DOTE Garden is a physical space in the city of Palermo, conceived and cared for by the collective Aterraterra. It is born out of Listening to Seeds, the third moment in our Year of Listening. You can visit the garden by reading the stories of the seeds that have been planted in it. This is one of the stories.
Dear Fabio and Luca,
My grandparents used to live in the north of Greece and I grew up in Athens with my parents. Many hours drive away from them. We visited each other as often as we could but as they got older and we got busier, the trips to the village became less frequent. Regardless of how often we would visit, every season my grandparents would prepare a big care package, consisting of multiple cardboard boxes and send it to Athens for all their children and grandchildren. One of their kids (usually my father) would go to pick up the package from the bus station, bring it home to open, split the content by four and distribute it to his brothers and sisters’ families. I remember the smell of wet carton, as my dad would bring in the rained on boxes one by one and let me cut the thin tether securing them. The boxes that had lost their shape on their way and my mom would always say that they look like they’ve been kicked all the way from the north to Athens. One box was filled with hay – which if you probed with your fingers you discovered the dozens of eggs hidden in there. Boxes packed with seasonal vegetables. A huge box that contained 20-30 chickens, slaughtered and deep frozen, we had to divide the content by four and make sure the rest of my dad’s siblings were there in time to pick up their share before it melts. Another box was chiming with glass jars of tomato paste, some of them sweet some spicy. The spicy ones had a mark on the lid so that my dad would know which they were and put them on the side. I remember how my grandma would simmer the tomatoes for hours in the pot until they became a thick paste. For the spicy ones, she mixed in a bunch of dried, crushed bukovo peppers. Then a few drops of alcohol on top, lit it up with a lighter and covered the flames with the jar lid so that it creates a vacuum seal. Then she’d put an x on the lid of the jar containing the spicy paste with a marker pen. Over time and after sending and returning hundreds of jars and depending on what marker pen my grandma had used before, not all marks could be washed off the lids so, in later years, we couldn’t be entirely sure which jar is spicy and which not. Maybe because of all the piano studying I had strong fingers since I was a child and a good grip, I was the jar opener of the family. To this day, I have a 100% success rate in jar opening. My task during that village unboxing experience was to inspect all jars for crack and leaks before taking them out of the carton box. Also my task was to check that the spicy jars are correctly marked (we had accidents int he past). As I would crack one of them open, the strong bodied, tangy smell of tomato would waft under my nose, sometimes combined with the sweet and spicy bukovo, initiating this slideshow of memories: soft grandma hands planting, watering, picking, cooking, packaging. In the 2000’s packages became smaller and less frequent. Not so much because my grandparents got older (because they kept producing more and more) but mainly because we, the families of their children, living in Athens, got more dependant on supermarket food. Suddenly the chickens, egg and tomato paste were not enough to cover our needs, suddenly it was too much of a hassle to go the bus station, unpack all of the goods and then distribute them around the city. We still received care packages but the gesture was now more symbolic than practical. A couple of years ago, both grandparents passed away and that signalled the end of that era. the seasons were no longer marked by the popping sounds of unsealing jars and the smells of tomato paste and bukovo. Missing these sounds, smells and tastes makes me miss my grandparents. I now realise that these packages were more than food, more than financial relief, more than ‘organic’, ‘authentic’, ‘traditional’ ingredients to decorate our urban kitchen shelves with. These packages carried a century’s worth of knowledge, love and resilience and they also served as a reminder of their existence. That they’re still there, working the land, witnessing death and fostering life until their last moment.
Click here to read/see the different stories…
Photo by: Stefania Galegati
