Hang on Little Tomato

I touched the first red grape tomato, intending to give it a gentle squeeze to see if it was ripe, but it let go of its tenuous hold on the vine and fell into my hand. Nothing to do but pop it in my mouth, bite down and burst the slightly tart juice over my taste buds. Perhaps not quite ripe, but it was my first homegrown little tomato.

When my sister gardener and writer (I'll call her Mel) gave me a tiny snap pea plant from her garden, I had had no thought of expanding my garden into the edible arena. But in the spirit of accepting a gift, I weeded and dug up a sunny, unplanted strip of earth along the chain link fence, enriched the soil with Black Kow and the first single bucket-full of rotting vegetables I could harvest from my small compost area, and stuck the plant in. (I laughed to see the not-quite-decomposed Brussels sprouts leaf and asparagus stem adornment.) It gave me a brand new spark; I went to the Farmers' Market and got a 4-pack of grape tomatoes and planted them, too. Then I sat back to watch for the results of my first foray into vegetable gardening.

Sadly, I only got two peas off the pea plant before something ate it. However, in addition to the grape tomatoes, a roma and three vine-ripened tomato plants and two squash plants are thriving. Where did they come from? I puzzled for weeks, before finally being clued in to the likelihood that they came from my bucketful of compost. A couple of weeks ago I counted more than 150 tiny green tomatoes. (There's not a lot to do in the garden right now.)

When Mel gave me that tiny plant, neither of us had any idea what it would start. A simple kindness that extended well beyond the edges of the gift. Next year I will widen the strip and plant the whole thing with vegetables. The point is, we never know when a word spoken to a friend or a smile directed to a stranger or an act of kindness shown to someone who may or may not have deserved it could touch a heart for a lifetime. (I should say here that everyone deserves kindness, it just may not be evident.) And how will those acts, given or received, change a day or even a life? “What happens to a story around the edges?...A story like a snapshot is caught, held for a moment, then delivered. But the people in them go on and on. And what happens next? What happens?” (The Postmistress, Sarah Blake). We most likely will never know that we have made a difference to someone. We won't know what happened next. All we have is the moment.

When I was eight, my family moved; but before we left Olympia behind, my big sister and I commuted with our dad for a few weeks so we could start in our new schools at the beginning of the year. That first day of third grade, Daddy and I walked into the school office. Daddy told the man at the counter (who happened to be the principal) my name and that I was a new student. A woman with her back to us turned around with a big smile and said, "Oh! She's mine!" She took my hand and walked me to the classroom. Those three words changed the course of that day, and all the days to come, for a frightened little girl. Thirty years later I ran across a birthday card she had sent me some years after I was her student. I set the card aside to remind me to write her a letter to make sure she still knew how much that day and that year in her classroom meant to me. Three weeks later, still not having gotten to that note, the mail held a letter from my mother containing Mrs. Rucker's obituary. I know I had told her that she changed the course for me (she served tea at my wedding, after all); I hope she still knew.

It should be remembered that bad deeds and angry words can also change the course of a life. My second grade teacher's name was Mrs. Louderback, and she was the troll under the bridge who ate billy goats and second graders for breakfast. And that's all I'm going to say about that. We all have words or actions we wish we could take back. Even if they aren't remembered by the receiver, they may be still hurting the one who delivered them. You know what I mean.

Today is Independence Day. I am not always proud of how my country, collectively or individually, treats others. Horrendous actions have been taken in the name of the stars and stripes. But, nevertheless, I am always glad that an accident of birth made this my home. And I am grateful to the courageous men and women who came before me. Some, like John Hancock with his bold and pompous signature on the Declaration of Independence, proclaim a self-knowledge that they are changing the course of human events, and they are well-known. But most are nameless people who unbenownst to them changed one life with a kind word or deed. Those actions increased exponentially to change a family, a neighborhood, a region, a state, a country, even a world.

Tiger lilies are a fascinating study in the unexpected. Their long, narrow, bright orange bud is unusual  in and of itself; but who could imagine what is hiding inside until it opens up to a most amazing flower. Five years ago my pastor sent me on a pastoral visit to a church member whose marriage had just ended. My second relationship had recently ended; I guess she thought I could provide understanding and comfort in a traumatic time. I listened, I let her cry, I was a caring body in the other chair. As my friend Jack says, much of ministry is just showing up. And we are all ministers. That difficult day changed the course of at least two lives. She tells me often how much it meant to her; and I her, as it was as much a gift to me. That single hour opened up to a beautiful and enduring friendship. I was asked to show up--and the affirmation in that simple request started the ball rolling. I said "yes." The door was opened to me and I was allowed into a life. And it changed the course.

We never know what a gift or a kindness is going to start--or how long it will be remembered--or how many lives it will touch. If we all lived life with the knowledge of the potential in each encounter, at the very least our own lives would be better for it. And perhaps that is all there needs be to justify our space on the planet.