Grass and resurrection

Molly loves to eat grass. Not bits and pieces but tons of it. Our old house in Buffalo had a yard that extended way, way back. Molly would walk slowly towards the end chewing all the grass she could handle all the way down. Molly also likes to chase birds and slap the air with her paws as she attacks flies, bees, moths, or butterflies. But mostly she just loves to eat grass. Our yard in Philadelphia now is much smaller. It takes Molly half the time to circle the area as she munches the new green shoots of our lawn. Ada and I sit on the patio and watch her. She chirps at the birds that fly by and keeps me in her view. At first I would cry softly to myself as Molly completed her grass eating rounds so swiftly. I was sure that she was aching for her old house and yard. Now, I just sit and watch her.

In 1982 I visited Hamburg with my second-husband-to-be (how's that for a name, Richard?) to meet his father. When we awoke early in the morning after our flight I told both men that I was unable to feel comfortable in Germany unless I first paid my respects to a Concentration Camp. We went directly to Bergen-Belsen. The air was still and silent with pain. Vast mounds of mass graves extended as far as the eye could see. However, growing softly all over the earth was a blanket of purple heather, which shuddered when a breeze occasioned by.

Since that time I have always longed for a pot of heather. Finally, eighteen years later in Buffalo I bought one. Soft and purple with tiny, green, fern-like leaves. The heather loved our yard and grew strong and healthy amongst the other plants.

As we packed up to leave for Philadelphia I ran out into the garden. Scooping up the rose bush Charlie had given me, along with its earth where I had buried some of his ashes I put them in a large bucket. Then I dug up the yellow flowering plant (I can never remember its name) that Susan gave me after Charles had died, and placed it in a different bucket. Finally, I gathered the heather and planted it together with my beloved lavender in a large, round, clay pot. I was ready to go.

This morning, while Molly chews on her grass and Ada sits on the patio watching, and chirping, I walk around my new yard. I see: dark skies holding back the rain still to come; Charlie's rose bush sprouting leaves after I planted it, his ashes and the yellow flowering plant whose name I cannot remember, in a new rose garden created two weeks ago; lavender in the clay pot is as green as can be. Recently I have been watching the heather closely, anxiously, as it looks dead to me. However, this morning, underneath its dead, brittle, skeleton, I find tiny green leaves struggling to return.

I think to myself, "Resurrection," and I must have said it out loud because Ada takes her gaze off Molly and glances at me. Resurrection reminds me immediately of a small, scrub-like bush that grew on the rocks of the Matobo (Matopos) outside Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. When I was a child and adolescent girl, I would gather up dead and brittle sprigs of the Resurrection plant, and put them in a glass of water at night. The very next morning fresh green leaves were sprouting up and down its spine. I always loved the way that little shrub came back to life so easily with just a few drops of water. There was something mysterious, magical, spiritual, hopeful about its seemingly return from the dead.

Spring in Philadelphia is glorious with cherry blossoms, daffodils and forsythia. As Molly becomes used to her new munching grounds, I sigh with joy. The heather is returning bringing with it connections to Hamburg, Bergen-Belsen, Uri and Edu, Tom and Buffalo, Bulawayo and Matopos, tying them all together for me as I peek outside my cave and embrace a new life.

Comments

[Leanne]

Great article. We should learn some lessons from the Resurrection plant. BTW, have you been to Longwood Gardens, in Philadelphia?
http://www.longwoodgardens.org/

That shall be my first stop (or next stop after the Art Museum) when the semester is over.

[franchini]

I've always loved heather too, and I liked the image of the heather at the concentration camp. I haven't visited one yet myself but I've heard that it is a very moving experience.

[Tamar]

Leanne, we could go together! It looks like a beautiful place. Semester is soon over.

franchini, yes. Visiting a place like that is important for all of us, I think. I have long wanted to visit the Gold Coast in Africa where slaves were collected before being sent out to the Americas.

[Jean]

I visited the island of Goree off the coast of Senegal where slaves were also collected. I was with some Latin Americans, for whom I had to translate the guide's French commentary. Very difficult in the circumstances, but also a focus which perhaps made the tour bearable! It's in my minds eye - heat, sand, dreadful low claustrophobic cells, despair, the beautiful view out to sea meaning something quite different from before we went in, frantically trying to recall the Spanish for leg-irons, gratitude that I met no Senengalese who was at all anti-European. Not something one ever forgets. I've never been, though, much nearer to home, to a concentration camp site in Germany or Poland.

[Jean]

PS um, I was going to keep this to myself, but it might make you laugh: it took me several minutes to work out that you could not possibly, in light of other information divulged in your blogs, ever have been married to Richard... (my brain is very tired at present).

[Danny]

That's funny. Even as well as I know you and your history, Tamar, from the way that sentence was phrased I also had a moment where I thought, "What? Richard Cohen is one of Tamar's ex-husbands??"

[Tamar]

Yes, Jean - that's where I want to go. It is as important to me as visiting holocaust sites in Europe.

Jean and Danny, how funny, I guess it does sound like Richard was one of the husbands! Oh dear - hopefully he doesn't read it as that. I was referring to his post on "marriage past and present."

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Tamar was referring to another incarnation. The Central Asian steppe in the 1200s, wasn't it, dear?

[Tamar]

I'm imagining the clothes we wore, back then ... dear ...