We are born as children of the Earth, our mother. Like the seed that blooms into the rose, the natural abundance of the soil, the sunlight, and the water flows through us and grows us into the miracles that we are now. I grew up on the fertile lands of my grandmother’s farms, where I resisted the ruthless sun and reaped the seeds she sowed.
It was the hot summer of 2011. My mother and I would wake up at 6 am to beat the sun and drive 30 minutes from Winton to Turlock onto my grandparents’ dusty, 20-acre farm. I am a first-generation Hmong American and spent many of my childhood summers picking strawberries in the fields with my grandparents and it was…as awful as you’d expect it to be. Hot. Dusty. Hot. Back-aching. Dusty. Hot. Did I mention that it was hot? The Central Valley has no airflow…it’s a valley. So the air is dry and stale…and the sun bakes the land and its inhabitants like an oven. And still…we were out there in the fields, often from pre-dawn ‘til dusk, gathering our crops and shipping them off to companies like Dole or getting them ready to be sold at various farmer’s markets that we were affiliated with.
And dang, the summer of 2011 was ruthlessly hot. I had just graduated high school and it was my last summer with my family before I moved away for college. My mother, a teacher, was also on break. Always up for a new adventure, she decided to take on a challenge that summer. “You never know, unless you try,” she would always say. And the challenge was simple: gather my grandma’s overflow of crops (which included squash, zucchini, basil, bitter melons, Thai chili peppers, strawberries, and more) and sell them at the Le Grand farmer’s market on Tuesday evenings. She of course tried to get me, my brother and two sisters, and my dad to help her harvest the crops. When the dust cleared, the only one that remained was me. And it was frustrating to try to convince the others to help, who ended up sitting on the sidelines complaining about the heat, anyway. My mom and I agreed that we’d rather spend our energy actually tending to the crops than listen to anyone complain.
And even if WE didn’t complain, it didn’t make that summer any less hot. My mother and I got into our routine of things. We would weed out the fields on Friday, gather most vegetables on Monday, then gather the strawberries (the most easily perishable and our most money-making crop) on Tuesday mornings. We would then load the crops onto my grandpa’s old, blue pick-up truck and drive to Le Grand…in the middle of the day…at the height of the heat…without AC.
It was ridiculously HOT.
We would arrive at Le Grand, sweating from our car ride, set up our tent, and sell. At the night’s end, we would go around the farmer’s market and trade with the other vendors. That summer I got to try the sweetest boysenberries, ripe and fresh peaches, different flavors of kettle corn, and special honey fresh from the hive. This sense of community was something that appealed to my mother and me because a rational mind would not put in all of the work and labor that we did for the measly amount of profit we made from our sales. That, and the heat.
However, the true gold from this summer came from our hour-long drives back home, where my mother and I would sit in silence: silent from exhaustion, silent from bearing the heat all day, and most importantly, silent from an unspoken but shared sense of indescribable accomplishment. We were proud that we were amateurs and were still able to bear through the sun, deal with the back-aching pain of harvesting our crops, and give life to our customers through our fresh crops. We felt the incredible energy of life flow through us and into our crops. In this silence, our love grew.
So…we faced the summer heat and went back, week after week for two months. During this time, I saw how giving and abundant the earth is, I experienced a true sense of humility, my skin grew thick from absorbing so much sunlight, and I strengthened my already powerful connections with both my mother and the earth.
Life is beautiful, even if it’s unbearably hot at times.
“Mother, I am your ride or die.
I love you dearly and would bear through a thousand hot summers for you. You nourish me with your love and your energy and your time. And I worship you and all the greatness you represent for me. Thank you for loving me.”
-Dennis Xiong
