33 pm
How wonderful… In reading this I realized I was doing the same for my mother.. Thanks for sharing..
August 28th, 2006 2:16 pm
So touching, Colleen. I LOVE that you ate the tomato for your Dad…and it was one that you grew, too? (Am I right about that?) You describe the way he ate that tomato so beautifully, I feel like I can see him, And YOU, too! It’s such a sweet thing to do and as I said, so very touching.
August 28th, 2006 10:59 pm
It’s still hard for me to read stories like that…but I loved yours 🙂
I finally got the headstone in place for my Mom last week…I put it off and put it off. Now to have the graveside service…I’m not looking forward to it at all.