Sweet Potatoes and Sickness

It was October 1970, just about two months before I was born. My grandfather had been bringing in his sweet potato crop, which required careful digging by hand so as not to pierce or bruise the tubers before they could be cured for storage; he would never think of using a tractor. Pop Pop Brannock was known for his sweet potatoes, and he even grew the tiny slips for planting and sold them to other farmers and growers. Mom recalls how gently, almost lovingly Pop Pop would brush the dirt off each sweet potato as he prepared them for curing.

The rest of the story I have pieced together over the years from brief comments made by my aunt and my mother. My grandfather is alternatively described as stubborn and domineering or soft-hearted and playful, a volatile drunk or a silly sipper of beer. My mother was 14 years younger than her sister. Personalities sometimes mellow over the years, so perhaps both descriptions are true. In any case, Pop Pop had been feeling poorly, but kept quiet about it because he had potatoes to dig. One day, the family came home from church and found dark drops of blood all over the kitchen. He'd had a stroke, but in typical fashion, he refused to go to the hospital and the ambulance driver couldn't take him by force. Pop Pop paced anxiously around the kitchen, unable to speak, blood dripping from his nose. Finally, his leg gave out and my aunt was able to force him to get in the car and she took him to the hospital in Cambridge. He never regained consciousness.

I never met my grandfather. On the day he went into the hospital, my mother was called, and she left in the middle of something. The kitchen timer had not yet gone off, and must have buzzed for hours before it finally just gave up. As a young

child, the broken timer was a reminder of the grandfather I never met. Pop Pop has remained a shadowy figure to me. Since he didn't like having his picture taken, there was only one photo of him in our family album--standing over his cold frame in the spring of 1967 with my older brother, Jim. Recently, my cousin unearthed a picture of my mother with both of her parents: tall, thin figures flanking her in the family graveyard next to their house. Mom cried when I gave her a framed enlargement of the image as a surprise two Christmases ago.

I can't imagine the fear and pain my grandfather must have felt as old age and his body betrayed him. Why did he resist getting treatment and instead chose to buzz dazedly--a bit like my mother's kitchen timer--until finally he had to give up too? The answer I imagine is that he was clinging to what he knew, what was predictable. The sweet potatoes had to be dug and if he could just get through this physical setback, he could get back to what needed to be done.



My last blog post was in October. Soon after I brought in my first-ever sweet potato crop, sickness hit my family again and again. Debilitated from severe back pain, my father had two spinal surgeries and has spent the last two months in recovery. My immediate family has suffered, in rapid succession, an anti-biotic resistant ear infection, gout, bronchitis, asthma and a nasty stomach virus. Just after Thanksgiving, I awoke in the middle of night with an upset stomach that somehow spiraled into anaphalaxis. I lay in bed--intensely itching, throat tightening, shaking because of my lowered blood pressure--and tried to control the panic, hoping the antihistamine would stop the reaction. I didn't want to shoot myself with epinephrine and go to the hospital. I'll have to wake everyone, there's so much to do before Christmas, I haven't pulled up the tomato plants, what about Joe's test...

I'm not kidding, this is what I was thinking--in between prayers. A long hour and a half later, the symptoms finally subsided and I fell asleep. My body betrayed me, but didn't give up. Perhaps now I have some insight into what my grandfather was thinking the day he died, as he lost control over his body. The work of harvesting, like all gardening, is a constant. Something to focus upon, a rhythm, a purpose when so much of life is really out of our control. Of course, it's folly to think we have control over our gardens either, with the vagaries of weather, rainfall and pestilence, but we gardeners like to control what we can.


Right now, I am choosing to delight in what I can't control in my garden. Somehow, despite losing one batch of sweet potato slips which succumbed to the cold and turned slimy before ever growing, I grew a half or dozen or more ENORMOUS sweet potatoes this year. The largest measured 13 inches long, 19 inches and diameter and weighed in at 6 pounds. The day I dug the last of the sweet potatoes (right after the first frost), I quickly uncovered several 4-pound potatoes. These are about 3 times the size of those you usually see in the grocery store. I found the prizewinner on my very last dig. I hollered to my family inside and they came out to gush and marvel and overall were suitably impressed. I called my mother to ask, "Is this normal?" I waylaid my Amish neighbor as she walked by in their adjacent field. "Ours were big this year," she noted, "but not that big." I bragged about my sweet potato to anyone who would listen. I researched giant sweet potatoes on the internet and learned the largest was 81 pounds!

On Christmas Eve, I brought my giant sweet potato up from the basement to show the whole family and to weigh it on my new digital scale. The result: 5 pounds, 15 ounces. No record there. Oh well, I'm going to eat mine not keep it to show off for 10 years anyway. On Thanksgiving, I made a double recipe of my sweet potato casserole from a single potato, and that wasn't even the biggest one. So there. No matter what, sweet potatoes are definitely on the list for this year's garden. Will I grow another whopper? I have no idea. It's out of my control.