Grandpa's Garden

"When my Grandpa was in the hospital, he was an old man. He celebrated his 20th birthday a few days before he died."

Sometimes I present this riddle to my students and it usually doesn't take them long to figure out that he was born on a leap year. Grandpa was born on Feb. 29, 1908, in Allahabad, India. His parents were in the British army there at the time. He moved to Vancouver with his brothers and cousins when he was around 16 years old.

Grandpa's full name was Frederick Brunton Douglas. I'm not sure how old Fred was when he met Kathleen Crocker, but they were very much in love. He became very sick when he was in his 20's and he asked Kathleen to wait for him to get better so that he could marry her.

She waited for seven years. When they married, one of his lungs was shriveled and unusable. I remember Grandpa being very slow-moving. He didn't exert himself much, but was in good shape regardless. I think this gave me the impression of calm strength emanating from his form.

I began my fascination with sunflowers in Grandpa's garden. As a little girl, I would stand directly beneath one of those monstrous works of art and beauty, gazing up at the face of the sunflower and memorizing the maze of brown pods. I remember being happily surprised when they magically turned into seeds between my visits.

Grandpa and Grandma lived on an acre in the heart of Surrey, BC. They had every kind of berry, fruit tree, and vegetable that would grow in British Columbia. There were also chickens, a fish pond, a swing hanging from a huge tree, a hammock, rhododendron bushes, rose bushes, sunflowers, and many other flowers.

What I remember most is Grandpa's hands. To me, they were enormous and wrinkled and worn. He would usher me into the henhouse with great shushing to be verrrry quiet, and he would carefully reach under one of the brooding hens. In the dark of the henhouse, he would slowly bring his hand down to me and there would be a warm brown egg sitting there in his huge Grandpa hand for me to peer at. He'd smile at me, chuckle a bit with joy, and we would sneak out together to show Grandma the egg.

With those hands that moved with certainty, he showed me how to find the ripest berries, how to hold a can on a pole up to the apple tree to get an apple from the top, how to hold a baby chick gently. He opened sun-warmed peapods, carefully chose Scrabble tiles, read his Bible in his chair, all with my eyes wide and round on his big steady hands.

There is a beautiful love story about Fred and Kathleen, and I will save it for another time.

The other day, I bought some local raspberries from a produce market. I mixed them with some yogurt, and as the sweet berry taste exploded onto my tongue, I was instantly transported back into Grandpa's garden. Sadly, the property has since been bulldozed over and made into townhouses. Even so, with no effort I can still envision walking in the yard looking at the berry bushes, hammock, rows of vegetables, baby chicks, and the majestic sunflowers.