The Greening

The Greening

Egyptians placed wild celery in King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1325 B.C. and the first cultivated medicinal use of celery dates back or as far back to 400 B.C. by the Romans. Greeks drank a wine from it, and winning athletes wore crowns of the foliage in Pan-Hellenic games.

One morning, several months after our dog died, my husband was dressed and ready to go for a walk. Yes, I told him, but I wanted to walk to the store to get celery. More? he asked, his eyes dropping to a roll. It’s a gimmick, he said, all this fuss about celery. Then we stood on the road, the long curve of concrete leading to a carpet of grass, blades of sea green and juniper.

When Kaya died, her throat closed. I couldn’t save her. She died in my arms, my son lying alongside me on the grass in front of our house, his hand against my chest. A young boy in our neighborhood watched from the road and cried out, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do. And then later that evening, he brought a bunch of wildflowers and a letter with uneven print saying he had seen our dog take her last swim in the river.

And although she was old, there was a vast hole. The house was eerily quiet. The walks with my husband felt flat and empty. I wanted to believe that on some spiritual plane, her sudden departure had to have significance. I wanted to believe in a magical thinking sort of way, she was urging me forward, that in her absence she wanted to encourage work and travel, that she wanted to push me into that cloud-space, the tree-space, into the greening…

Take the time, she might have urged through her mascara-lined eyes, for it was she who had seen a lifetime of traffic through our house. Years of children and children’s friends, of school meetings and birthday parties, couches and chairs pushed against the back wall, the black coffee table laden with food; my sisters and a brother, their husbands and friends, the stretch of in-laws, the aunts and uncles arriving for holidays, the meals made and cleared and made again and again, and again, the years of thanksgiving tables extending from one wall to the next, metal chairs borrowed from the church next door and then returned, the upstairs bedroom turned into a clinic for a sister who lost a breast, an in-law who lost a mind, for a half-brother who was once homeless, the TV carried up the steps and down the steps, the queen futon jammed upwards with three of us pushing against gravity and laughing hysterically, as each summer brought even more people, girls overflowing, boys in the basement, the cat tipping over glasses of water left on the office floor.

It was she who lay dutifully next to my father when his own life abruptly turned and he came to live with us one winter. The two octogenarians stayed downstairs in the small room adjoining the kitchen, classical music and cups of tea. When one got up to stretch, the other followed suit, each one smiling as a fresh plate of food was presented, as the newspapers piled up on the floor, as the outside door opened and shut for their ritual afternoon walk. And when she was gone, my father never got over the empty space where she used to lie, where they had spent long months together, the slow rhythm of their lives in perfect sync.

It was she who had seen my desk move from one room to another as I shifted furniture this way and that, as if finding the right combination of desk and chair at the right angle in the right room with the right light next to the right bookshelf, would somehow provide the way to equilibrium, to the balance of work and life, to being a more successful mother, writer, teacher, wife, to finding the perfect solution to the subject I was always meant to write about. As if by shifting the furniture, I would finally find room for myself.

Is it a punishment? My husband persists, his face contorting at the thought of celery’s rank bitterness, the opposite of the colorful sugary drinks he once drank—unknowingly--in service of good health.

I have armloads of information about the health benefits of celery juice, I want to say. The salty elixir has been sanctioned by actors and internet-medics alike but the reason I drink it has nothing to do with reducing my caloric intake or creating gastrointestinal balance. Those might be side benefits, if they work, but the real reason is so far removed from the jargon of juicing. When I tuck sheaves of the green stalks into the aging metal machine I own, it goes to the deep well of self, to a place where I am planted in my own patch of earth. An imagined landscape, a place of wild fern and amber nasturtium, deep pine forests and phosphorescent fireflies. Drinking celery juice helps me remember who I am.

There is something about the process of cutting those tall vivid stalks, a veritable forest, and watching the frothy lime green juice steadily fill the container, that signals to me I am present. A ritual of self. And when I drink the bitter liquid, all 12 ounces of it, I feel myself expand, as if my limbs could reach beyond my house, to the trees that crown my windows and further still, into the space of clouds, to a place that defies age and time and the rigid structures of life, the roles of mother, daughter, sister, wife, that define me.

I thought back to the healer whose small work room was housed on the second floor of a church next to my house. Celery juice, she said. The daily practice of it. She drank it every morning, adding nothing but a teaspoon of spring water. Her dark hair was growing out, the roots fiery with silver and grey, her hands were strong and determined, like those of a blacksmith as she moved my limbs on her table, pressing river stones against my back as I wondered, does one loss evoke another?

The woman told me about taking her young son into the countryside for school, renting a place for the two of them during the week. A place where she had time to read and gaze at the landscape. At the trees, she said, pulling out her phone to show me a photograph. And there in the square of her palm, I saw the monument of mountains and turquoise skies and the edge of a wooden fence where she must have sat. And next to the fence, she pointed to the warren of trees that had come to define freedom. And like an alchemist, the woman held out hope.

And then, one day, after more than a year had passed, as if Kaya were leading the way, I shut the house behind me and went traveling, seeking wild fern and nasturtium. There was no furniture to move, no balance to achieve. There was only the open road, and as I moved in search of mountains and turquoise skies, I found a blue-green island surrounded by rocks. There was a deep pine forest and phosphorescent fireflies. There was a small black ladder leading to the sea and a thicket of evergreen where my limbs could reach into the boughs and further still, to that place that defies age and time, where I was no longer mother, daughter, sister, wife. A place where dogs might roam.

Is drinking celery juice a sham? Not if you ask me. The secret is not the tenderness of the stalks or the quality of your blender but the process of blending; the everyday practice of it, the reaching through the window, into the cloud space, the tree space, into the greening...