Here Today, Gone Tomato
an elegy for Tomato Girl Summer
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ORIGINALLY POSTED ON NO CERTAIN TERMS ON SUBSTACK. READ FULL POST HERE.
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We get into into a stranger’s Toyota at the airport. The car is decomposing. As I pull my suitcase to the trunk, I see plastic hanging from the fender and cracks in the hood. I slide onto the pilling seat cover and watch the bobbleheads on the dashboard. They’re skeletons, and whimsical, reminiscent of the colorful ones we see on Dia De Los Muertos. Each holds an instrument that bobs along with him.
We’re dazed from our flight and from binging three episodes of Mindhunter, but we’re happy to be coming home. I am particularly excited about two things: reuniting with our dogs and reuniting with my tomatoes. Like many others on the Internet this summer, tomatoes have become part of my personality.
It began as a fling.
At the nursery in March, I picked out three varieties: Cherokee Purples, Red Grapes, and San Marzanos. I was excited about all and committed to none. I wanted a little bit of everything.
But as time went on, as the plants grew, as I watered them and watched, I began developing an attachment. The yellow blossoms rounded into tiny tomatoes, stretching in every direction, first green then red and purple.
I loved them all differently. The Red Grapes were easy and plentiful. Each one smooth, bright red, and perfect. The San Marzanos a challenge but, like any other toxic relationship, good when they were good. I became most enthralled with the Cherokees. The unpredictability, the imperfections. The way they sometimes stitched themselves back up where they split, those gorgeous zippered seams. Some heart-shaped and smooth, others ugly, swollen and bumpy.
The healthier the plants grew, the more they needed, and I was at their beck and call. I watered more, watered less. Added calcium. Added nitrogen. Protected them from the wind. Built more infrastructure. Trimmed and trained.
Suddenly, the tomatoes were everything. It happened the way John Green characters fall in love: slowly, and then all at once.
I would do anything for them and everything with them.
It became a summer of tomatoes. Of tomato salads. Tomato cocktails. Of tomato pies and tomato jams. Even tomato jewelry. They were gathered as gifts and offered at parties. Visitors ate them like candy from the stalks. Like a salesman with photos of his children in his wallet, I was ready to show off my tomatoes to anyone available.
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What came first—the tomato or the trend—I’m not sure, but sometime during June, Coastal Cowgirl was out and Tomato Girl was in. It was a movement. A lifestyle. A color palette. Girlies all over the world adorned themselves with headscarfs, polka dots, tiered ruffle dresses, and sweetheart necklines. An international celebration of delicate femininity, of lace. Of flushed cheeks and freckles. Brands rushed to create the ultimate Tomato Girl Summer pieces and TikTokers everywhere capitalised on how-to videos.
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For once, I couldn’t get enough of the trend. I was overjoyed that my Instagram feed fed and reflected my obsession. But, like most summer romances, Tomato Girl Summer—and the tomatoes that inspired it—does not last forever.
The end began a few weeks ago. Tomatoes were still growing but fewer and smaller. Skinny, forgotten limbs began browning. Things weren’t as bright and exciting as they once were.
And then I did the worst thing I could do. I left town. I left town and forgot to set up a watering system.
And now, exiting from the Toyota, my body is buzzing. In anticipation of the dogs’ predictable joy at us returning and nervous for what I might see in that tomato bed.
In just two words, I know that my summer—my entire identity—is gone.
Evan says, “Uh oh.”
He is ahead of me, already in the backyard. I take a deep breath and turn to the garden bed. Even in the dim sparkle of the string lights, I see that there is no more life in the tomato bed. The leaves are shriveled, crunchy. The stalks are brown. Some ripe tomatoes hang on for dear life, bending the stalks with their weight, but their impending doom is no secret.
Tomato Girl Summer is ending and, with it, everything I’ve come to know about myself.
I wonder who I am. I question the last few months of my life. Could I have committed to something so fully that, within only a week, is gone? Who am I now? And who will I be?
The next morning, I meet the tomato bed with garden scissors. I’ve always been one for a clean break, and that isn’t changing today. Not now when the rest of my identity is in question.
I harvest all of the tomatoes, each like a little prayer, and begin untangling and cutting the blistered stalks. I hear my neighbors next door and turn to see them lying on the roof, cutting off the shriveled grape clusters from our shared grapevine. Another identity that could have been.
I think about who else I could be. I consider Carrot Girl or Beet Girl for the fall, but it doesn’t feel right. Could I be Broccoli Rabe Girl?
And then it hits me. I look up and see what’s been there all along, towering over the tomato bed and me. An orange tree. Our orange tree.
Memories of last year’s harvest play like a montage in my head: squeezing pitchers of orange juice on the porch, gifting oranges to coworkers, baking orange scones and freezing orange juice in popsicle molds.
I run inside and open my freezer. There are no orange popsicles left, but just like that, I know my life is not over. I know once again, with resounding certainty, who I am and who I will be.