My Father's Domain (Tarnawsky)

I was never much of a gardener. The garden was my father’s domain. In the back
yard, he had a blueberry bush, two large raspberry patches, three plum trees, and an
expansive vegetable garden which gave birth to beets, tomatoes, beans, strawberries,
currants, and concord grapes. In the front yard were a plethora of rose bushes, daffodils,
tulips, poppies, lilies, irises, and geraniums. One summer, he discovered vincas, and those
were added to his already long list of plants. He spent almost every day out in the garden
engaging in some sort of “garden-esque” activity - weeding, removing hungry bugs from
his tomato plants, waging war with the squirrels who eagerly devoured his plums. All of
this came to a halt after February of 2012 when he suffered a stroke.

My father had always hated doctors and hospitals and when the stroke occurred, he
stubbornly resisted swiftly going to the emergency room. This left the right side of his
body compromised, and although he could walk with the aid of a walker, he could not
easily use his right arm. Frequent mini strokes revisited him and dementia began to
harden his brain. One day we had the following exchange -

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said.
“OK,” I replied.
“Where is it?” he asked.

I pointed to the bathroom and he walked over to it. He stood in the doorway of the
bathroom for a moment and looked in. He then looked at me and said, “What do I do
now?” Not knowing how specific I needed to be, I said, “Well, you go in. Take your
pants down. Sit on the toilet. Do what you need to do. Wipe. Put your pants back on.
Wash your hands and you’re done.” He smiled and nodded and went into the bathroom.

When my father first became compromised my sister took over the responsibility of
the garden. The plum trees succumbed to some strange kind of disease and were
removed. The vegetable garden turned into an expanse of grass. I had been living in
Seattle at the time, so all of these transitions - including my father’s stroke and his initial
descent into dementia - occurred and were retold like fairy tales or travelogues. As his
condition deteriorated over time, I returned to Cleveland from Seattle and moved back in
with my parents as it was obvious that my mother needed more support. The garden and
my father now became my responsibility.

As a musician and theater artist, my work schedule is a fairly erratic one. I can
spend three weeks in Portland, Oregon, working on a project and then return to Cleveland for
a few weeks before leaving for New Orleans to teach a weekend workshop in singing. I
also wasn’t the most informed or skilled gardener. I did what I could in the time periods
that I had. Sometimes exotic alien weeds would grow in my absence, and I would use a
pitchfork to remove them. I was always grateful for the heartier plants who seemed to
grow in all conditions and stages of attention and neglect. For both my father and the
garden, I did what I could. Eventually, he was placed in a full-time care facility as he
needed twenty-four-hour care which my mother and I could no longer provide him at home. My
mother and I visited him almost every day until he passed on November 11, 2019. A
friend of mine sent me some poppy seed packets in her condolence card. I realized that the
garden was now my full responsibility. It’s not that my father truly gave me any input on
the garden while being ravaged by dementia, but in some way, I sensed that he did. With
his passing, that feeling was gone.

The proper time to plant the poppy seeds coincided with the eruption of the
pandemic in the US. The daffodils came up as expected, as did the irises. I cleared away
the part of the garden which would now be the domain of the poppies, did my internet
research on how to make this happen, sowed the seeds, and prayed that I did it all right.
The late spring and summer were to be busy times for me so I wasn’t planning on
spending much time in the garden, but Covid-19 changed all of that in a matter of weeks.
A concert series, a tour, a three-week summer camp, a second tour, another summer camp - all
fell away. The calendar on my phone still sends me reminders of where I am supposed to
be on any given date and I look at that information and smile. Those reminders feel like
bedtime stories told by my grandmother. Fairy tales.

As the cancellations mounted, I dedicated that “cancelled” time to the garden. I
became more interested in the weather report. I was not as hardy as my father. I gardened
in seasonable conditions. A cool day meant I could spend time out in the garden weeding
or planting. I invested in plants called four o’clock flowers which seemed to take forever to
grow. They just started flowering before a recent heat wave and I fretted that they
wouldn’t last. They did. I planted peonies and was later told that I would have to wait three
years until I saw flowers on them. That was something I should have researched ahead of
time. I planted flowers my father never planted such as pansies, liatris, and verbena, and
ones that he hadn’t planted in a long time like snapdragons. I listened to birds chirping
while doing “garden-esque” things and sang little ditties while I planted. I began to
understand my father’s appreciation for being in the garden almost every day and am
often stunned by how he maintained such a large area of vegetation. My garden is barely
a third of the size of his. I am still not much of a gardener, but the pandemic has certainly
increased the hours I have spent with my hands in the earth, humming songs, and
remembering my father.

Nadia Tarnawsky spent a year doing research and teaching in Ukraine as a recipient of a Fulbright Award. She has performed at La MaMa ETC (NYC), Annex Theatre (Seattle), Cleveland Public Theatre, and in Fringe Festivals in New York, New Orleans, and Cincinnati. Nadia also sings with Apollo’s Fire, Cappella Romana, Ukrainian Village Voices, and Quire Cleveland.