My favorite inheritance is the green toy metal shovel. Also, the elfin-like ski-toed leather booties. Also, the pair of snowshoes, the boxfuls of paranoid diaries, and the hand-carved checkerboard. At some point my mom framed four packets of eighty-year-old seeds. There was more. More by the tonnage. But junk, mostly, save for the few things one could pull off as vintage decor or convince someone at a swap meet of great impending value.
I moved around and couldn’t commit to its sheer volume. Half a dozen cities in Michigan, plus Norfolk, Phoenix, Portland, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Boxes remained at my parent’s house until their divorce. I was in my thirties and barely remembered the select items I’d stashed away, much less what was about to be handed down.
Inevitably, other people’s definition of worth funnels into us in many forms. Directives to hold on, hold on, remember forever. You don’t have to take it out of the box, but never let go. People divorce, die off, commence pre-death cleaning, or just stop giving a shit about all their—shit. I became the repository, so online selling became my side gig.
Selling changes you. There was more than a twinge of gross-out factor as my eye became trained to see practically anything as sellable, transactional. Yet, it felt like ‘transactional’ was also in my blood. There’s a hunting and gathering nature to it. I look to my Nordic lineage and easily see those origins. In diaries passed down to me—some a century old—and, even older, ledgers of trading with neighbors, working off debts and promises, haggling with buyers of fur, timber, and produce. Survival transactions recorded as time capsules of poverty and self-preservation. Every single penny tracked, and not a single stray cent to be found when we began cleaning out the crumbling farmhouse in 1981.
Emil was my great-grand uncle on my mom’s side. Poor as could be. He was gaunt and gauzy-eyed. Stiff-jawed, wispy-haired, and tobacco pipe-embouchered. There’s a photo of me standing on the front porch of his dilapidated Finnish-style farmhouse, and I’d just peed my pants. That dates our relationship to about 1980, meaning I was three and Emil was about to die.
It was a bad way to go: Northern Michigan winter, middle of the night, falls off the bed, gets severe hypothermia. In part, because he lived remote and alone in a house that never had electricity, plumbing, or phone. Only a wood-burning kitchen stove that needed vigilant tending. A kerosene lamp strapped to the end of his bed kept frostbite from blackening his toes. Also, he was rock-solid stubborn.
He never had a romantic relationship and lived with his brothers in that house until they either died or were institutionalized. Emil refused to move off the land where he was born, farmed, hoarded, and intended to die. He protected that right with a shotgun until he became too weak to pull a trigger. Until my mom found his body on the floor, alive, frozen like a twig on stream ice.
He trusted her and not many others. We can assume he loved us both, so we feel connected to his memory and mess. He’s both mythic and problematic. His belongings so filthy not even a price tag would go near them. We wiped them down and carted them around for decades. They keep us wary of the hoarding in our bloodline. But where we had boxes, he had rooms full. Sheds full. Even pits dug in the yard hiding more. The property was abandoned after he died, but remained an archaeological weekender’s paradise. Family tiptoeing across rotted floorboards, rusty nails, swallow carcasses—cat carcasses. He hoarded feral cats and everything smelled like piss. Furniture free for the taking if that scent gives you nostalgia.
The family could hardly believe it when an antique-home restorer came up from southern Wisconsin and hauled it away. Disintegrating house and sauna. He actually wanted the heap that we eyed for a bonfire. By then, the mid-’80s, the family had scrounged the objects that were salvageable. My parents hauled the last of it—which was a lot—to our house a few miles away. Loads of scrap metal and car parts. Boxes melded into boxes filled with automobile brochures, war propaganda, blue medicine bottles, seed catalogs. And seeds. Four packets of old seeds.
My now-husband and I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in 2015. The real estate market was a slog on both ends. Nobody wanted our Chicago condo, everyone wanted Los Angeles houses. Six months into living out of short-term rentals, we received a tip. A house with land would be coming up for sale on L.A.’s northeast side. Hold out and prepare to be amazed.
I was alone when I first saw it. My husband was on a work trip and I texted him: “This is it.” If the house were located in the Midwest, few would react with such heart palpitations and trembling hands. It’s a cookie-cutter ranch-style tract house on a cul-de-sac. It has a hillside view, sure—sunsets and urban skylines—but Hollywood glamour the house is not. The appeal was the undeveloped land. That L.A. rarity. Setting down roots is never simple, but here I could envision a simpler life. Enough space to adopt chickens, plant a garden, and feel obscured from the city—despite loving Los Angeles. Indeed, Emil’s blood still courses strong with the convictions of self-sufficiency and seclusion.
