I was RIGHT. I thought you were talking about growing the yam and not eating it.
I wonder how we both thought that. See, I guess I was thinking of a sad little mommie tradition, in Southern Cal, you know, or at least my sad little mommie thingy, where growing a sweet potato for company can actually be pictured as a possibility, and then, heck, a reality.
I guess that was a sort of "fish" too...... just my silly curiosity, I mean.....
Well, actually, I think, contemplating the Subject Files, the micro-mini ancient files of "No Friends" that passed over the scanner, even facetiously, (or maliciously?) ~ the scanner access ports picked up a sweet potato vine.
That sounds almost uhm....incredible?
But maybe you ported it too!
Hee hee.
Science.
(I hope people laugh in the parts of this I laugh. In.)
Okay, so if we get past the admittedly bizarre way this memory was evoked, I remember the room, it's shape, the windows, the furniture (beds) and the jar, and the toothpicks, and the roots, and the excitement of my first leaf. First sprout and leaf.
(These are Mommy "loneliness" or self-esteem treatment things!)
I can see the shape of the stem, it's curl and little green sweet potato leaf.
I was really pleased my mommy and daddy would let me have a sweet potato, which was pretty lavish in 1958 or 9, to simply "waste" (that would be not eat) ~ to GROW something.
(Of course, I didn't think it was going to grow, either.
I SIMPLY DID NOT BELIEVE IT. My six year old mind made NO CONNECTION between grocery food items and REAL plants.
I mean, I was pretty thrilled when my dad managed to grow a couple of strawberries, in LA, and the closest thing to a food plant I'd seen was a sweet pea (still love em, because of this introduction) ~ and I couldn't figure out why we were planting a sweet pea it if we weren't getting a pea. Was this another example of The Adult World being deceptive? All talk?
You really have to be on your toes; I know that much. Deceit, deceit, deceit.
When I found out we were going to TRY TO GROW SOME STRAWBERRIES, I was completely bowled over. Like losing it.
STRAWBERRIES COME in JAM.
YOU CAN'T GROW THEM.
A person gets tired of being lied to, and jerked around.
They are grown in the phillippines or something.
I mean I don't know;
Down and Over There. Somewhere.
I had a little puzzle, well the pieces were little, with all the States on there, and you fit them in, and one of them always had a bent part, they designed some State, laid out some State, wrong, and it wasn't a very good piece. But I didn't think strawberries came from anywhere on there.
Turquoise jewelry came from Arizona.
And Old Faithful was in Wyoming.
Then. I don't know about now.
I always liked turquoise and silver.
I am a re-incarnated Navajo, and they brought me pictures of Utah, and Arizona, and Indian shepherd girls in fluted skirts and velvet shirts, and I pointed to them.
This was before my father was carried away into the industrial corporization of America, and he seemed to have some control over his life.
But I remember going to the door of their bedroom in the summer evenings, after dinner, and seeing my dad at the drawing table he had set up, upon which to learn and practice engineering, drawing, to take to his night school.
I knew he was caught up, in some Thing. Some swirl.
I looked at some of the stuff, on his board, pipes and things were there, and I was impressed with what he was doing, but I couldn't see how all of these things and time were necessary, for civilization. I thought we had everything. HE was excited, and tired, and I knew he was leaving \The Present behind.
I swear it. I don't know HOW I knew, but I did.
It is strange that I have accessed this memory from the sweet potato. I've remembered this one before, through another way, another day memory. I told a friend about this memory and feeling, and they said it was amazing I had that impression at that time; but after seeing it again through this sweet potato doorway, I am pretty sure of it. I'm also sure they are at the same time. Close.
If we trace the planets backwards, I sure we will find an asteroid in my "Perceptive" and "Pensive" House. One what repeats twice a millenia.
Anyway, I said my Father wasn't sucked up yet. He was still doing things.
Planting strawberries, building a gate for the driveway, having a luau..... (That birthday I mentioned before, number five or six, where we munched ankle balloons? Same place and time.)
Anyway, I still have a beach towel, that was part of the patio drapery to look luau-y at that luau; and that's when someone gave us lobsters, I made my Dad keep alive. It's blue and has red suns on it. In case, you wanted to know. The towel.
My Dad, he knew about sweet potato plants. One day he came into our room, and said, "You know what you really need for that vine, is something for it to grow on."
A trellis.
I couldn't really see what he was talking about. That's one of the neater things of childhood.
But after about a week of his spare time out in the garage, in came The Trellis. It was the fan-spray thing, about three feet high, made of spaced one inch pieces of thin wood. It was pretty elaborate, actually. I don't think I could build one.
I kept the jar and the vine and everything going for most of a year, at least.
I bet if I ask him about it, he too will remember.
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