Kia ora Koutou,
Once upon a time I used to visit an old woman whose name was Mary, I was in my thirties but it still seemed a bit rude to call her by her first name, especially as she was going to teach me about gardening, but she insisted. She said that these days everyone she met called her Mrs and it made her feel that somewhere along the way the real Mary had been lost. There was only this woman who represented just part of her life.
Calling her Mrs, she said, meant that Mary, the baby, the little girl, the schoolgirl, the library monitor girl, the singing in the choir girl, the giggling behind the hymn book girl, the sneaking out to dances girl, the learning to work behind the counter girl, the falling in love three times at least girl, the crying into her pillow girl, the being put in charge of the showroom woman, the walking up the aisle woman, all were lost. ‘Even when he buggered off,’ she said, ‘they still called me Mrs.’
I was curious. ‘Did you tell them not to?’
‘Course,’ she said, ‘but they took no notice. It was easier for them. They said Mary sounded disrespectful. They said kids got away with too much these days and it would be the last straw if they started calling adults by their first name, especially older adults.’
I visited Mary once a fortnight on Saturday afternoons. Our talk was mainly about growing things. These weren’t formal lessons. We would just go around her little garden and she would stop and hold a branch, a bud, between her wrinkled gnarly fingers and talk about its growing habits. ‘It doesn’t like too much water,’ she’d say, ‘likes the dry, so good to grow in the dry parts of your garden.’ She’d finger a leaf. ‘Rust,’ she’d say, ‘bloody rust. Have to spray. Although between you and me, the spray’s useless.’Then she’d pat the branch and say, ‘But you’re a resilient bugger, you’ll grow for me, won’t you.’
I enjoyed everything about visiting Mary but what I loved most was when she talked about growing up. ‘No–one told me anything,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t have a brother, ‘so boys were like a different species. They dressed differently, they talked and laughed in different ways, they did different things. They didn’t sew or knit. They didn’t sweep the floor or make the bed. They didn’t hang out the washing.’ She smiled at me. ‘It was only later I discovered that they were the ones who, when they grew up, brought money into the house. ‘Which,’ she said, ‘gave them too much say. Until…’ She pushed the hoe gently around the new lettuce plants, loosening the soil, then turned her head and grinned that Mary grin, a mixture of fun, cheek and understanding, ‘until they learned bringing money into the house didn’t buy everything. At least not in my house.’
Mary showed me how to hoe, how to leave the soil slightly ruffled. ‘Its not the fashion these days,’ she said, ‘they like everything smooth, but its better for the soil and the plants if its ruffled a bit, gives them both a chance to breathe. She also showed me how to dig. ‘People think its just a matter of jamming the spade in, lifting it up with the soil on it, then turning it over as you put it back. Sometimes,’ she said, ‘that works but more often you need to break it a little, gently mostly but sometime you need to bang it with the back of the spade.’ She smiled at me. ‘Life or garden soil, Renée, ‘you need to let the air in.’
When she died in her sleep one early February night, I cried. She was not whanau, I only saw her once a fortnight or three weeks, I only knew her from what she said during my visits. I didn’t even know if she taught anyone else. Or had any other visitors. We’d met when I helped her find a jar of pickles at the supermarket and somehow that led to talking about gardening and me telling her my problems and her offering to show me the way to garden.
There was only a small group of us at the funeral which was held in the Funeral Director’s room. Someone played the piano, and someone talked about her life and I stood at the back and thought about all the things she said and how, when I boiled it all down, probably the most important, because it applied to most things –gardening, cleaning or how you treat other people – ‘Just be sure you let the air in.’
Renée
