Secret Garden

I took the day off to get my toes painted, hit Target & stroll the dreaded grocery store. I love taking weekdays off. The stores are usually dead and traffic is nil. 

When I was sitting in the pedicure chair, eyes closed, chair massaging, daydreaming, I had a flashback to when I was a kid. I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7. We had an old neighbor couple named Mr. and Mrs. Meyer. They lived down a couple houses across the street and I used to go visit them sometimes. I loved going over there. They weren't scary, shriveled up curmudgeons and they didn't smell funny or talk loud like some of the other old people I'd known. They were warm, inviting, friendly, fun, funny. I liked how they let me do things instead of making me watch. It made me feel grown up.

I remember Mr. Meyer and I would pick vegetables from their garden, then I'd bring them into their house and Mrs. Meyer and I would cook them. I remember eating sweet peas right off the vine, breaking the pods open with my teeth and scooping the peas out with my tongue; eating mini cucumbers so crunchy they sounded like carrots when you bit into them; the rhubarb that was so tart it made my fat cheeks pucker every time. I remember licking the tip of the rhubarb stalk and dipping it in the bowl of sugar for each bite. Mr. Meyer would just smile and say, "Atta girl. That's how you do it." But none of those were my favorite. Mrs. Meyer would cook up some purple thing that looked atrocious and humongous. As a kid your taste buds are attached to your eyeballs and I never wanted to eat anything that horrible looking so Mr. Meyer would distract me & call me out to the deck to help him shuck corn. He taught me how to split the husk at the top in fours and tear down in pulses to get the most silk off the stalk. They also had the best lemonade ever. I don't know why it was so good. Maybe it was just the atmosphere of sitting on their big deck under their big oak watching the sun set. Memories are funny things. They're not always chronological. I remember popping into the kitchen when Mrs. Meyer was cooking something. Frying it  I think. It smelled so yummy. I was barely tall enough to see over the stove but it was enough to catch a glimpse of the goodness in the pan. I had no idea what I was looking at as but it was so delicious. To this day I can't recall the actual taste but I remember how happy I felt hearing it cook, smelling it, tasting it, watching Mrs. Meyer watch me watch her cooking it. What I didn't know until probably my 20s was that I was eating eggplant. Eggplant wasn't a big staple in the Zopfi household so I don't think I'd actually knowingly had it again until sometime in college when my friends and I went to Khan's Mongolian Barbecue in Dinkytown. The second I tasted it, I knew that's what Mrs. Meyer had cooked for me all those years ago. 

I don't know what made me think of that when I was getting my toes painted. But I'm glad I did. It was a good memory. Mr. and Mrs. Meyer have long since passed but I think they'd be happy to know I still think about their Secret Garden, fondly.