I am 5, barefoot, in the garden with my mother, gathering beans and okra for dinner. Something crawls across my foot. I shiver and squeal thinking “worm!” But it’s a furry bean vine. I kick it off and carry on. But a sensory memory has been formed and stored deep in my young and fertile brain.
Decades on, it’s Saturday in New York City. This year’s crop of Honey Crisp apples is dwindling as it’s late October, so I’m off to the Farmers’ Market on 67th street. Any old shirt will do. I button on the ankle-length skirt ’cause there’ll be a chill out there, then flip the Velcro straps that ‘tie’ my shoes.
On the bus (after tripping on my skirt climbing in), I catch myself remembering that long-gone summer day in the garden with the crawling vine. What brought that on? There’s no bean vine on this uptown bus. I switch to watching for my stop, glad for “ankle-length.” Next month, gloves weather, for sure!
The driver calls my stop. A familiar sign points to the market and my apple guys. I swing to the sidewalk, then … I slow my pace … Didn’t something just crawl over my left foot? The garden memory? Again? Another example of the mysterious workings of the human brain! The memory fades as I turn through the gate to the busy Farmers’ Market. Still…Strange!
The guys with Honey Crisps bag up all I can carry. Getting in line to pay I feel the vine again and instinct makes me look. Silly me! But this recurring sensation is new. Forget it. I wait to pay. See? Nothing crawls. My turn, I pay and turn away. October though it is, I’ll look for kale.
Determined to ignore the vine sensation, I browse the baskets of peppers and pumpkins, but it’s there, atop my left foot, then the right. (Blame the boots I wore last week? Did they pinch a nerve?) Sunburned faces, nod and smile, but the answer is the same. “Sorry Miss, no kale till spring.” The apples are weighting me down. Vowing to leave the vine in the market, I head for my downtown bus.
Home and apple-happy, I plop in my chair, kick off my shoes, then put the kettle on for coffee. At the closet, I clip the skirt band to its hanger, lift it toward the rod … and shiver! The crawling vine’s come home with me but with a difference! It’s on my wrist? It’s in my hand! The vine’s a kinky, stretchy thread that’s dangling from … MY SKIRT? It’s come UN HEMMED! I’ve ridden two buses and shopped for apples in a skirt that has no HEM! My mother would cringe! And the kinky, stretchy thread’s alive! It’s leading me … as hand-over-hand I follow it … back to the chair and … a kicked-off shoe!
There, a row of Velcro’s teeth clinch tight on a snarl of blue denim thread. They’d snagged and torn it loose as I boarded the bus. They hung on tight as Velcro’s designed to do. Then, inch by inch they’d tugged it free as, step by step, I looked for kale, dragging the lengthening thread across my feet, triggering the memory of a creeping bean vine in the garden.
The kettle sings, I brew the “instant” and sit … extracting yards of kinky thread from the teeth of the Velcro strap. Raised right, I’d use the thread to restore the hem. For sure, the color’s a perfect match. But the kinks? “Righter” still, I could iron them out?
Marion Whitley, who grew up in Caledonia and Columbus, lives in Manhattan where she reads, writes and remembers. Her email address is [email protected].
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