So Much More Than Skittles and Carrots

So Much More Than Skittles and Carrots

"Would you like a carrot lady?" asked my three year old granddaughter as she tried to squeeze her head through the fence. She was talking to my neighbor behind me, old Mrs. Sharp.
We called her old Mrs. Sharp ever since we moved into our house 24 yrs. ago. She lived alone in the small white bungalow. Her two boys were grown-up and had moved to another part of the country and her husband was in a care home. She puttered around in her small garden at that time growing leeks and carrots to probably, ....give her something to past the time.
My own children would accept carrots from her when they were my granddaughters age. She would sell them baby carrots for two Skittles a piece. This was a price my kids had placed on the root vegetable all those years ago. A price that had never gone up, on either party's side.
She would reach through the six foot tall privacy fence that had alternating planks. One on her side and one on mine, all tightly spaced together. You had to stand on an angle to the fence to reach through the alternating boards. She would in a broken barley audible voice ask them if they wanted to trade candy for carrots today. And if the child had no candy? She would always say 'You can pay me later', but with little interest in ever collecting her pay.
She never ate the candy, but pretended to. Her bony arthritic hand reaching to her mouth faking her intentions to enjoy her pay. She would then palm the candies into her right sweater pocket telling the child how good they tasted.
In a fair turn though, the kids hardly ever ate the carrots. They'd munch off the pointy end a bite or two then place it in a pocket or leave it in the grass.
The sound of a hoe hitting a stone or her humming an old church hymn was the only way we knew she was out there. I think most times she was just there to hear the children play. If they were out playing she was out gardening. She was kind of like an elderly guardian angel it seemed. Just listening and peeping, enjoying their laughter, and games, and mostly unseen.
She knew their names and ages but couldn't keep straight the birthdays. She would never remember the month or day and would tease the kids when they would correct her. 'Oh you've already had your birthday you're just trying to trick your parents into another one!' she'd say.
As the years past the kids stopped coming to the fence. Play in the backyard was replaced by video games, shopping malls and the opposite sex.
Old Mrs. Sharp was still there though. As if waiting on them to come out and play.
Through the year I'd stop the lawn mower and keep her current to the kids life. She took interest and would ask questions on how they were doing.
She could not believe how old they had gotten and how so quickly it happened. But that's pretty much how life happens.
So it was with great pride that I had my three year old granddaughter stand at the fence and ask if she, old Mrs. Sharp would like some carrots, which I had grown in my garden. She had long stopped gardening and was sitting in the shade at the back of her house. She took forever to get up and make it to the fence. No words were spoken as her elderly tired hands reached for the carrots. In exchange she handed my granddaughter a peppermint which she recognized from her own grandmother as tasting like medicine. She took the candy but placed it in her jacket.
It was later that year she past on from natural causes the paper had said. She had outlived a husband, one son and a grandchild.
I never knew. She never said a thing in all those years. I had figured the husband would of past but she made it clear the husband in the care home was out of bounds years before.
It's amazing what a fence will let out and keep in. It has the power to keep in sorrows that have no bounds which can't be boxed. Pain and loneliness are contained just behind a six foot fence, mirrored by four long rows of carrots. A fence raised to protect youth at play and at the same time punish the elderly from knowing.
A fence, a limited vertical and linear barrier that stops worlds from crossing into one another. Lives lived in close proximity that at times touch but yet remain so far apart.
A fence that can't contain the sounds of laughter and play of little children. A fence unable to stop the joy of an elderly lady watching the excitement of youth. A fence that limits the touch of the tired arthritic bony fingers from eager, always reaching fingers of the young.
Digging, planting, watering and weeding followed by an early harvest to offer up a baby vegetable for which in return she received an unwanted candy.
She told me little of her life in all those years, and I learned not to ask. She preferred to remain with her own secrets and sorrows behind that fence.
I think she was reaching out for so much more, but, she used the fence as, or it became her locked wall. A wall that was unlocked with only a baby carrot as the key.

Bob Niles