Love on a Potato Patch

By Sue Petrovsky

Found in corners of our personal field where we least expect to find it, love sneaks up on us or arrives full bore and is not recognized until later--sometimes much later; t'is a mark of personal wisdom to be looking for love and to be able to give it some sort of definition. There is this thing about love—it is hard to define.

Digging potatoes. Not the sort of background where one is likely to find love. My memories of these moments stretch back to the time when I was about two or three years old. Holding my grandmother’s hand and totally bare assed, I accompanied her to the potato field more than once. Grandma and Grandpa lived at that time in a summer house on stilts on the banks of the Wabash River in southern Indiana. These are bottom lands, flat and rich and they seemed to my young eyes to stretch on forever and ever.

Grandma would spread her legs wide apart, straddling the potato hill, reach over with a hand spade and gently but firmly pry the hearty food from the dirt around her. This was the story of her life – finding goodness in a poverty stricken life. Her printed dress and rough muslin apron spelled warmth and comfort to me. They billowed out, making folds and edges for my small hands to grab--places for me to hold to and deep folds for a small child to snuggle into. Even in her work, if I would run to her I remember her reaching out with a hand to surround me and the gentle tenor of her Indiana dialect would draw me into a world of safety and love. I have never known more peace in my life than in that humid, hot potato patch with my beloved grandmother.

Watching her was sheer delight and magic. She taught me to dig a bit with my big silver spoon and urge a large, lovely, golden potato to pop from the muggy earth. I can remember her softly saying, “Mar Sue’, come here. Just look at this,” and she would open up some other wonder of her natural world to me. Two of us – alone in nowhere –alive in everywhere. Ah the richness of this simple love.
By Sue Petrovsky

In our photo album there is a picture of this small child with brown ringlets, stark naked except for shoes and a large grape leave shielding important places. No one saw and no one judged. At Grandma’s, as free as the breeze that cooled a sweaty little brow, I knew love... There is no secret of love. It is affection given freely in the rich fields of our lives.

I learned so much from my grandmother:

Dig carefully so as not to hurt,
Glory in the magic that life unfolds,
Live patiently, in order to accept what is,
Love completely, with concern
for the giving more than the receiving,
and trust that there is more to life
than what we see.