deep enough

my grandmother was an artist who painted still life's and landscapes. in 1944 she went to the barn and found a shovel and dropped it beside a bed of peonies and irises. she walked up to the farmhouse and retrieved the long, cylindrical packages she had wrapped in layers of paper, canvas and burlap.

when i was twelve years old the house where i grew up north of boston developed a problem. a kind of sinkhole had gradually manifested itself and gaped unattractively near the edge of the yard where it sloped toward the pond. the lawn dropped off and leveled back out again beyond this rude intrusion in nature's plan. the canker on their land deeply disturbed my parents; they stood on the edge of the abyss and wondered how to fix it.

i peeled back the top of the packet of radish seeds and poured some in my hand. my husband loves radishes. we had built a new house and i was planting another garden. the soil was dark and rich, full of worms. the smell alone was enough to get me through the day.

laddie-boy, the family dog when i was in high school, ran past me with a big, reddish, dripping lump in his mouth. i thought it looked raw.

standing on the grass in front of the peonies and irises on her farm in latvia, omi, my latvian grandmother, gently cradled the packages in her arms before she put them in a box beside her on the ground. she pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes and stared down at a spot on the earth near her feet.

my parents decided to "compost" the old washing machine in the hole, in addition to a rusted-out wheelbarrow, four lawn chairs, a few metal barrels and a pink bathroom sink—all dilapidated, and at that moment, all very useful in filling an unwanted hole. my parents composted organic material (the only people i knew who even had any idea of what composting was). why not this stuff?

i sprinkled a few seeds in each small cavity along the fifteen-foot row. i filled in the holes and patted the soil carefully. i watered the newly-planted seeds with a fine, light spray from the garden hose and hoped for a good harvest.

grab that dog! somebody shouted.

blow after blow, the shovel mercilessly stabbed at the green grass, turning up clod after clod of good earth. omi rested and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.

i watched from a second floor window as my parents dragged the junk to the edge of the offending orifice and then pushed the items in one by one. conveniently, on the other side of the house, my father was systematically removing part of a rocky hill, one wheelbarrow load at a time, to scrounge for stones to use in the rock walls he was building on the property. (it took him twenty years to get rid of a chunk of the hill and longer than that to build all the walls.) now he had a place to dispose of his hill.

as the radish globes pushed through the loam underground, the greens on top grew large. but when they were finally pulled out and inspected, the radishes were disappointingly small and lumpy. the ones i had planted at our other house in portland were bigger. these tasted ok, though. my husband liked them.

our dog was under the beech tree with his jaws wrapped tightly around a stolen pot roast. (not the first thing he had ever stolen, either —in addition to food, his list of larcenies included socks and underwear, too. woe to those who liked to hang their washing on a clothesline.) he proceeded to excavate a hiding place for his prize. that black labrador / norwegian elkhound pup had a magnificent nose and a lust for raw meat. what a thief. we never did find out who was missing a pot roast..... or socks. or underwear.

my grandmother laid the box containing her carefully wrapped oil paintings in the grave she had dug, satisfied the soviet army would never find them there.

my parents planted grass on top of their land reclamation project. the addition of fill well beyond the hole itself enlarged the lawn, offered more space for plants, and improved the look of the landscape.

i no longer grow vegetables. i grow perennials.

laddie ate his last pot roast in 1980. we sprinkled his ashes where he liked to bury his bones.

my grandmother threw dirt on her artwork. she intended to dig up her oil paintings when she returned to latvia after the war.

but she never did.

after omi left the displaced persons camp in germany, she climbed aboard an american troop transport ship—a liberty ship—with her family and other refugees. as the ship sailed into new york harbor, the statue of liberty welcomed them to america. omi lived out the rest of her days in boston.

sleigh ride

seventy-five winters ago there was still a shaky peace in the land. there was also a short-lived independence between the two big wars for the small baltic countries - latvia, lithuania and estonia - one they would not see again until 1991. in a few years the second world war would start and embroil these tiny nations in feuds not of their own making. german and soviet soldiers, horses and tanks would trample over latvian soil, changing forever the lives of thousands of people.

but that was later. for now marta and her family and the farm's workers, would keep on doing what they had always done. many years ago in latvia, the family lived on a farm called three lindens, named for the three largest trees on the property. the three linden trees stood proudly by themselves in a cluster beyond the terrace, like three beautifully dressed girls showing off at a garden party.

three lindens farm provided much of the food for the people who lived and worked there, any surplus was sold or bartered. sugar beets were the main cash crop. old grandmother, marta's mother (a widow), owned three lindens and, with marta's help, ran it well. (marta's husband was a university professor who lived and taught in riga during the week.) she supervised baking bread and cakes, slaughtering chickens for dinner, milking cows, planting flower and vegetable gardens, and landscaping the grounds. sugar beet production she left to the farm's manager.

not only was this a prosperous farm, it was also a home, and old grandmother firmly believed in the beauty of nature. the barns and other outbuildings were built a distance from the house to keep the business of running a farm separate from the business of running a family. old grandmother surrounded the big, yellow farmhouse with tall lilacs and hedges, planted for their beauty as well as for privacy. colorful flowers, shrubs and fruit trees grew in a dense profusion, and fine gravel pathways laced around the manicured garden. beyond the garden, an unobstructed, panoramic window-like view through the tall pine, birch and linden trees was carefully maintained all the way down to the bank of the little daugava river.

that winter seventy-five years ago, when marta's daughter, ani, was six years old, was a cold, snowy one. ani and her friend sylvie could not walk the two miles to school in the huge snow drifts. until the weather warmed up, one of the farm hands hitched a couple horses to the sleigh every morning. marta fluffed up the fur blankets, tucked the children deep into the sleigh, and watched as they drove off to school. along the way they would stop and pick up other girls and boys who were walking to school on the road.

shouts of joy greeted each new rosey-cheeked passenger as they climbed in and snuggled under the warm furry coverings. with sleigh bells jingling, the children would sing and chatter and laugh as they slipped across the icy land on their way to school. riding free, free to let their voices ring out loudly across the fields; free to announce their happiness to the world; free to slide along in a sturdy sleigh with beautiful horses pulling them down the snow-packed road; free to just be children.

when the war came, many of the farm's workers left to become soldiers. when the soviet tanks got too close, the school closed. when the tanks drove away again, the school reopened. when the town's food supplies dwindled, marta's family did not go hungry, nor did their neighbors. they stayed on the farm for as long as they could. then one day in springtime when the soviet army returned, closing in on the retreating german army, marta and her family fled under the protection of the germans, taking only what they could carry. they assumed they would return home when the fighting was over.

the sleigh disappeared one night near the end of the war. the sleigh bells hung silently on a peg beside the barn door, mute and forgotten. old grandmother, marta and ani never saw three lindens farm again.