Back to the Garden

Once upon a time, deep in the 1950s, my Italian grandfather took me to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. It was highly unusual for me to have time alone with my grandfather, and this is the only such occasion I remember, but for some reason, I became his responsibility for an afternoon.

My grandfather had come to America from Naples in 1905, and still spoke in broken English. The life he found in the new country was hard, but he dabbled in various endeavors and at one point had a pizzeria on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. In its storefront window he created a veritable jungle of plants in large olive oil tins with punctured holes for drainage. When the sunlight slanted through the grimy glass, the leaves became luminous, and the splendid tins with their Italian names were gilded and shiny. This was his garden during those years, and he took pride in it. He had grown up tending to the fruits of the rich volcanic soil of his homeland; he was a peasant farmer at heart.

So perhaps it made sense that on our one day together, he chose to take me with him to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. He was gruff and mostly silent as we wandered, but a more enchanting place did not exist anywhere. We walked through a greenhouse together, where the air was moist, tropical, and fragrant in a way I had never known. I remember a ruckus of green and yellow parrots from the palms and rubber trees, though I am sure there were none, and a wooden footbridge over a clear pond into which glinting pennies had been tossed for wishing. It is as though we took a journey together to some South American dream, just my grandfather and me. To this day, I cannot enter a greenhouse without thinking of him.

Today, I went with my grandson into the glasshouses at the Oxford Botanical Gardens, and all of that magic came back to me. Felix entered each domain with reverence, falling silent or whispering. In the tropical rain forest house, the air was humid, gentle, and fragrant, and shafts of sunlight lit the leaves of rubber plants and avocado trees. There were flowers and cacti in the arid house, and the atmosphere felt starkly different, desert clear. There was a cloud forest filled with ferns, and a water lily house, and a house of weird carnivorous plants. And as we walked through the corridor and opened each new door, Felix proclaimed that we were teleporting ourselves to various planets, and it seemed as if we were.

It’s a beautiful thing to see a child’s curiosity and sense of wonder unfold. Witnessing Felix’s exuberance is one of the great joys of my life. And as we visited new worlds together, I thought about my grandfather, who was probably younger than I am now when he brought me to the Garden. I thought about the miracle that seventy years later, I can summon up that day so vividly, and I wondered if someday Felix, the great-great-grandson of that old Italian whose DNA he carries, might remember being here with me, his silly, silver-haired, oh-so-easy-to-manipulate Nonna.

The greatest poem ever known
      Is one all poets have outgrown:
      The poetry, innate, untold,
      Of being only four years old.
Still young enough to be a part
      Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
      Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
      And unselfconscious as the bee—
And yet with lovely reason skilled
      Each day new paradise to build,
      Elate explorer of each sense,
      Without dismay, without pretence!...
And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
      May make you poet, too, in time—
      But there were days, O tender elf,
      When you were Poetry itself!
~Christopher Morley, "To a Child," 1921

I often think about the impact of childhood memories—the tangible ones, the places and the light. The way everything shimmered sometimes, and anything you proclaimed in your pretending could transpire, and how the moon seemed to wink at you and a maple tree nodded, and the sidewalks of the city were the deck of a ship on waters still uncharted. Sometimes, I click back into that mindset even now, and I stand still, transfixed. I have not lost the key.

It’s a hard time in the world right now, and challenges await when we get back home, but I resolve to do my best. I tossed a penny into the wishing pond on that long ago day with my grandfather in the Garden. I learned to whistle in the dark, a habit formed when I was poetry itself.