When I was a kid, I’d come in the kitchen in the early dark and find my grandfather listening to the Farm Report relaying facts and predicting futures on the radio. It was meaningless to me, but his stolid presence, the warmth of the wood-burning stove, and my grandmother making breakfast felt like a child’s Garden of Eden for three. Both sides of my family knew how to grow things, knew how the land worked, even though they made little money at it. Tobacco with its annual ups and downs was the cash crop for one of my grandfathers, while the other one owned a threshing machine he hired out to local farmers. I might as well have been a city slicker for all the country lore I picked up from either of them. Today, my tomato seedlings have grown to the size of the carnivorous plant in The Little Shop of Horrors but are constantly under attack by flying insects and mysterious blights. My pepper plants lean sideways in their too-shallow pots as if the weight of the fruit is just too much for them to bear. And year after year, my lemon bush erupts in scented blossoms, and I get excited and then nothing happens.

There is so much lore I wish had been passed on to me as a child: the names of plants, the cure for sadness, the secret of how to grow true love.

I’m don’t think my family knew much about that last one, but I’m sure ours was not the only one planted in shallow soil and struggling to bloom. My grandparents made the best of things when it came to marriage, but my parents and aunt and uncles simply gave up on theirs and started over. Sometimes more than once. In retrospect, I realize that my father and uncles all came home from the war with different levels of PTSD that were acted out rather than treated. The result was chaotic homes, callous behavior and broken families. Somehow, my brothers and I survived, but I wish there had been a wise Farm Report that advised me how to weather a drought of affection, how to sift wheat from chaff when it came to men, and how to grow the seeds of lust into mature love. I may have missed out on those secrets, but I’m still learning. How to live an imperfect life. How to name what is present instead of what is missing.  How to stop searching for the ideal tomato for a BLT and realize bacon covers a multitude of sins.

Nikki Hardin is a writer of stories, musings, and memories. Her poetry has been published in Riverteeth Journal. She was the founder and publisher of skirt!, a monthly women’s magazine in Charleston, South Carolina. You can reach her at nikki@thedailynikki.com.