Rootbound

My mother arose from soil among great grainy fists of popcorn. Whet her first appetite in the wheat in Papa’s fields. My father was born a bulb by the bollenschuur, a tulip beheaded sweetly with a laugh and an idiom, and shipped to America. When I was born I would have died if not for the dirt beds cradling my food. I was allergic to everything-- I ate so many savior sweet potatoes and carrots, my skin turned orange. Dutch orange, Tennessee orange.

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When Sir William got laminitis, the vet suggested we feed him sweet potatoes and yeast to aid his digestion. When we pureed the long, starchy roots into his food, he instinctively ate around it, before he realized raw sweet potatoes were his favorite snack. With all of the supplements to regrow the soles of his hooves and remedy his insulin resistance, sometimes Sir William still struggled to go to the bathroom. The vet recommended beer. I smiled at him and clinked our bottles together before pouring his brew into his food pan, savoring the first time drinking Yuengling with my pony.

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Those sensitivities have passed away. Returned to the ground that tended them, leaving me ever obsessed, forever blessed with the serenity of soil. I aim and fling my days at the opportunity to be buried in the dirt that holds hundreds of Dutch bulbs, like grapes on the earth’s tongue. My skin swaps seats with my heart each time the green stands up to the sun, a standing ovation, a raising of triumphant tongues. My sensitivity renewed, relieved, re-leafed.

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Ipomoea batatas, the sweet potato, is one of the only plants in the Convolvulaceae family that is not poisonous. In its family are several garden flowers like morning glories, but also some less welcomed plants, like strangling bindweed. Sweet potatoes are dicotyledonous plants, meaning they have two seed leaves opening like hands before the becoming. Sweet potato flowers are most fragrant at night, when they attract moths to their trumpet blooms, the bells peeled outwards-- a deep dished painter’s palette. I sprawl my limbs in all directions in bed, breathing in the scent of fabric softener on flannel sheets and leather conditioner from the saddles perched on the wood I screwed into the wall. Sweet potato tendrils only twine clockwise, and for some reason this makes so much sense to me.

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Years went by, and a temporary fix became a permanent one-- his hooves bound inside cushioned boots. Sometimes he felt up to teaching one of our students, and would carry them around on his back, showing them the power of soft hands. How control comes not from holding, but from attunement, balance, and confidence. How we must look where we’re going because the weight of our heads can throw even a 650lb pony off balance and off course. Even as his steps shortened, the breadth of his smile never faltered, and if you were to place a finger on those front teeth, you would find them to be dry.

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In the driveway, I had hundreds of baby plants in pots. When the nights were still cold, I would bring them back into the garage, sheltering them from April’s frosts. Yellow pear, Cherokee purple, and beefsteak tomatoes. Violet sparkle, poblano, habanada, jalapeño, and aji peppers. Sweet and lemon basil. Mexican sour gherkin, Aonaga Jibai, and lemon cucumbers. Watermelons and kajari melons. Tomatillos too. And sorghum. I had dill, parsley, chives, thyme, oregano, cilantro. I grew okra. Purple bok choy too! And rainbow chard! Wando peas! Alabama butterbeans, dragon tongue, tongues of fire, soybeans, Bob’s purple beans, and Judson’s beans. Birdhouse gourds and bushel basket gourds! For brassicas, I had purple cauliflower, broccoli, kale, collard greens, and turnips. The plants that needed more heat and humidity were in clear plastic tubs like makeshift greenhouses. I turned the cardboard from wine cases into pots. When they became rootbound, they simply pushed through the soggy paper.

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My anxieties sprout like dandelions-- gorgeous, inspiring little weeds with taproots piercing my rationality. Maybe I too was born a bulb, both flower bulb and light bulb, one that I keep shaking, listening to hear if I’m dead or alive, but I’m just out begging this sun not die out, not to let this darkness drain my chlorophyll.

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I killed the grass in Mom and Dad’s backyard with boxes. Droste Dutch Cocoa, Naked Wines, Greenhouse Megastore, Smartpak, and Netherland Bulb Company boxes full of holes. I filled the gaps with my dad’s bulb order forms after carefully ripping out hundreds of staples. I laid it all down in the skeleton of an enormous raised bed I built from old wood in the hayloft, too warped and with too much dust and barn swallow poop to possibly use for anything, my dad said. He probably would have taken it to the dump sooner or later. Dad drove the tractor back and forth from the pasture, scooping up load after load of composted horse manure. Dad’s biggest concern was that my raised bed would be ugly. What are you going to do to make it look nice? He kept asking. You know I’m going to have to mow around this, right? I wish I had turned the whole damn yard into a garden. Dad crouched in the grass, worrying about the tractor tracks he had made.