More than a home, it gave sense of fresh intention. To commence micro-farming (I erroneously call it farming) and focus on growing my online vintage shop. And I could finally give my Emil collection its due attention. In the living room I display his toy metal shovel, elfin-like leather booties, and hand-carved checkerboard. I have read and preserved his paranoid diaries. But I don’t have the eighty-year-old seeds. Technically. Or, technically?
Los Angeles estate sales are no joke. Invigorated by fresh fantasies, I began lining up for frenzied sales at 5:00 am to snag the best vintage goods. An imaginary storefront built upon eBay, Etsy, and Instagram. Quirks and one-offs. Good pottery and first-edition books. I curated an urban-rural vintage aesthetic. A few things from the Emil stash found homes elsewhere. I can’t keep everything (I must convince myself). The four seed packets, for example. Each with an old-school illustration of tomato, lettuce, or radish. Nothing extraordinary, but a pleasant shabby chic wall filler. I never cared much for their whimsical assemblage, glued to a backing board of burlap within a dated picture frame. Besides, the seeds had no personal connection to Emil. They’d survived within a box in his house. So what? He didn’t even bother planting them back in 1930-whenever.
I did wrestle with giving them up, but presumed the seeds were long-expired. Eaten by beetles or doused in humidity. I reasoned that, even if some were still viable, I didn’t yet possess the necessary infrastructure (i.e. greenhouse) to propagate fragile seedlings. So, I sold them. And that—one among hundreds of sales—had implications like none other.
Uncle Emil’s house and sauna are still standing. They no longer smell like cat piss. In fact, they’re magnificent. Featured in home and garden magazines. Every single board and beam was inventoried, shipped to Wisconsin on flatbed trucks, and rebuilt on an idyllic hill overlooking sheep pastures. The owners cozied the home among barns and outbuildings that were also salvaged and resurrected to perfection. I remember it as practically a living history museum of settler homesteading and Scandinavian Americana. Uncle Emil wouldn’t have gone near the place.
I should have offered its owner the framed seeds. That’s one aspect of my regret. The sale seemed ordinary but I was ignorant of my selfishness. And for what? It certainly didn’t fetch much cash. In fact, it had been listed for sale off and on for who knows how many months with no interest. Wouldn’t it have looked charming hung on that once-filthy now-grand porch where I peed myself in 1980?
If I wallow, I can get stingingly envious of the house’s owner. I have never and will never make the kind of money to afford its return to our family. I’m comforted that it’s still out there, so loved: but I’m jealous of that love. It’s gut-hollowing how I sometimes find myself pointlessly desirous. It wasn’t my labor that rescued the house and I’m in no way deserving of it (I must convince myself). My mantra kicks in: It’s just a house. It’s just an object. I have all I need.
Then the seeds went viral. Not Tik-Tok-level viral, but the online gardening community is fervent. Not only gardeners in this case, but random YouTubers who like installments that follow a mystery to its end. They would never know there are two endings to this story.
To continue, I must add two grains of fiction to protect the innocent. First, the buyers. That’s what I’ll call them: John and Joanne Buyers. Second, I’ll say that the lower right corner of the frame displayed an unopened packet of watermelon seeds. In truth they were something other, but for this story they are watermelon. And they had not existed on the planet—if we’re to trust the internet hype—for nearly a century. Extinct. That’s what John Buyers determined. What happens after an extinction event? A select few people with specific knowhow clamor for genetic material to bring back the dinosaur. Thrilling if successful. Lucrative, perhaps. I thought nothing of the sort when I sold them. Least of all when Joanne included a kind note in her purchase saying that John likes gardening, thus the assemblage would make a nice birthday gift. She even gave me his social media account to follow his backyard hobby. Oh, Joanne.
Sure, I checked it. Yup, looked like gardening. I then forgot about it for months. Thought to check it again and, there they were, my watermelon seeds. Front page news. I mean, this account had turned into a hype machine. Comments were pouring in. Everyone anticipating watermelon germination. Gardeners begging to be first in queue—offering cash—for the first batch of seeds that the melons, or melon, produced. There wasn’t even a sprout yet!
Until there was. Several. Watchers went wild. John was wide-eyed and hooting in his videos. I thought he might burst a vessel. He added headlines: Click to See The 80-Year-Old Watermelon Brought Back from Extinction! This had become a circus sideshow. Step right up, folks—to my freak Jurassic watermelon!
