Radishes awakened my interest in food.
I was 5 years old and feverish with the promise that spring would soon arrive.
I sat down with a seed catalog retrieved from the trash and started circling plants with a marker, just as I did with the toy catalogs in December. The radish page was my favorite, vibrant with colors and shapes. Radishes delivered a snap of heat and spice unfamiliar at our family table and far outside the Holy Midwestern Trinity of salt, pepper and ketchup.
Page after page, I circled radishes and admired them: bright red orbs, pink ovals with white hats and the long white hairy spears called "horse." Our neighbor Rueben grew horseradish in his garden. I knew this because whenever I visited him for lunch, he padded our bologna sandwiches with a liberal slap of his homemade horseradish sauce.
I was so appreciative that Rueben sent me home with my own stash of white heat. I carefully labeled the Mason jar with my name and hid it in the back of the refrigerator, not wanting to share this precious gift with greedy siblings. (I needn't have worried, as none of my older sisters cared for the heat that I found so invigorating.) My life in food began the afternoon I took a first bite of bologna and horseradish.
Sometime that spring, the thaw finally came and a package arrived for me in the mail. Inside was a small seed packet with a picture of a shiny red radish. I shook the sealed envelope and the seeds rattled an exciting percussion.
My mother brought me outside to the small dirt patch on the side of our house. Her gardens took up much of the backyard, but this little plot was to be mine. She showed me how to space the radishes and push the seeds into the soil.
I worked all morning in the damp chill. Several times a day, for weeks, I inspected my radish plot and waited. And waited. There is a lot to be said for the patience that gardening instills.