WHAT GROWS AROUND COMES AROUND

It all started with that little potato. We were cleaning the kitchen and Danny--my younger brother--found it under the sink. No one knows how it got there, but when we found it it was shriveled and sprouting tendrils from every angle like a twisted spider. Mom carefully picked it up and examined it. She turned the alien object in her hand. She had never seen anything like it: thin white tendrils with light green nodules at almost regular intervals. “It is certainly not edible,” she said, which was a shame because food was scarce, and this was missing calories. I think Mom felt a little guilty for letting food slip through the cracks like that, especially with four of us to feed. The rations were just not enough for two adults and two growing children.

Hearing the commotion, Dad came to investigate. With a look of surprise on his face, Dad took the ugly potato from Mom. “Wow, look at this,” he exclaimed.

“I'm sorry,” Mom said. “I don't know how I could have missed it. I don't think we can eat that.”

“No,” said our father, “but we might be able to do something even better.” Dad told us that when he was young, people used to grow potatoes themselves, rather than have them handed out by the ration teams. Of course, we did not believe him. He had a habit of regaling us with fanciful tales of his youth. Dad would paint whole worlds of fun and fancy, things like amusement parks where children could ride and eat until they dropped from exhaustion, and trips down rivers in pointed narrow boats. He mentioned something called fudge, a sweet bar of chocolate and nuts. I had heard about chocolate in school as part of our lessons, and how it was banned because it was not good for people to eat. Sweet poison, the teacher called it. But Dad insisted that he had eaten it with no ill effects. He said it was his favorite treat. “Solid chewy bars of chocolate with nuts in it.”

“What kind of nuts?” asked Danny.

“Any kind you wanted. Usually walnuts.”

We did not know if Dad was telling us the truth or not. Neither of us had ever seen a walnut or chocolate. Mom said that we should believe him, so we pretended that we did.

Dad also talked of tents--camping, I think was the word for it--and cooking over an open fire and watching the sparks disappear into crisp night air, and snuggling into insulated bags for warmth with just a thin sheet above your head to protect you from the rain. He told us tales of distant cities like Paris and Heidelberg, places so ancient that the buildings were made of individual pieces of stone and held together by mud. Of course, we were all wise to Dad's tall tales, but we had fun hearing about them nonetheless. We certainly did not believe Dad when he told us about the potato. That was the most fanciful tale of all, that people used to grow their own food, right in their yards.

“I think we can plant it,” Dad said. “It might be fun to watch it grow.”

“What if it doesn't grow?” Danny asked.

Dad shrugged his shoulders. “We're going to throw it out anyway. Why not try to have some fun with it”

“What should we grow it in?” Mom wondered.

The kitchen fell silent. After a few moments, each of us began to brainstorm different containers that might be appropriate. “I think it has to be big,” Dad said, “because the potatoes need room to expand.” We did not have much that was not already in use, and we were close to giving up. Finally, Dad grabbed the box that our food rations came in. He looked it over, turning it in his hands a few times. “I think this will do nicely,” he said.

Out in the yard, Danny and I had fun scraping away the weeds and filling the box with handfuls of sandy soil. Despite Mom's entreaties to not get dirty, we made a mess of ourselves. When the box was filled about halfway, Dad laid the shriveled potato in the center of the box, instructing us to fill the box.

“Won't that kill it?” Danny asked.

“I don't think so,” Dad said. “I think the potatoes grow underground. Danny and I laughed at that as we buried the sorry little potato. Mom, quite certain that was the end of the affair, used a small flat rock as a tombstone and placed it the soil on its edge.

The box sat in the corner of the yard, largely forgotten until two weeks later, when Dad called us to come and see. Small leaves were peaking though the soil. The little potato had risen from the grave.  

“Are the potatoes ready yet?” asked Danny.

“Not yet, I think,” Dad replied. “They take a while.”

“When will we know?” asked Mom.

“I don't know,” said Dad. “We'll just wait and see.”

Wait we did, for more than two months. Danny and I checked on the box every day after we logged out of school. The leaves were deep green, and had a funny smell. One clump even put out small white flowers, which quickly shriveled and fell off. Eventually, when the weather turned cooler the green leaves began to yellow and eventually succumbed. Our experiment came to an end. The family gathered around as Dad dumped the box. Amazingly, fist sized potatoes spilled out into the yard. Danny and I snatched them up from the dirt, each of us trying to find the largest one. That honor actually went to Mom, who amazingly grabbed a potato the size of Dad's fist. In all, thirteen potatoes were harvested from the box. We ate better that night than ever before after everyone agreed to save the smallest potato to repeat the experiment.