I’ll be honest, I’m a floundering fiction writer masquerading as a poet who moonlights as an essayist. And Uncle Emil’s story—his home transformation, his descent into delusional paranoia, his hypothermic demise—is good fodder for all of it. His creepy homestead wonderland was the foundation for a novel I worked on for seven years, all the while selling vintage. The novel turned out great (I must convince myself), but agents didn’t bite. This whole watermelon thing didn’t make it into the book. So this is that.
My freak watermelon. My precious extinction. How could I hand you over? I could have parlayed your story, our videos, into book marketing. I could be the one with all the followers. I’m the one who bought more land for the fantasy of growing produce. Perhaps to eventually open a seed store? That would sell back-from-the-dead seeds? That’s how the greed spiral starts.
I got jealous and it got ugly. Those hype videos got me riled up. When folks started begging to purchase the first batch of fresh seeds, I emailed The Buyers. Hey, remember me? The seller of your celebrity seeds? Got a few to spare? Crickets. I reasoned with reasons: Maybe I wasn’t the first person to stake the origins claim. In my next email I included Joanne’s purchase receipt. Proof of sale. Kindly asked that they think of me once they had seed to spare. Explained that I now have a greenhouse and can handle the task at hand. I told of Uncle Emil and how much it would mean to keep the family heirloom alive. It’s a full-circle story. A love story. A blood story. Silence.
Maybe my messages weren’t cutting through the crowd. Maybe The Buyers couldn’t keep up with administrative tasks. Next, I jumped in the social media threads and gardening forums. Into the shark frenzy of anticipation, I tossed myself like a bucket of chum. Something like: Hey guys, um, you don’t know me but those were my seeds. I think I deserve to cut the line here. Can anyone put me in touch with John? Nope. I couldn’t even get bullied on that playground.
Scummy behavior. Desperation born out of some manufactured story I allowed my imagination to concoct, such that it would correct my embarrassing mistake: I’d sold off the hen’s tooth, the golden goose. I sold off the thread of life that bound me to a man I hardly knew. Never did this occur to me in the midst of it. My mind was in a single lane, driving toward one goal: Possession. Which part of me was in the driver’s seat, I wonder now. Transactional survival? Self-seclusion grasping for social-familial connection? If it was greed, what is greed?
John’s first watermelons yielded enough viable seed to grow more. After a couple seasons he’d seemingly saved enough to sell limited quantities in his online seed shop. Demand was high and I had to line up among the commoners. At only a few bucks a packet, though, it was clear John wasn’t trying to get rich. His efforts and enthusiasm turned out to be just that. Not fame-thirst or rampant capitalism, but a hard-working gardener who has particularly animated enthusiasm for germination. Maybe he was making a living in that new way, the social media-driven way, and so what?
Eventually other gardeners started getting in on it. Selling their own successive generations of the watermelon seeds on Etsy and eBay. Nobody was getting rich and the extinction was way over. I ended up with four packets from two different sellers, John included. I planted a few seeds and stashed the remainder. They grew easily, though they did not emerge as a beanstalk transporting me to Uncle Emil’s cloud. I felt so little connection to the plants that I practically neglected them. They did their own thing, produced fruit, and then died. I didn’t even plant them again the following spring. The leftover seed sits in a box on a dark shelf, silica gel packs warding off humidity. They’ll probably sit there for another eighty years. Wait, that math…
But the watermelon itself—isn’t that what matters here? Everyone wants to know how it looks and tastes. Everyone. Decent, I suppose, though the plant itself was unruly. Classic heirloom flavor. No surprises. Texture on the mealy side. Skin could have benefited from a dermatologist. All in all, nothing to write home about—unless you’re that one writer who is obsessed with writing about home.
The obsession, the chase, was it all for the thrill of the kill? Was I that child viciously guarding the crayon he wasn’t even using? Maybe my toddlerism was primal or primary, barely controllable. Yeah, maybe I’m let partly off the hook by some deep-seated, fear-based, survival instinct. I’ve considered I have an underdeveloped lobe that leaks reason and reasonability. Maybe something’s off up there. Some genetic fraying of a behavioral cord. Well, public self-awareness can pendulum so far as to seem piteous, so I’m going to lift my foot off that accelerator. In other words, I’m in therapy.
