There were both black and golden-green grapes growing over the old wooden fence at the back of Grandma and Grandpa Christensen’s lot—right behind the cherry trees. Though we all lived in a desert region, this acre in-town plot was a shining example of the promised-land Mormon settlers referred to.
My great granddad, a first-generation, Danish convert, had over the years, with his beloved, dark-curled Myrlie, grown an oasis with their rows of dahlia’s, tomatoes, beet’s, peppers, onions, corn, zucchini, strawberries, rhubarb and apricot trees. There was enough streamed-sun, shade and irrigation water to grow the slip-skinned tarts and these especially to me, felt like another country—somewhere foreign and exotic where artful bunches of cascading grapes hung heavy in their heavenly reward of integrity-toil of heart and soil.
Once, I had a vision of sorts, one in which my grandfather, who used to feed me mush or corn flakes poured with whole cream and hot raspberries picked moments ago from his garden for breakfast. He’d already made his rounds in his old, red Ford to change the water gates for farmers around the town by the time I was stretching my young legs, making my way off the high sprung bed, down the narrow stairs.
It was my grandpa, after becoming a King to rule and reign forevermore, still, with his blue as Bahama-water-eyes that came to me in a dream and shook his head, “no,” in reference to the man I had been seeing for quite some time. A much taller fellow with mud-brown eyes who liked to tell lies and somehow Houdini his way out, making them my tar to carry, eating all of the grapes he could find in some back corner and when confronted shrugging his shoulders with no better reply than a two-year-old with no concept, “I wanted to.”
Photo Credit: Amos Bar Zeev/unsplash