The fixation with the tomato plant makes sense now.
Our daughter whose husband is serving in Iraq has been reporting to us regularly since the day she tucked it into the ground.
"I got my tomato plant in," she said.
"Good," we said.
It was good. This is the girl for whom picking fresh produce long meant first opening a plastic bag and grabbing a twist tie.
"My tomato plant is growing," she'd say.
"Great," we'd say.
We had phone reports when the tomato plant had a growth spurt, when it put forth its first yellow blossoms, and when it grew big enough to warrant a cage.
"I have three baby green tomatoes," she said one day.
"How exciting," we said.
"What do you think she does on the weekends?" the husband asked.
"The same thing you think she does - monitors the vital signs on that tomato plant," I answered.
When I suggested that the relationship with the tomato plant could be bordering on co-dependency, she answered that her husband left last year when the tomatoes were ripe. "Which means he'll be back when they're ripe again," she said, with a lilt to her voice revealing an optimism and expectancy known only to backyard gardeners and waiting wives.
There are a thousand ways people measure time when they are separated and, apparently, tomatoes are one of them. She is praying him home, wishing him home, willing him home, one green tomato at a time.
"Wonder what she'll do if something happens to that tomato plant?" the husband asked.
"I don't know what she'll do, but I imagine you and I will dig up a mature plant, drive it 600 miles west, and plant it for her as quickly as we can."
They had been married one year, one month and 10 days before he deployed. There are thousands of other young women in the same tomato cage with her. They befriend one another, support one another and measure the time by the "misseds" - the missed holidays, the missed birthdays, the missed leaks in the roof, the missed snowfalls and thunderstorms and, in some cases, even the missed births.
She doesn't know if she planted a Big Boy or a Beefsteak. She doesn't care. Whatever the variety, it should be renamed Homecoming.
"One of the tomatoes is starting to turn," she says. "He's almost home."
The days barely appear to budge at times, much like trying to watch a tomato actually growing on a vine. But now, within days, he'll be back. There will be an end to her signature sign off by phone as she jokingly teases, "Do you remember I'm alone out here? Does anyone care that I'm lonely?"
These final days of summer are often among the most beautiful. The begonias are bushy, the impatiens proud, and a military transport will soar through the sky and touch down on a runway.
Like generations before, she patiently waits for her soldier. She will continue to wait, until the cows come home and the tomatoes turn red.
Borgman is a columnist for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service. Her e-mail address is lori@loriborgman.com.
