Family Heirlooms

Beverly Medina
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

It’s July in Florida, and I am eight years old. The humidity has settled in like a warm handmade blanket: heavy and stifling and feeling like home. A watercolor sunset fades into a navy night sky, the crickets keeping time with the music on my grandmother’s patio. Sweating, swatting away mosquitoes, we sit down for dinner. All the obligatory Southern stars are present: succulent roast beef, a potato casserole that’s more cheese than potatoes, corn on the cob and sweet string beans… but we all know what we’re here for. The feature performance, the headlining act, is my Grammy’s tomatoes.

Grammy’s mother, Velma Joyner, was a homemaker and mother of six in 1930’s Charleston. A child of the Depression, she was no stranger to home gardening and canning — in those days, it wasn’t optional, it was how you fed your family. Over the years, the six Joyner children went their own ways, many leaving the rural South Carolina life for the promise of lucrative jobs or the prospect of marriage. My Grammy moved to Florida, started a family, married then remarried, and had loads of grandchildren. All the while, though, she stayed true to her gardener’s roots. Each year that she spent in Florida, her backyard was populated with home-grown vegetables. When she began summering in Virginia, she took advantage of the moderate climate, planting corn, beans, squash, peppers, and whatever other seasonal vegetables appealed to her that year. The older she got, the fewer vegetables seemed worth the effort — the bunnies would always eat the squash blossoms, and why spend hours in the dirt on aging knees when corn can be purchased at the farm down the street?

Still, through all of this, the tomatoes prevailed. They prevailed despite Florida’s notoriously inconsistent growing season; they prevailed despite droughts and hurricanes; they prevailed with the strength of a seasoned gardener whose connection to her plants can only be described as spiritual. Year after year, they made it to the table in thick, succulent slices — sometimes spread with mayonnaise, sometimes sprinkled with salt and pepper, and sometimes speaking entirely for themselves. They had a quality that even the most high-end supermarket tomato couldn’t begin to rival; their rich color and almost complete lack of the seedy goo so common in tomatoes made them no less than a religious experience.

Every year, with every life event and every birthday, one thing is certain: Grammy’s garden would produce the reddest, meatiest tomatoes you’ve ever known. Her tanned, bony hands carve the roast beef and the plate of tomatoes is passed around. I am home.


It is an unremarkable Florida afternoon, the sun beating down unfazed despite the promise of thunderstorms lurking on the horizon. I am 21 years old, and kneeling in the manure-laden dirt behind the house I am renting while finishing my engineering degree. I handle the seedlings as though they are bombs, as though the tiniest jostle could cause an explosion that destroyed my small patch of meticulously tilled dirt. Gently releasing them from their peat-moss pods into the expanse of soil, I whisper a gentle prayer that this batch of tomato plants won’t be ripped from their beds by a hurricane or an unrelenting thunderstorm. I laugh as I find myself whispering affirmations to the seedlings — or perhaps to myself –that my plants may be so much as an echo of Grammy’s.

It is late summer, and I have been watching the tomato for weeks. I have shooed off birds, squirrels, and raccoons. I have staked and re-staked the plant, ensuring that no stress is placed on my perfect ruby bounty. Other tomatoes have come and gone, victims of the robins or the weather; this one, though, is strong. It is strong like the soil, strong like family ties, strong like the spirit of a woman who never stopped believing in her tomatoes.

Inside, I sharpen my knife and slice my prized tomato, marveling at the full, meaty interior and the deep red-orange of the flesh. For some reason, despite being completely alone, I am compelled to arrange it on a plate. Finally, I sit, knife and fork in hand. I am home.

Environmental engineer, food blogger, freelance writer, oatmeal enthusiast. Website: beverlywrites.com IG: beverlyeats

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