Goodwin - A Victory Garden for Trying Times

Copyright Debi Goodwin, 2019

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: A victory garden for trying times : a memoir / Debi Goodwin.
Names: Goodwin, Debi, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190119497 | Canadiana (ebook) 2019011956X | ISBN 9781459745056 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459745063 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459745070 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCSH: Goodwin, Debi. | LCSH: Goodwin, DebiFamily. | LCSH: CancerPatientsFamily relationships. | LCSH: GardeningPsychological aspects. | LCSH: GardensPsychological aspects. | LCSH: Grief. | LCSH: WidowsBiography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC SB454 .G66 2019 | DDC 635.092dc23

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Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Lan dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de lart dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

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For Peter

BEFORE WINTER COMES each year, I plant my garlic. In late October, usually. Early enough to give the thread-thin roots time to poke out of each clove and anchor in the soil before the first hard frost stiffens the ground, but late enough so sprouts as delicately green as fresh peas wont prematurely shoot out of the earth on warm days only to be destroyed when the killing weather descends. That year, though, I waited until November because the fall was warm. Unusually warm. And I was worn out with worry, my routines as off-kilter as climate-change weather.

Planting any kind of vegetable a seed, a seedling, a clove is an act of faith: Faith that there will be enough sun, enough rain. That disease, insects, and blight can be kept at bay long enough for beets to fatten in the soil, tomatoes to turn red and sweet, beans to multiply on poles. That we will be there to harvest them. But planting garlic in the fall, expecting it to survive the winter underground and then to start transmuting one clove into a head of new cloves at the exact right time, takes a special kind of faith. Plucking fat new heads from the ground eight or nine months later is a special kind of victory.

By the time I planted that fall, Id had my garlic ready to go for weeks: five organic varieties from the local farmers market and a few heads left over from my crop of the past summer. Id pulled the individual cloves from the heads, careful to leave as much of the papery protective cover around each clove as I could, and then I stored them in a basket in the cold cellar until it was time. Plant them during the full moon, a farmer at the market had told me in a low, gruff voice, as if he were sharing a secret. I missed one full moon but didnt want to wait for another. I assumed freezing weather was on its way even in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, in one of the warmest zones in Ontario, where I then lived. And I wanted the garden put to bed for the year because there were more urgent things to do.

By the time I set out to plant my garlic, wed received a definitive diagnosis for my husband, Peter: third-stage cancer of the esophagus.

The diagnosis came after a short holiday to celebrate my sixty-fifth birthday that fall, a trip to Colorado and beautiful New Mexico, where our faces glowed in the afternoon light and our thoughts grew darker over Peters increasing inability to swallow and therefore eat. In the almost twenty-seven years wed been together, Peter had faced many physical challenges and conquered them all. We thought this was just another bump in a history of bad luck with his health. Maybe we shouldnt have gone on that trip, but doctors had told us that Peters difficulties with swallowing could be anything and that swallowing problems are common as we age. We had finally made it to the specialist, a gastroenterologist in St. Catharines, the day before our departure. Go on your holiday, hed said. Neither he nor anyone else had said the C-word about what seemed to be a polyp seen on an X-ray, and we were all too willing to accept their lack of concern. Blindly, I suppose.

Peter had found me the highest sand dune in North America to climb and he was eager to finally visit Santa Fe. I thrilled at exploring natural wonders, especially empty canyons, open deserts, and dunes, while Peter was content to sit and admire them. He was eager to learn the peculiarities of a new city its odd museums, its quirky characters, and its unique past while I loved to photograph its architecture, its splashes of colour and personality. I didnt want to give up my birthday trip. Peter didnt want to ruin another of my significant birthdays with a medical crisis, as had happened before. It was just for two weeks, after all. So, we went.

As soon as we got back, Peter underwent a probe and a biopsy that hed scheduled before we left. After that procedure Peter had to follow up with the gastroenterologists office for an appointment. He was given a time two weeks later, a routine appointment. And we took that as a good sign. There was nothing urgent; this was something routine.

But when we arrived for the appointment, we sat in the crowded waiting room, nervous, afraid of what we might hear. When the doctor, a short, grey-haired man, called us into his office, we followed him into a small, claustrophobic room with a desk in the centre. I sensed there was clutter all around me, on file cabinets, on the desk, on the walls, but they were all in my periphery; I was focused on that doctor and what hed say. Peter introduced me as his wife but the doctor didnt respond, didnt even look at me. Peter and I sat down in the two chairs across from him and watched as he shuffled papers. Without a glance at us, he turned his face toward his computer screen and muttered, Its cancer.