If Kale Could Talk

If kale could talk, it would tell you how it grows in six neat rows in the back of the field on the farm. It would tell you how it’s best when eaten the day it’s picked, sautéed in olive oil or raw in salads. But mostly, it would tell you the story of the women who came to work at the farm today. It would tell you the story of two breast cancer survivors, one who relapsed twice after she thought she was cured. It would tell you about a painter who taught English in Thailand during the War in Vietnam and about an environmental lawyer raising a four-year-old son.

Wednesdays are workshift days at the farm. Every Wednesday, six CSA members sign up to complete two of their volunteer hours. Today, I pulled weeds in the kale bed along with the women who signed up. Today, what we didn’t know was that as we worked on our hands and knees in the mud, a man was shot at the Holocaust memorial museum in Washington D.C. And as the painter told us about the day she heard Dr. Martin Luther King give a speech about freedom, we were unaware that a white supremacist was being rushed to the hospital, so that doctors could work to revive him, after he took the life of an innocent man.

Working in the kale, these women exchanged stories of the things that had made them strong. The lawyer talked about her struggle to earn equality in a workforce dominated by men. The breast cancer survivor who relapsed twice talked about her fight through chemotherapy and radiation, proudly cancer-free since the year 2000. I don’t want to say I’m happy I had cancer, she said. She was glad, though, that something had come along that made her rethink her life, something that made her realize what was truly important.

It was their life experiences, I thought, that made them strong. I was the youngest in the group, and I secretly wished for a day when I would have more life experiences to share. But there was something about them that let me know that experience alone is not what gives people strength. There was a certain passion for life that they possessed, a passion that couldn’t be marked by time. The murderer at the museum was eighty-eight years old.

After two hours, the environmental lawyer stood up and looked at the three beds we weeded. The kale stood out neatly where we had worked. We covered a lot of ground, she said, and we smiled. She wasn’t talking about the kale.