one of the true, inalienable gifts of the end of summer is the harvesting of homegrown garden tomatoes.

bright red, succulent, juicy-delicious, it’s a gift that actually comes in all shapes, colors, and sizes: the  omnipresent heirloom, the muscular beefsteak, the green zebra, fuzzy peach, red boar, the hillbilly, grape, plum, campari, even the diminutive cherry. all can be planted easily in the spring, watered abundantly through the brunt of summer, and ultimately & gloriously harvested, often, thru the end of september.

personally, i can’t think of anything much more satisfying than cultivating healthy fruits and vegetables from your own garden, then enjoying them on your own personal or family dinner table. simply, it’s life at its best. the natural, pre-industrial order of things. and what meal isn’t perfectly entrée-ed with a plate of beautiful home-grown, happy red tomatoes, combined with a leaf of fresh green basil, topped with thinly-sliced cuts of white buffalo mozzarella, and garnished with a homemade salad dressing of extra virgin olive oil and a splash of brown japanese soy or tamari sauce? (okay, sure, wine vinegar is fine too.)

i’ve been a gardener my whole life.

maybe it was growing up in the baby boom suburbs of post war long island, where mom and dad always grew a healthy summer garden of zucchini, bell pepper, green beans, spinach, eggplant, and of course, red juicy tomatoes. they say the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. well, that was me. a gardener by osmosis. even my teaching, and i am a life-long teacher, is a metaphor for my gardening. plant the seeds, and they will grow… beyond the classroom, into healthy plants or trees, into wild weeds, or into grafted originals beyond even the teacher’s imagination.

i’ve lived on a hilltop paradise in sunny california for 18 years now. i call it “lucretia gardens” because around back from the sprawling red bougainvillea and white hibiscus trees out front, there lay 7 hillside terraces of verdant garden down below, all resplendent with fruit trees like fig, peach, avocado, plum, grapefruit, lemon, and lime, along with two separate terraces devoted to vegetable gardening.

hence… the glorious tomatoes.

this summer i happened to celebrate my 64^th birthday.

i had a little “when i’m 64” get together at lucretia gardens, and i invited 64 of my nearest and dearest friends to come over for a little “pahty”. the guests’ ages ranged from 19 to 85 and included old friends from the long island baby boomer hood, several LA theater notables, and hand-picked students from the last 25 years at USC. it was a kid-less party though. we were the kids, parents had to leave their young ones at home.

but who knew that when the beatles’ paul mccartney penned “when ’m 64” in 1967, while the rolling stones were teaching us not to trust anyone over 30, and 64 was such an ancient, old man’s or old woman’s age of approaching and decrepit senility, that i would, one day, make it to that stentorian age… having survived lymphatic cancer, still having only one hip of my own, and in possession of most of my mental and physical faculties. hell, i hit the tennis ball harder and better now than i did in my teens.

the pahty was a smashing success… a great turn out, on a balmy, late-august california night, and oh,  i forgot to mention, everyone wore white. it was my wife, surya’s, idea. i don’t know where she got it from. being from indonesia and 30 years younger than me, i know it wasn’t her recollection of the beatles white album or her memory of the four moptop’s pilgrimage to india to see the chanting maharishi. no, it must have been a current fashion magazine, or just her own sense of je ne sais quoi, but there we all were, just about 64 of us jaded, world-weary LA sophisticates, wearing white shirts, white pants, white dashikis, and yes, far too many of us, white hair.

of course, surya and i set out plates full of red ripe tomatoes with basil and mozzarella cheese, along with ocean black mussels sautéed in white wine sauce, home-made cold green zucchini soup from my mother’s timeless recipe, ceaser salad, asian dumplings, barbecued chicken wings……. it was a spread. there was a young pony-tailed friend, matthew, who took photos, a curly, blond-haired USC cinema student who shot a video, and best of all, so many of my friends, many of whom hadn’t seen each other in years, who mingled and enjoyed seeing each other, until about 2 in the morning, at which point i discovered that i was completely spent and had to throw the remaining stragglers out into the cool morning air.