Dad's triumph with the potato led to experimentation with other things. Any seed that we could find in the food in the ration box we tried to grow. Though many failed, we did have success growing tomatoes and beans. The first tomato, though small, was flavorful. Bigger ones followed. Beans proved easy to grow, and were a prolific part of our diet through most of summer. Each of us in the family donated one pea from our monthly allotment of dried peas. We planted them without knowing what were doing. We assumed that they would grow low to the ground. Instead, they stretched upward, reaching for sunlight. The peas put out long thin fingers to wrap around. We scrambled to find things that they could grow up. The challenge was that thicker supports did not fall over, but the peas struggled to grab onto them with their slim green tendrils. The peas seemed to prefer thinner supports, but they were harder to secure upright. Finally, dad got the idea of bending some unused wire coat hangers into a ladder shape and attaching that to a stronger post. We watched the peas grow, then flower. Miraculously, the white flowers morphed into small green pods.

“Is that where the peas grow?” Danny asked.

“I have no idea,” said mother.

We were all amazed when the pods began to swell, the seeds faintly visible if the sunlight caught the pod at the correct angle.

“How do you know when they are ready to pick?” asked mother.

“I guess when they get the right size,” Dad responded.

We thought that since we planted them all at the same time, that all of the pods would be ready together. Instead, they came a few at a time. Mom had the idea to freeze them as they came in, but no one had any idea how that would be done. So she simply saved the pods, letting them slowly dry on the counter, until all of the peas were harvested. There was enough to put in a soup.

Apples proved elusive. The seeds simply would not germinate. We were all surprised, however, when we actually grew strawberries. The council provided fresh strawberries every year around the holiday. It was Danny who realized that the little dimples on the fruit were seeds (we always thought seeds grew on the inside of the fruit). Mom shaved off a very thin slice of one of the fruits and patted a thin layer of soil over top of it. The only container she could find was an old shoe box. She kept it carefully watered. We were all amazed when two tiny plants emerged. Dad put the box outside in the sun, since we had only two small windows in our house. When the first small green berries appeared, there was excitement in the house. Strawberries were issued only during holiday, and each person got only two berries in their allotment. The two little plants produced enough for each of us to have two more, with one extra, which we gave to mom since she was the one who thought of planting the seeds, and since strawberries were her favorite.

Eventually, almost every inch of our small yard became devoted to growing food. Boxes, bins, jars and containers were lined up in rows, with narrow twisted paths making a sort of maze through the yard. I liked to walk through the little garden not just to see the plants, but to smell them. Each plant had its own smell. Tomatoes smelled strong, and little tinny. Peas were sweet and mild. Beans smelled like grass. Strawberries were fruity. To me, the smells were almost as exciting as the harvests. And of course there were the colors too--light green pea shoots, yellow tomato blossoms, and white bean flowers that we did not even recognize as flowers at first. They looked more like white pimples hanging from the plant. That was Danny's description.

We ate better than ever before. For the first time, we were actually full. We even gained weight. Dad kept a record of what was planted when and how it grew and what kind of harvest it gave. Because paper was scarce, he kept his records on whatever scraps of paper he could find--leaflets from the government, old napkins, cardboard boxes that had begun to rot and could no longer be used to grow things. He kept his notes in an old shoe inside his closet. Each time we planted, we tried to do better than the last time. The family bonded around the plants. We each had a favorite one and we competed to see whose plant performed the best.

The knock at the door came during dinner. It was totally unexpected. The platter was filled with a bounty of home grown beans stewed in tomatoes picked fresh that morning. This filled out the small portion of ration meat and rice that made up our allotment. Dad stopped chewing. He began to visibly sweat and I noticed that his fork shook in his hand. The knock repeated.

“David Richards!” said a voice from the other side of the door. “Open up, please.”

Dad sat frozen in his chair. I guess he never thought that it would come to this. Why would they ever care about us? What could they possibly want? More knocking, louder this time.

It was Mom who finally answered the door. She did not really have a choice. Everyone knew that once the knocking begins you either answer or they cave the door in, which is the worse option.

Three men entered without pleasantries. On either end, the men carried large black clubs in their hands, even though they would get no trouble from us. We were a peaceful family. The man in the middle read from a tablet. “David Richards, violation of the 'Food Is Freedom Act', accused of illegally growing, producing, possessing, and/or consuming home grown food.”

“But we didn't know,” Mom protested. “We were just trying to feed our family. Why is it wrong to grow food?”

Dad swallowed his tomatoes and beans, daintily wiping his mouth before going silently with two of the men. The third man went into the back yard and destroyed every plant, every container. He pulled down the pea trellis that dad had made. He bent and broke the poles that the beans were climbing. He kicked over boxes, scattering dirt across the yard. He did not find Dad's scraps of paper hidden in his old loafer.

We watched Dad's trial on the television, even though we heard the ratings were low. Mom cried through most of it. Dad did not even try to defend himself. He just wanted to feed his family, and he did it very well. If we survive on our half rations for the next six years, we will be happy to see Dad again. In the meantime, I am collecting boxes (and seeds) and memorizing Dad's notes.