I Once Knew a Woman Named Gertrude
The summer before my final year at college I met a ninety-four-year-old, strong-willed woman, with two Boston terriers, and a backyard full of raspberries growing wildly. I was handed gloves, a plastic barrel, and some rusted pruners on my first day. I knelt beneath the hot sun and made my way through the overwhelming brush, attempting to follow Gertrude’s instructions precisely. As I became more confident, each clip transformed into a rhythm. I had a system that I could carry out, letting my mind get lost in the dance. I filtered through the chaos, cutting away the death that only stole light. I removed what yielded fruit and was ready to pass on to the next stage of existence. It was now their time to fertilize new life, in a new form.
I was transitioning into a new stage, and a new purpose. My role was ceasing in the way I had always known it. No matter my opinion, I was forced to wander a new path. But in the moment, all I felt was lost in a scene of endless sand. Mounds of sand created no visible path, like the Great Sand Dunes of Alamosa that I had wandered for a few hours.
I knew while clipping through the bushes that God was pruning me, cutting away the parts that draw me down wayward roads. I was distracted. My priorities were cluttered. I was stuck in shadows that hindered growth without light. But the process took an aching heart and tears of pain. The process took learning to be still, learning to stop, learning to reevaluate. I had to dissolve into ashes, in order for new life to emerge.
I once knew a woman named Gertrude. A chemistry student who graduated from college when few women made it through high school. She taught me to head roses and cultivate turnip bulbs. Each week she wore the same blouse and trouser pants before hand washing them and hanging them to dry on her clothesline covered with green growth and Japanese beetles. The water that rinsed her weekly outfit was used for the non edible plants. The green floating liquid was poured over the soil of the succulents inside her greenhouse.
I came to her house early one hot summer morning to clear out the raspberry patch before the mile high rays became unbearable. She talked to me as she filled up one plastic cup of warm water. With that, she brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and washed her face. I guess the Great Depression never quite leaves those who lived it.
I once knew a woman named Gertrude who built her house on a wheat field in the 1960’s. Today it lies between Tennessee and Jackson street in the heart of Denver. The world has established itself around her. Business, office buildings, Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble. She knew the land before commerciality stole its existence.
I once knew a woman who after nine decades of life swam three days a week in a tall steel building down the block. I drove her there once. She rode in the passenger seat, directing me on which streets to turn down, holding a mesh bag containing foam weights, a swimming suit, and a towel. She told me not to get old, but for ninety-four, old was looking pretty good.
“Life’s too damn complicated,” Gertrude told me while fiddling with the lock on her black wiry door. She locked each door she entered or exited. “It’s complicated enough without ISIS.” The key she held was her trusted self defense. She told me of the time she crawled across her lawn, dragging her aged body for forty feet by grabbing the grass with the strength of her arms. “I had always cursed the lawn boys for keeping the grass too long. But not that day,” Gertrude recounted.
“You want to know why I’m still alive?” She asked me one afternoon as she drank her cup filled with water and vitamins, half a banana and small plastic cup of pudding set on the counter for her lunch. She was one of the last of her generation, of her high school class, of her siblings and cousins. “I have long genes and I eat healthy. Have all my life,” was her sole explanation.
I’m sure there is truth in that, and lots of it. But I think there is a secret lying here, like the roots of the Bindweed she reminded me every morning to pull (the object of her full hatred and her every opposition.) She had found her purpose. Her life mattered. Her Boston Terriers needed to be fed and walked, her plants needed watering and tending. She was relied on to carry on the life that was around her. And that was what pulled her from her bed each and every morning. She woke up knowing she had work to do.
The magic of new places and travels and nature had passed. But I found a new peace in a raspberry patch beneath a Blue Spruce and a summer sky. The adventures were said and done. They had passed by and were now in the past. I had recovered from the fatigue, I had processed the excitement. And then I was left with the familiar mundane and a deep ache in my heart. I woke up with the sun and wrote about the experiences that had shaped and inspired me. But I sat through the emptiness. I kept writing and shaping and rearranging. I was preserving a memory. I was building my story. I had no knowledge of reward, all I knew was I had something to say. Those mornings were mine to hold and reminisce in the quiet summer dawn. I wondered what it all meant. I wondered why I was spending hours of everyday pouring out my heart in an unknown prose, while the world was sleeping or vacationing or making money. Where I was heading and why, I could not say. Maybe it was merely therapy. All I knew was what was before me. All I knew was that I had turned down a summer in the woods, beneath the stars, breathing the mountain air. I did so for a boy and a journey to an unknown destination. And now it was me, a red bench, a daily sunrise, and thousands of words on a page.
I came to give my days to the lady who had seen death and life, seen the passing seasons, seen wars, seen peace. I gave my days to the lady who spoke to her tomatoes and broccoli leaves. “I miss you when you’re gone,” she told me after only a few days in the house on Tennessee and Jackson.
Jordy Mack Art 