EXPLANATION #43
YOU CAN TAKE A PLACE WITH YOU.
THE METHODOLOGY IS DISPUTED.
The first time she moved away, she took two jars with her.
One contained sour cherry jam.
The other contained soil.
The jam had been made by her mother from the sour cherries that grew in her grandfather’s garden. She never opened the jar. Years later it still stood on the blue shelf by the window, exactly where she had placed it when they finally moved into their own house, after so many rentals and so many changes of address that sometimes it took her a few seconds to remember which part of the city they had lived in during a particular year.
The house had a garden.
It also had a kitchen sink facing a window, something she had wanted for a long time, ever since seeing a woman washing dishes and looking outside in a film. The film was probably American, although she could no longer remember the title or any of the actors.
When she washed dishes, she could see the children playing in the yard.
If she turned her head slightly to the right, she could see the jar of sour cherries as well.
Every now and then she did exactly that.
The children outside. The cherries on the shelf.
The soil came from the Meadow, her favorite place since childhood. At first she went there with her grandmother, who would let her run through the grass until she was out of breath. Then they would sit in the sun with their eyes closed while her grandmother told stories. Later she began going there alone, carrying a book. Later still she went there with Ionel.
Ionel told stories too. At the time they seemed very different from her grandmother’s stories. Looking back, she was no longer sure they were.
The jar of soil traveled with her through all those rented apartments. It sat on shelves, in cupboards, inside cardboard boxes that were barely unpacked before the next move began.
On the day they moved into the house with the garden, she dug a hole behind the house and poured the soil into it.
Ionel planted a walnut tree.
The years passed. The tree grew.
One autumn they harvested their first walnuts. She placed them in a green basin and stood there for a while, looking at her hands stained dark by the husks.
“Did you hurt yourself?” Ionel asked.
“No.”
The second time she moved across seas and countries, she took three jars.
The first contained sour cherry jam made by her mother from the cherries in her grandfather’s orchard.
The second contained walnut jam she had made herself from the walnuts of their tree.
The third contained soil.
It came from the flower bed beside the walnut tree, where the children had played for years and where, from spring until late autumn, there was always a forgotten ball, a plastic shovel, or a toy soldier left behind after some important battle.
She packed it carefully in her carry-on bag.
At the airport, a security officer picked up the jar and examined it for a few seconds.
“What is this?”
“Soil.”
“Why?”
She thought for a moment.
“Just in case.”
The officer looked at her for a long time.
Then handed it back.
In the new country they rented again for the first couple of years, carrying the three jars from one home to another.
Eventually they settled in a small house at the edge of a forest. They no longer had the large garden they once had, but the woods began so close to the fence that they called them “our forest.”
The children left for homes of their own. One across seas and countries. The other across the street.
The three jars stood on a shelf in the kitchen.
Enough years passed that she sometimes had to look carefully to remember which jar held the cherries from her grandfather’s garden and which held the walnuts from their tree.
One day she realized she was no longer entirely sure where the soil had come from.
Beside the walnut tree?
The flower bed?
Had a little of the Meadow found its way in there as well?
She placed the jar back on the shelf.
A linden tree had appeared beside the fence.
She did not remember planting one.