Grandmother’s Peaches

By Emily Whitney, Class of ’24 —Guest Columnist

Emily Whitney wrote this piece for her Creative Writing class. She includes her artist’s statement below her story.

A soft, bushy bed of grass catches my fall, and I tilt my head towards my sister’s laughter. Sunbeams weave down through the maple canopy, illuminating my skin. An earthy scent tickles my nose, the very soil that births the lively community of my grandmother’s backyard. Her love for gardening was one she could not explain. Similarly shaped stones stand guard, protecting fiery tiger lilies and untamed hosta from the various critters that roam around when we’re asleep. The bursting butterfly bush swarms with hummingbird moths and tiger swallowtails. Thorny bitter melons climb up and around an arched puzzle of trellises, sheltering the wide, leafy lettuce plants below. Angelic figurines hide in between thick, green stocks. Fruit trees, cherry, apple, and peach line the forest edge, right next to the deteriorating wooden beehives and the fish-gutting table. 

Stories were all I knew of my grandparents. They escaped a torn Vietnam on a helicopter in the capital, Saigon. Your grandfather served as a translator after being injured in battle. Your grandmother cared for her four children, worked, and took English classes at night, all at once. They are very lucky people. They are very faithful people. A misty fog surrounded this part of my identity: bright, glittering patterns of flowers on áo dàis (traditional Vietnamese formal wear) itched my skin. Mealtimes were a symphony of chopsticks against rice bowls, but my food allergies prevented me from joining in. Their world seemed so different compared to mine. The fog would begin to clear when my mother hesitantly let me stay with them for the summer.

When my grandmother wasn’t in the kitchen, she was gardening. When she wasn’t gardening, she was in the kitchen. Cluttered, cramped, and saturated with the smell of dough and grease: this was where all the delicious magic happened. The deliciousness came from the cooking skills she learned in Vietnam, but also the secret gardening technique she developed for all her crops.

It was a two-person job. My grandfather would stroll around the garden and rub the insides of the blossoms together, pollinating the plants. From years of experience, my grandmother knew exactly the right timeline for each crop’s pollination, watering, and fertilizing. The activity gave them a goal to work towards, something to hope for. I would hear them at work: my grandmother rarely completed a task without humming a tune. Vietnamese church music would gush out of her phone, and she sang from her heart, words flowed off the tips of her pink-lipsticked lips. Careful moving, wrinkled fingers nurtured her garden into flourishment. She molded the land with her touch. She harnessed its power and translated it into something the whole family could enjoy.

By the end of the season, I could see much more clearly. Humidity and the blazing sun cast away signs of any fog lingering nearby. I greeted my grandparents with, “chào bà ngoại” (hello grandmother) or “chào ông nội” (hello grandfather) with a slight bow in my head as they taught me. The words didn’t slide out gracefully, but they were words nonetheless.

Her plump, yellow-orange peaches were by far, the closest to perfection. After a long, sticky summer day, she would send me home with a shopping bag full of fresh fruit I picked earlier that day. Their colors changed throughout the season, from an unripe green to yellow, and finally to yellow with bursts of warm orange—those were the best ones. I could eat one singular fruit and be satisfied for the whole week. They belonged to not only one color but a pallet of them. The balance is what made them so delicious.

Cover image from: Mykola Swarnyk, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Artist’s Statement

My vignette, “Grandmother’s Peaches” is about my experience getting to know my grandmother better, specifically by spending the whole summer while I was in elementary school in her house and backyard. Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks” inspired me to write this vignette because her writing is so raw and honest, and it derives a lesson she still holds with her today. Tan wrote about her struggles embracing her culture, which I related to, so I wanted to tell my own version through this summer at my grandmother’s house.

The [significance of my story] is that culture adapts to different experiences: an identity means something different to each person who possesses it. Since my mother is Vietnamese, and my father is white, I have struggled with feeling like I don’t belong to either identity. However, the reality is that our unique experiences cumulatively, how we have changed and adapted, create a true identity that is not always immediately visible. The tone changes from being uncomfortable with my Vietnamese identity to embracing it; the change is apparent when I look at the experience with new eyes. I learned to speak simple phrases in my family’s language even though the words do not slide out naturally.

I would like to thank Maddie [Zimbalist] for helping me develop my [story’s significance] There was not one clear takeaway in my draft, but she pointed out some themes like the impact of religion and the struggle with identity, which ultimately led to this version of the story. Additionally, I did not include the metaphor of the peach in my first draft, but I believe it instills the main lesson of the vignette. My favorite literary device in this piece contributes to the in media res hook: “I clutch onto the woven green fabric—my world sways like a pendulum as my sister launches me higher and higher until / I fly straight / out of the hammock.” I also enjoy the lyrical description of the scent of the garden: “An earthy scent tickles my nose, the very soil that births the lively community of my grandmother’s backyard.” These both capture the playfulness of my grandmother’s backyard, helping transport the reader into this world. Overall, I am most proud of the way I bring the reader fully into the way I see my grandmother’s garden. I weaved in little details to give a fuller picture, such as the angelic figurines (the importance of religion) and the time she spent in the kitchen (food binding the family together).