Naked in the Garden (Paradise Remembered)
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GREENPRINTS GARDEN STORY: Naked in the Garden
Paradise Remembered By Justin Isherwood
Everybody knows Paradise was naked. Least I knew Eve was naked, because
there was a picture of her in the all-together in the vestibule Bible in
the liberty Corners kirk. Twenty-nine pounds of hide-bound, bulletproof
Bible sitting on a book stand. First thing you see in church. So was the
picture of Eve. Plucked-chicken naked. Peeled-grape naked.
Skinned-knuckle naked. Naked was Eve in the Garden and not a sin in
sight. I was intrigued by the idea of nakedness when I was a kid, though
I can't honestly say why. Maybe because the way the Bible described it,
naked seemed such a happy condition. Adults had a tendency to muffle
happiness, squash it out of existence with clothes, chores, and
compulsory arithmetic. There off in the distance, though, was Eve,
jay-bird naked in the Garden of Eden, and the God of the universe saying
it was nice. Darn nice. The only time we ever went hog-wallow naked was
at the irrigation pit after a day of haying.
The Bible has the story right: Nothing is so transfixing, so remedying
as a whole immersion into a deep, unblinking pool of water. Nothing
throws off oppression, early death, abuse, slave labor, bleeding
fingers, hay itch, and muggy July better than a buck-naked dunk in
water. I have no idea why the same measure of water does not feel
equally joyous in a bathing suit. A single layer of cloth shouldn't
render the fluid so different or the cure so ineffectual, but it does.
Something about being naked is immaculate. Biblical scholars haven't
worked this out. A fig leaf is not all that far off from stark reeking
naked, but there they are in the vestibule, Adam and Eve looking most
unhappy in a fig leaf. Never mind that they're better dressed than
before. Sorrowful are they, sorrowful as can be, because they aren't
naked anymore. Didn't take a German theologian to understand what the
Book was getting at: Eden was transformed when they put clothes on it.
Few ideas have so transfixed the West as paradise, and the idea of a
final reward awaiting the faithful somewhere in the cumulus. The Persian
word was paradeiza, which means garden-that's it, just garden. Not a
theological construct, not a three-credit seminary course, not a midden
heap for saints.
Paradise was a garden, nothing more, nothing less. The word began in
that region of Persia known now as Iraq, where climate and terrain are
unpleasant: cold, hot, sandy, dry, windy-such a place where a sandbur
looks succulent. Seems the ancients of this region built enclosed oasis
gardens; these they watered and tended. Merchants of that time well
understood how rotten was this region, for it blocked the Silk Road to
the Orient.
Terrible country. Cruel. Pitiless. Damnation dirt if ever there was any.
So local sheiks and entrepreneurs developed these fortified oases to
house the weary journeyers, who swapped for lodging their silk, herbs,
spices, shrubs, and flowers. Thus the gardens of these inns became more
extravagant with each passing traveler. Herbs perfumed the air, rare
birds sang in the trees, lilacs from Tibet bloomed beside Formosan teas
and Chinese asparagus. The supper lamb greeted the hungry with strange
new flavors, and the bath was lavender-scented. Those who had crossed
this desolate, good-for-nothing wilderness spoke of paradise, of
gardens, of heaven found on the way through the terrible desert.
Our farm garden was also a paradise, an Eden place. From the first
radishes and May lettuce to an endless supply of green beans, tomatoes,
and sweet corn, the family thrived by the garden. Beside every farmhouse
stood its garden, an acre devoted to cauliflower and Brussels sprouts,
strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb, onions, garlic, and spinach. There
were hollyhocks, roses, apple trees, plum and currant, cucumbers, summer
squash, celery, and carrots. The hedge had cherry and Asian apricot,
there was an arbor of wild grapes, another of hops-never mind the
morning glories and tangled bittersweet. Every right-thinking bird had
its nest near this farmhouse garden.
After swimming till dark at the irrigation pit, we walked home across
the field with our clothes tucked under our arms. To wear anything after
such a worshipful experience would have soiled the effect. We did,
however, walk home the long way; our lack of attire on the town road
might have entertained more than we wished. It was so good to feel naked
in the open air-how on those summer nights we felt like deer! An
exultant wildness fixed our hearts and we leaped across the rows of
potatoes, prancing like new colts, to come home in the dark by way of
the garden, by way of my mama's paradise.
In the dark we grazed, plucking strawberries on our knees, climbing into
the apple trees for early greenings, munching rhubarb that twisted in
our stomachs. Digging up new potatoes, we popped them whole into our
mouths, along with cauliflower, crisp cucumbers and radishes, followed
after by a fine, sweet layer of raspberries.
An ordinary garden would not have survived such depredations, but this
was a farm garden, long as a barn and as ample. This the garden that fed
the barn-raising and threshing crew, filled them till they fell asleep
behind the potato shed, stuffed to the point of respiratory arrest with
mashed potatoes and corn and pickles, coleslaw and apple pie.
Mama, when she did go to town, required only token items from the
grocer: flour, salt, pepper, bay leaves-never canned corn, never pie
filling, never carrots or radishes, romaine or endive. The garden
provided all and, in collusion with the mason jar and root cellar,
continued throughout the winter and spring to do the same. Our larder
was filled with pumpkin pie filling, canned beef, Irish potatoes, jams,
jellies, grape juice. The garden filled us, hid us, clothed us without
resort to garment and thread.
We were once a people wild in the way of paradise, in a naked and happy
time. When the price of milk fell, Mama's paradise abided. When war
came, the farmhouse felt it only distantly; the dinner table never
slipped or failed to provide. No celebration ever went unadorned, no
visitor left unfilled.
Seasons, prices, drought, hardly mattered: The mason jars lined the
cellar in swollen ranks. Distant cousins stayed and spoke of never going
home. Popcorn perfumed the long nights, stored in jars of exact
moisture. Our paradise never faltered, never blinked, never whimpered.
Now I realize how naked we were, how unclothed was the farm, how many
years its income did not surpass the poverty line. Yet we were as
princes fed, our lives tended by an abiding paradise. Naked in the garden.
Green Prints Magazine, The Weeder's Digest is published and edited by
Pat Stone, and his family in Fairview, North Carolina Copyright ©
Green Prints. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission by http://www.greenprints.com