As such… the reader, the gardener, the house builder, the seed—they owe me nothing. Nor am I in need of anything they possess. The desire, jealousy, paranoia, guilt, and whichever genetic goblins are swimming up my bloodstream, those are between me and the shrink I pay handsomely because he’s out-of-network. If a writer comes at their essay pandering for the readers’ sympathy, then therapy is probably a primary endeavor. My job here is not to ask for pity, but to understand the connection, tension, and value between my story and the reader’s interest. The story itself is history, so what can it carry forward?
Therapy, at its best, nudges us into revelations about acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go of control. Living in the moment. If our mind is ruminating in the past or future, it’s probably consumed with fear or grief. Easily summarized for the writer who holds the power to manipulate sentences that glide himself to a soft landing. To create the persona of a writer who has reached his wisdom era. Off the page, I still hoard the future implications of my decisions as tonnage that reaps immobilization. Guarding control, rushing in with skepticism of people’s motives, withholding self-forgiveness, avoiding experiences out of fear—it’s all in my blood like Uncle Emil’s paranoia. I have a wonderful pen-and-ink portrait of him drawn by a family friend. If I’m not vigilant with self-care, I’ll see my mirror image—stuck forever in the same frame.
When vigilance delivers me to reason, I wonder: What the hell am I holding onto? Maybe I’ll enjoy change more than comfort. Comfort has been no picnic. “Things” have been an emotional and back-breaking burden. If we part with hand-me-down objects, mementos, will the loved one’s existence fade from memory? In the non-physical realm, how many flop stories must we hoard to appropriately punish ourselves for a blunder or remind ourselves what regret feels like? How many collected mistakes will prevent the next big one from shaking us? If we don’t steer through the ruts of our hunting and gathering behavior, permit ourselves to travel on with a lighter load, stop pulling over to collect reasons to be angry or scared or guilty, we become slaves to the tonnage of their future implications.
Oh, but I do hate mistakes. The mere potential for making them freezes my decisions. And with that hypothermia comes the lost potential of so many opportunities. Or, in the words of my therapist: Let’s not label it OCD, but there are indeed aspects of its traits.
And now this watermelon behavior is on my permanent record. Anytime I start acting a little wobbly, my husband can revive its consequences. Remember how that meant so much, then turned out to mean nothing at all? Whatever you’re obsessing about, you have to let it go. Don’t worry so much. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’d attempt self-forgiveness more often if I could remember it’s an option. If only guilt and fear are the rubber bands that snap my wrist into loving-kindness. I’d be snapping to attention all day long.
Well, this isn’t a marketing pitch for psychotherapy—though highly recommended. Maybe this is accountability. Maybe this is a big mistake. Maybe I’m just trying to find the words to say I don’t want to act ugly and I don’t want to act scared. Act strange? Maybe. Oddly? For sure. We can call that eccentric, and isn’t that just life imitating art etc. etc.? But I don’t like acting ugly. I don’t like the presumptions it makes of people who are doing the great work of being good and the hard work of getting by. I want to be doing better and forgive myself for regressions. A little naughty? Maybe. A little bitchy? For sure. But for all my bitching and its mediocre net results—the little freebies and five-dollars-off coupons, the tissues of sympathy that wipe away my crocodile tears—I trust in the theory of being good natured, working hard, and giving freely. I’ve found its origins, and it too is in my blood.
I want that blood to keep my heart fresh. It gets hardened by the city and softened by the land. That’s flexing and that builds muscle. But I want that muscle to grow from human interactions, not human avoidance. Like how I want nothing but good things for John and Joanne. I want nothing from them. They didn’t make any mistakes or owe me any favors. It was all a whipped-up concoction of my imagination. Ugly stuff. How my brain carried the pathetic notion of deserving, despite already having so much. The burning want was perhaps a greed born of some scarcity & competition fantasy. Emil hoarded everything because he had nothing, so maybe my blood carries that vestige. But that also seems like a cop out. I can’t lean on his history as my excuse. I don’t live in his era and cannot, as much as I might romanticize it, relate to it whatsoever.
If my messages indeed did get through to The Buyers, I owe them an apology for the ugliness I let steal the best of me. I believe we’d have a lot in common and would enjoy touring each other’s gardens. And our story—I’d convinced myself it’s an “our” story—isn’t an our-story whatsoever. It’s purely my own hoarded nest of insulation and none of it holds up to the hype I’d heaped upon it. In fact, the whole thing sort of falls apart at the end, wouldn’t you say?
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(Photo: Dion Gillard/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- A Way of Saving by Bradley David - January 30, 2025