it’s been a few days since and i can’t get “the pahty” out of my mind. i still see lingering and funny images of former titans now stoop-shouldered with age, hear snatches of conversations about awkward falls and errant electrical explosions, recall my embarrassingly profane birthday cake speech. so many crimes and misdemeanors, an embarrassment of riches. but hey, i tell myself, we planned it for months, why not let it linger on as long as it wants to… before it all too soon, retreats into the forgetful humdrum routine of memory.

but now another thought comes to mind. an onerous one. a bittersweet recognition: what if… that night was as good as it will ever get?

what if it’s all downhill from here?

i mean, look… on this one summer night… i still had my… health… my friends… my job after 25 years, my 1^st marriage after 10, my hillside home after 18 (although i merely and mercifully rent). i still had  my memory, my sense of humor, my 12-year-old dog, clay; so many of the people and things i’ve collected from all over the world for 64 friggin’ years.

i go out and sit on the plump, stuffed designer chair on the narrow, red-tiled front porch, in a little corner i like to call “mi rincon de memoria” (my corner of memory), amongst the low hanging creeping charlies and the wood-carved mexican religious figurines.

i  notice a single white easter lily growing through the green ground vegetation towards the black wrought-iron fence. it is singularly beautiful and very alone. i know that it is way too late in the season for a white easter lily to be growing in the garden. but there it is. i look a little closer to admire it, and i see that its white graceful edges are now fading to brown. in a few days, it will be gone. it stands there entirely alone, so fragile, in its slow, elegant decline. inevitably, it will crash like a springtime flower into the cold of september.

we all know what’s awaiting us. no matter how many more miracles of modern science will be invented to keep us alive far past any quality of life. no matter what faith we keep or what religion we invest in. death awaits us all. sure, heaven and reincarnation comfort some of us. but… white easter lilies turn brown… and die.

hopeful springs become the winters of our discontent. lucky 64-year-olds turn 84, or a hundred and four… and then just fade away.

what if i retire in a few years? what if i lose my job? my marriage? my home? where will i go when my landlord asks me to leave lucretia gardens? what if my health fails me? when my health fails me?

 

bitter? sweet?

i have a friend who truly seems to believe that his “golden years” will be “the most productive” of his life. he is optimistic, energetic, and hopeful. he’s constantly crooning,

‘it’s all mind over matter, right?”

maybe so.

“have more faith, trules. be more optimistic.”

okay.

but then again, i don’t want to be “productive” any more. i simply want to “be”.

i look around and i see that too many people have been saving up for the rainy day when they’ll retire, have it easier, not have to work so hard, not have to struggle to get by. but… it never happens. they get sick, the economy goes bad;

there are no golden years and no rainy days. they should have been living all along. been bolder. taken more chances. enjoyed more.

me? i’ve never been able to plan anything. make life conform to my desires.

“life is what happens while you’re waiting for your plans to work out.”

john lennon is famous for saying that, but i think it was some little old lady in manchester or liverpool who he heard it from.

what if my 64^th was the pinnacle of my life?

what if  i will never again be so healthy, so loved, so gainfully employed, or well situated?

what if it’s all a slow slide down the terraced hillside of life? from here on in? if every life is a 3 act play, then certainly i’m entering the final act of mine. i just hope that i can carve out, build, or discover an interesting path through act 3… maybe a little b&b in bali, some decent health care in the fading USofA, maybe the miracle of fatherhood when i’m 70! i will do my best, artist-warrior-like, knowing eventually, that the curtain must… finally come down.

in the meantime, i’m sending out the weblink of the dashing pahty photos to my 64 white-clad friends. i just started 5 new youthful classes at the university right after labor day, and… i’m already thinking about those ripe, ruby-red tomatoes for next years’ new spring garden……

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