(With thanks to Callum Robinson and his wonderful first book “Ingrained”)
My gardening hands have a way of
forgetting from one season to the next. Some of this stems from being out of practice—winter’s dormancy and frozen ground had forced a pause in my outdoor activities. Forgetfulness is also brought on when I skip the planting of a particular vegetable for a year or two (such as when I acknowledge that I never really liked Brussel sprouts). This occasional planting hiatus makes me think twice about its precise seeding and cultivation requirements when I do try again. Of course, I can always consult the back of the seed packet or a gardening book, but at this point in my life I prefer feeling my way through a task rather than thinking about it. After all, the more you’re in your head as opposed to trusting your hands, the more you’re out of touch.
I must concede that some of this lapsis in my manus is age-related. The words of an eighty-five-year-old Kansas farmer I once interviewed come to mind: “Every year the ground gets a little further away from me.” Also, the curmudgeonly farmer in Connecticut who once explained to me his strategy for reducing the impact of aging on his farming: “The corn don’t grow so good around the edges, so this year I ain’t planting any edges.”
My digital dexterity, which once happened without premeditation, is partially thwarted by arthritis that has invaded several knuckles. This becomes particularly apparent when I start indoor seeding. From late winter into early spring, I will fill cardboard containers with potting soil then soak it with water, pressing my finger tips to the surface to check for the appropriate degree of sponginess. The first seeding of a container is always clumsy—the seed sticks to my palm, disappears between the gaps in my fingers, doesn’t fall correctly onto the soil, or lands too closely to the previous one. As I gently shake the packet, too many seeds may spill out, or they adhere to the inside envelope leaving me with too few on the surface. Rather than rely on my stiff fingers to capture the errant seeds, I’ll blow into the packet to dislodge them. Too often, however, this causes a helter-skelter scattering of seeds, leaving one or two “planted” up my nostrils.
But by the time I reach container number seven or eight, the feeling that came to me last spring as easily as the “leaves to the trees,” begins to return. The tendons and joints become pliable as they remember sensations forgotten from neglect. Even the tension from the seeping spread of arthritis gives way to motions formerly latent. The hand catches the seed, the other hand’s thumb and index finger pinch them one at a time to be laid softly on the potting soil; spare fingers press them to the proper depth—knuckle deep for peas, to the lower part of the fingernail for tomatoes, to the top of the finger nail for lettuce. Fifty years of my fingers transporting information to my brain which processes it and sends it back again in a micro-second tells me if everything is okay or if adjustments are required.
I’ve often held my hands up to the New Mexico sun hoping that the intense light would illuminate the bones like an x-ray. I do this more out of wonder and respect for these two divine instruments than to better understand the mechanics of each one’s 27 bones. But oh, the things they’ve done over the years without me asking, like that foul ball at Fenway Park that magically passed through two dozen outstretched hands before landing in mine. I remember admonitions from basketball coaches to “dribble with your fingertips” that allowed me to make that turn around jump shot at the age of 17. Arcing over the hands of opponents, the ball fell gracefully through nothing but net, a goal that won our intra-mural league championship. Now it’s those wonderful few hours spent shooting baskets with my grandson. The hands retain the feel of the ball, its resistance to the ground and the bounce against the backboard, even when, like the Kansas farmer’s receding ground, the basket seems to get higher every year.
How about lovemaking? The manner in which your hands wander across the body of your lover—knowing when to wait, when to proceed, how to caress, squeeze, stroke, or even pinch—is important to all relationships. How long did it take you to get it right (did you ever)?
What about the writing and related technology I’ve had to master to bring these words to you? My first letters, words, and sentences were brought to life with a Number 2 pencil. I can still remember Mrs. Robinson, my third-grade teacher, guiding my hand to make the loops and curves that would become the building blocks of “my letter to the world.” Other than the addition of a pen, not much would change until the typing course I took in summer school seven years later. Over the course of 20, hot and humid un-air-conditioned days, I would say goodbye to hunt and peck as I touch typed my way to 30 words per minute! When I look back on 19 years of education, that may be the most important course I ever took (other than drive ed). Following a progression of manual and electric typewriters, giant desk top computers, laptops, tablets, and smart phones, my fingers would prove adaptive even though my brain resisted the ceaseless pace of change with every cell of its being.
Often my hands are the messenger of my carelessness. Thinking my bare paws are capable of grabbing and holding anything regardless of its size, weight, or level of risk, from cigarettes to firewood to skillets, my stinky, splintered, and blistered hands remind me that there are definite limits in my pursuit of cool.
Our sense of touch is the least utilized of our senses. Most of us see and hear all the time. Though not as robustly as our canine friends’ powerful schnozzes, the human nose is regularly sizing up an array of atmospheric scents, or our mouth is enjoying (or not) a host of tastes. But touch, though we do it all the time, is frequently relegated to everyday functionalities like grabbing the doorknob, pulling our pants up, or judging the temperature of a can of beer.
But for the sake of sheer sensuality, I’ve never found anything that revs up the potency of touch like gardening. Blindfolded, I can plant garlic cloves in the fall by finding the tiny root hairs with the tip of my finger, point the clove downward while nestling it snugly into the soft earth just above my second knuckle. Pulling a weed tests the hand’s strength which in turn tells me that it needs help from the other hand, or maybe we give up and use the trowel. Passing a hand across human skin is divine and often erotic, but gliding your finger tips over the skin of a vine-ripe tomato can be a close second. For the sensuous gardener, a brief caress of the vegetable nearly mature on the plant in the sun’s heat stimulates the taste buds and conjures up a recipe or two. Even the offending tomato hornworm, rapacious in its path of destruction, has a silken, fleshy feel as it’s pulled from the plant stem and terminated with extreme prejudice between two bricks.
Our gardening hands have grown lazy and forgetful from a winter of disuse. It’s time to plunge them once again into the moist, cool spring soil. That will wake them up, and I hear tell that the dirtier they get the more they’ll remember.