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Sir William carried me through every downward sweep of depression, even when I grew too big to ride him anymore, and could wrap my legs all the way around his cherry-bay barrel. Even on my darkest days with stained shirt sleeves, he would look at me like I was still that 10 year old picking out her first project pony, laughing through every buck and rear, saying Yes, this is perfect! This is exactly what I want! That 11 year old walking him up and down the iced Connecticut driveway, waiting for his torn ligaments to rejoin. That 13 year old shipping him in a commercial horse trailer to Tennessee. That 15 year old turning down $35,000 for him at his first event at Kentucky Horse Park, because he was my sport pony. That 16 year old running a business out of her parents farm, the bulletin board in the tack room filling with crayon scribbles and I love you stamps and ribbons of all colors, mostly blue, until the walls were completely concealed. Over the years he just kept smiling no matter how many ropes I hung up in the hay loft or how many notes I burned in the aisle. When I returned from the hospital, you were still smiling the dry toothed and wet eyed smile. Whenever I hugged you, you’d wrap your neck around my body, as if stretching to grab bits of sweet potatoes by your tail.

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When’s the right time to tell my career advisor I want to be dirt when I grow up? Give me worm castings, give me guano. I too am that sensitive. Phototrophic. Prolific. Pensive and soft souled.

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The man made the backhoe look like a giant paw. How it seemed to gently dig into the Tennessee red clay, upturning sheets of limestone as if they were pebbles. He would pause for our approval and measuring tape, periodically. 6 feet deep, 10 feet long, 8 feet wide. The claw would go down, pull back, and back up, pouring the contents of the earth in a huge pile to the side. Sometimes it would turn under and softly push the dirt and rocks back into the hole, making a clean and sturdy edge. When the man was finished, we thanked him profusely. Laughed through our premature grief that it would have taken a year or two to dig a hole that big. He wouldn’t let us pay him, and drove the yellow metal animal back to some other farm.

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I filled every window sill in the house with sweet potatoes until the sun made them sprout. They sat in little beer glasses, ice cream sundae glasses, beer steins, and other vessels. Purified water halfway up the side. When the purple slips ventured 6 inches from their eyes, I gently twisted them off, and let them root in water. When the roots were 6 inches long, they were ready to plant.

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After Sir William seemed to have almost made a full recovery, the symptoms suddenly returned, and worse than ever. Even the dead grass of midwinter carries a sweetness. A sweetness that for that for that pony, was deadly. He could hardly walk, and lived in his stall for a while, on great pillows of pine shavings, and a net full of hay. One morning while I was grooming him, I gave him a little tap on his barrel to ask him to move over. This pony knew the meaning of every pulse in every position, could half pass away from my leg from just a few degrees more bend in my knee. Back when I could still ride him. I taught him everything he knew. And he taught me everything I know. But that day, when I nudged his ribcage to give me enough space to groom his hind quarters in his stall, he just turned and looked at me. His eyes looked just like an apology.

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For his last morning, he felt well enough to walk out into the pasture. The velcro of his boots hushed against the millions of blades of grass. I let him stop and eat as often as he wanted to. Sometimes he’d rip up so much at once that the roots would come up too, and he shook the dirt away wildly. We took him out to the pasture he explored the first time on the farm in Tennessee, the first time he saw miniature horses and was terrified at the strange fluffy creatures galloping to meet him. I’ll never forget how he bolted around the pasture for hours and made friends with Gunsmoke and Mocha the next day.

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Let me hold multitudes, but drain well. And when I see the veins beneath my skin, I’ll know I’m just rootbound.

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When he walked up to the hole for the first time, his head shot up into the air like a catapult, eyes seeming to pull forward, slightly out of his skull. I scratched his withers, telling him it was okay, and he went back to grazing-- mowing himself a little path around the grave. When it was time to fill the hole, I couldn’t possibly let those rocks fall onto Sir William, so I picked them up, one by one, stacking them in the back of the pickup truck. Unloaded and reloaded again. Then, dad pushed the clay into the opening in the ground, closing it slowly.

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I think I’ll drop out of college and become a stonemason, I said, joking but not really joking, as I stacked up the limestone chunks, seeing how they fit together. A rock jigsaw puzzle around my garden. You’d be good at it! Mom encouraged me. Makes good money too! Dad added.

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At 6:45am everyday, I walked through the mist to let the miniature horses and Sage outside for their low-sugar morning graze. Stopping by the big mound of clay with my coffee steaming the fence boards, I’d speak softly into the dirt. Hey little buddy. How are you this morning? I miss you so much. So does Sage. And Gunsmoke, Mocha, Cocoa, Tidbit, and Daisy too. Buddy too. I love you, Sir William. Thanks again for helping me finish my garden.

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I placed the sweet potato slips with their 6 inch roots dangling like fly bonnet tassels in the soil on top of Sir William. I didn’t intend to ever harvest them. Here you go, little buddy. Enjoy.

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