Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-08-18 - 7:27 p.m.

Something to Give

I have tomatoes. I have to go out in the early morning or in the evening, after the bees have finished, but I do have tomatoes. I have enough for our tomato needs and then some. Tonight, we had homemade salsa; I've been eating tomatoes every day in salads, or just cut up with basil and a splash of balsamic vinegar. The best thing is that I have more than I can eat.

Every year, when I eat the first sun-warm tomato from the garden, I think how much the work of a garden is worth the harvest. Even though it's only tomatoes, these days. The weeding and the rototilling and the planting and the watering, none of it very hard or time consuming in the long run - and you get the very best of God's bounty in return. How much I would rather sweat, and clean the mud and weeds out of the rototiller blades, than I would make yet another run down to Raley's.

But the very best part is having enough and more left over to give away. It's the true meaning of bounty. Since I have been in these lean years, I've had very little to give. I don't treat friends to dinners out, or buy extravagant gifts for birthdays. I don't give much to charity; I don't have a United Way gift taken out of my paycheck. I don't bring friends beautiful florist bouquets and I don't take them to concerts.

Of all the things I don't like about being poor - of all the worry and juggling and the ducking - the thing I resent the most is not being able to use money to do these things any more.

Yeah, yeah. I do make things; I cook for people; I do favors when I can, in the ways that I can. I know the worth of a homemade gift, or a phone call at the right time, or a rose from the bushes in my front yard. I do, I really do. I know what these things mean to me when I receive them, and I know they're gifts of consequence and value when I can give them. I'm not talking, here, about the true generous impulse, the open heart. I'm talking about the selfish and mercenary side of me, the side that wants to buy my daughter a pony just to see the look on her face. The side that wants to sweep my best friend away for a spa weekend, because she deserves it and because I want to be her benefactor. The part of me that has in the past been given things that I could never have afforded myself, that have made my life easier and better, wants to have the same power - the power to share extravagance, to revel in giving it away.

Tonight, I will take a small basket of wonderful tomatoes to the neighbors, who don't garden. They are the best tomatoes, and I am grateful to my garden for not only giving them to me, but giving me enough to share, to give something away. It is a spiritual break from hoarding and stretching and fretting and squeezing. It is filled up and spilling over, the horn of plenty, the bountiful harvest. There's a lot of gratitude in that small basket. Some days it isn't enough. Most days it is.

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