We didn’t observe Lent in my family. It wasn’t part of our tradition, although in the weeks leading up to Easter our Sunday school lessons covered all the elements of the Easter story. We heard the stories year upon year, the hymns we sang at Sunday services reinforced the messages as well as the sermons that I half-listened to as a child. But we missed out on the mystery of waiting.
We were preoccupied with Easter dresses, and white shoes, and bonnets, I swear there were bonnets, and always new white gloves where I slipped my dime for the collection plate. Corsages for the girls, new bow ties for the boys. Their hair slicked down, ours curled to varying effect. Easter eggs and Easter baskets and ham for Easter lunch.
As our family grows and there are babies and children to accommodate, new in-laws and grown children coming and going, our traditions are in transition as we seek a new balance. This year, we are planting potatoes.
My friend, Silas, says we are to plant our potatoes on Good Friday. It is tradition, an essential part of his Appalachian roots, and I see no reason not to make it our tradition, too.
I suppose Silas plants potatoes in the ground, when the danger of hard frost has passed. We will be farming in raised beds, and by raised beds I mean cardboard boxes, and there may be some challenges with the cold, but we will risk it.
Because I like the idea of planting on Good Friday.
Easter is a holiday that follows the moon, and it arrives early or late in a spring season. Daffodils bloom or are spent by the time it shows up and some years, they might not even be up from their winter naps. This year my peonies are struggling to grow, their shaggy heads having been trampled by work boots and my own boots and once, a truck tire. But they persist, and I am glad. The Annabelle hydrangeas may, just may, have survived being uprooted, sentenced to solitary in large pots to spend the winter, covered with straw and prayer.
And potatoes. We will have potatoes. The IKEA box I planted them in last year is long gone, but this spare Target box is just about right. It will not be a good look, and sad to say it will be visible from the street, but I don’t really care. If passers-by can tolerate a porta-potty in my yard for almost a year, they can surely stand a cardboard box up against the house.
My plan is to take Cy his own cardboard boxes so he can tend his potatoes at home. His mother is all for it, although I worried she might not be. With a two-and a half year old, and one year old twins, I thought she might not want one more thing to keep alive. But no, she thinks it is a good idea, and while we are at it, she says she wants to start some herbs.
She wants baby goats, too, I think she said, and I don’t know where this farming impulse comes from. But she bakes her own bread, and wants chickens and I wonder if it is all part of the nesting instinct, a little family huddled together against the world.
Or maybe she is just bored.
Either way, potatoes this spring.
Cy is probably too young to take care of his crop, and really, the biggest challenge will be getting him to leave the potatoes alone until it’s time to harvest. But in this spring of possibilities, we will dig in dirt and nestle slivers of potato into fluffy warm soil. We will cover them over and water them while they will sleep, and dream and grow. They will flourish in their “big boy bed,” just like Cy is flourishing in his, the bed he of which he is very proud.
And then we wait.
Wait for spring to arrive and warm us.
Wait for summer to come.
Wait for the good things below the surface, just out of sight, growing large and round and fine, and then one day, to feed us.
m
Greta McDonough 