Joe’s Tomatoes

By Jeanne Albanese

Patience was never my father’s thing, as anyone who ever sat in traffic, stood on line at the grocery store or suffered through a Yankee loss with him can attest. That’s what makes his tomatoes all the more spectacular.

His post-retirement annual bounty of juicy red tomatoes, giant cucumbers, and two foot tall stalks of leafy basil and parsley plants belied not only his short fuse but his small growing space — half a dozen giant pots on a tiny side patio at his home in Staten Island.

He loved his garden and he was good at it. Everything grew big, grew plentiful and grew delicious.

He made up for his missing virtue in other ways. As a pharmacist and college professor, he embodied the importance of attention to detail, of following multi-step directions to the letter, and understanding the implications of the chemical compositions of whatever was in front of him, whether he was making bullets or growing prize-winners. And just like bacteria in a petri dish that he set so many times into an incubator, he knew that growth takes time.

My dad was committed to whatever craft he pursued, whether it was target shooting, trap shooting, hunting, fishing — or gardening. He approached everything like the scientist he was, reading everything about everything and leaving no detail to chance. He knew the best spots, the latest techniques and always had the best equipment.

He wasn’t just a hobbyist. He was a serious enthusiast.

His morning routine was built around his garden. Every day after breakfast, before it got too hot, he’d don one of his many baseball hats and set out, usually in nothing more than an undershirt and shorts. With great precision, he would pinch, prune, weed, water, fertilize and make fruitful his assortment of pots. A labor of love, maybe, but I think really the only way he knew how to do things — all the way and well. Nothing would deter him and as his gait grew ever unsteadier, rather than tell him to quit or do it for him, my mother would quietly accompany him out the side door last summer, the summer of his last harvest, just to make sure he didn’t overheat or fall down.

He cared for his flowers and lawn in the same way and when he was done, it was time for his mid-morning nap. The next morning, he was back at it. In his last few years, when he did less and slept more, gardening gave him purpose and something to accomplish.

I also like to garden, I also don’t have patience and I also don’t have any of those attributes that made my dad so good at it. But I like growing my own vegetables and every year, I try, with varying levels of success.

I still have his old indoor plant light, the one he didn’t remember when I sent him a picture of it this spring, the one I used for my middle school science experiment about the effects of preservatives on plants. (Yes, all my science projects were his idea, but I did all the work.) Many years, I would optimistically and enthusiastically start seedlings under that rickety old light, only to have them die once they got into the ground, so I eventually gave up on that.

My dad was never one for long phone conversations, sometimes it would be no more than a quick hello from him. I would try the usual topics, but as an adult, don’t follow the Yankees or St. John’s closely enough to talk about those teams for more than a minute or two and I otherwise avoided one of his favorite talking points — politics — because that would never end well.

But the tomatoes. He loved to talk about his tomatoes and he loved to tell me how to grow mine. In early June, when my plants in the Syracuse tundra would be little more than seedlings, he would boast about already having green tomatoes and tiny cucumbers on the vine. I can admit I was envious, but slightly annoyed that he just didn’t seem to grasp the difference in our growing seasons as he gloated.

We would talk about and exchange seeds, and some years he would share with me seeds he harvested from his cucumbers. One year my cucumbers grew better than his and he asked for my seeds. Finally, I did it better than he did! After years of trying different tomato plant varieties, he declared that Celebrity and Early Girl yielded the best fruit. Except he mixed up the names and had me hunting for “Celebrity Girl” tomatoes one spring.

When the blossom end rot started turning the bottoms of our tomatoes black about ten years ago, we talked about it on the phone, exchanged tips about how to water, when to water, whether to add coffee or tums to the soil. He tried it all, but some years, nothing worked and his big fat deep red tomatoes were sullied and black on the bottom. But no matter, my practical mother would slice off the bottom and eat the good parts. Still delicious she declared.

During our annual August visits to the island, bowls of cut up cukes sat on the table, lunch featured thick juicy slices on sandwiches, and dinner included tomato-cucumber salad. I am sure if it was socially acceptable to top our after-dinner ice cream with tomatoes, my mother would have. If I was lucky, I got a brown paper bag full to take home.

My dad never got to his garden this spring. He was 88 and experienced a rapid and almost inexplicable decline in late April that had him hospitalized when he should have been planting.

I never got to mine either, with weekly trips down to see him. He died in early June and by that time, I didn’t have the interest or energy to weed, prep and plant. But I can’t go without fresh basil so I set out to Home Depot to find some and there on the sidewalk were a selection of potted tomatoes, already staked and bearing some green fruit.

I looked at the label.

It was an Early Girl.

Automatically, I picked it up and placed it in my shopping cart.

Turns out, back on Staten Island, my mother did something similar. Two tomato plants and one basil plant in honor of Joe and the summer tradition to which he so lovingly tended.

About a month later, my Early Girl seemed a little bedraggled in the small pot, so we planted it in the ground. Some of the tomatoes were starting to turn ever so slightly.

We managed to plant a few other things but that tomato plant is all I care about. Yesterday when I watered it, I reached down to touch the reddening fruit. Two small tomatoes fell right into my hands, a sure sign they were ready.

I stared at them for a bit, held them gingerly and brought them inside. I sliced one up, lightly salted it and topped each slice with some tuna fish — also a favorite of dad’s — and ate the whole thing. Chris often teases me about how much fruit I waste when I lop off the tops of strawberries and tomatoes but this time, I cut close around the stem to get every bite possible. No thanks to anything I did, like any homegrown, the inside was deep red, sweet and delicous. It tasted like home and I could close my eyes and pretend it was one he grew.

Thirty minutes later, my mother called. She had sent a photo of the headstone she picked out, looking for final approval on her choice of design.

Fortified by the tomato in my belly, feeling connected to him through time and space and nature, thinking about his final resting place became that much easier.

Because he’s here, in every green lawn I see, every fragrant flower I smell, and in every ripe “Celebrity Girl” I pick.