The Things We Fear

This morning, a bee landed on my right shoulder and remained there for the next several minutes. I stayed as still as I could, wondering if she thought my blue tank top strap was a flower or if she had just recognized a temporary safe haven in the city. So many people have a gut reaction of fear when it comes to bees. In reality, bees only sting when threatened, which won’t happen if you are still and calm. Can you sense a metaphor?

When I was first accepted into graduate school at Temple, I became accustomed to the look of fear that many people from my hometown in the Philadelphia suburbs would give me when I told them I would be moving to an apartment in West Philly and commuting to North Philly for school. “Do you have a death wish?” I remember one person asking me. Collectively, these two neighborhoods are stigmatized as dangerous by many people in the area where I grew up and are generally thought of as places to be avoided.

True, Philadelphia is one of the highest crime cities in the country. And true, North Philadelphia in particular represents one of the highest concentrations of criminal activity in the city. But it is also true that there are people that call North Philadelphia home and go about their daily business here every day. It is also true that many of these people are working every day to make their Philadelphia neighborhoods safer. And there are so many incredible things about the places that get overlooked when you are only focusing on the statistics.

Today, I brought Evelyn some of pesto I made to put in the jars she had given me. Seeing her smile when I gave it to her was the highlight of my week. Working in the garden this summer has given me the privilege of experiencing so many of the kind, strong, and intelligent people that I never would have had the opportunity to interact with had I not been working in North Philadelphia. I know North Philly has its problems, and I am only experiencing the neighborhood from my small vantage point on the street corner where the garden is located, and only for a few hours of the day. But from that one small spot, in just a few weeks, I have found a sense of community to exist that seems rare in our society today.

I’m not advocating for putting oneself in harm’s way. I’m not saying to go walking through the street alone after dark. What I am saying is that the bee on my shoulder didn’t sting me, and it’s only because I wasn’t afraid that I got to watch it up close and be in awe of its beautiful wings and bright colors and the graceful way it took off when it decided to fly away.

Gifts

“You’re going to turn me into a vegetarian,” says Yvette, the security guard who works at the front desk of the medical school building, when I first come through the door in the morning. She tells me about the sautéed kale and broccoli she made for her family last night, both of which I picked and gave to her the day before.

Derek, who works in the medical school’s library, holds out his hand to high five me as I walk past on my way to the garden. He tells me how he added the fresh garlic I brought him to his salad dressing last night, and it made all the difference (after harvesting sixty heads of garlic this week, there’s plenty to go around).

The best parts of my days in the garden are always when I can give gifts that we’ve grown to the people around me. I drop off boxes of food to the staff working in med school café and hand out fresh basil and mint to the people walking past on Venango Street. But perhaps the best place to bring food from the garden is the Zion Baptist Church across the street.

The Zion Baptist Church is an unassuming, grey brick building. From its faded anterior you can see the outlines of blue stained glass and the dome shape of the sanctuary. I’ve walked past this church for months, barely noticing it. What you can’t tell from the outside is that the church is a historic landmark, over a hundred years old with ties to Jessie Jackson and Nelson Mandela through former minister Leon Sullivan, a civil rights leader and anti-Apartheid activist. You can’t tell the magnificence of the church organ, whose pipes take up the entire back wall of the sanctuary or the glow from the inside of the original stained glass panels. You can’t tell how welcoming and warm the people inside are when you show up uninvited with a basket full of vegetables.

Last week was the third Monday we brought vegetables over to Zion Baptist for them to distribute at their weekly food pantry. Deacon Jones, who greets us at the front desk, calls over Mr. George, who is starting to be able to recognize the different types of greens in order to explain how to use them to others. When Evelyn, a member of the church, sees the fresh basil we’ve brought, we talk briefly about pesto recipes and she tells us she thinks it would be a great thing to can in jars.

                                   

The next day, working back in the garden, I talk to Joan, who lives down the street. She tells me how she gardened in the city for 35 years, but now the medical school building blocks out most of her sunlight. My heart breaks a little, but because I can’t tear down the building on the spot (I want to), I pull a whole kale plant out of the ground and offer it to her. I tell her to replant it in her garden- it is such a hearty plant that it will grow in almost any conditions.

An hour later, Clay, who I also know from the church, stops over to joke around with me. We laugh about the idea of putting chickens in the garden, and I tell him I am trying to follow at least some rules so I don’t get kicked out of school. As we are chatting, he sees the parking authority start to write a ticket to a car whose meter has run out. Clay reaches into his pocket and rushes over to the car, which isn’t his. “I have it,” he says, and puts enough coins in to hold the meter over another hour.

I go back to weeding the pumpkins, thinking about selflessness. It’s not long after that Evelyn walks by with a plastic bag and hands it to me through the fence. I open it up and inside is a box of mason jars. “For your pesto,” she smiles. And an hour later, when I think my heart is most likely going to burst, Joan shows up with green beans that she grew. “I brought them for you.”

If you are trying to find kindness in a place where you aren’t sure it exists, plant food there. Daily I become more and more convinced that it’s a recipe for bringing out the best in people. Stay tuned.

Magic

This week we built the first of six new raised beds in the Medible Learning Garden, the space where we grow medicinal herbs and vegetables on a plot next to Temple University’s Medical School, the locally proclaimed “palace” of North Philadelphia. This ultra-modern multi-million dollar complex stands in the heart of one of the most impoverished and deteriorating neighborhoods of the city, on a block where you can find health science students and people from the hood walking past each other and averting their eyes, infrequently interacting.

I’ve spent a year on this block and am one of the only students I know who can name people who live down the street. Tony often cooks dinner for his father, who is too sick to leave the house. Vicky has a fierce laugh and loves fried green tomatoes. Eddy is a Vietnam War veteran who likes to work with his hands.  It’s not that I have a gift of words or a superhuman ability to bridge gaps between two seemingly separate groups of people walking down the sidewalk. In fact, I can’t really take any of the credit at all. It’s some kind of magic that happens when I’m working in the garden, that somehow makes it okay to approach and be approached by people you would never otherwise risk a conversation with, and despite the iron fence that separates the raised beds from the sidewalk, there is a human connection that happens that goes beyond the boundaries that exist in the outside world.

On Tuesday I was drilling together planks of wood for our new beds, so focused on my work that I could almost forget where I was at. I was wiping sweat from my forehead and reaching for another screw when I saw a group of small children approach- eight sleepy sets of eyes only three or so feet from the ground walking outside in the ninety-degree weather, herded by three older women who were nudging them along. When the children saw the garden their gaze shifted towards me (it was probably the only time they had ever seen a white girl with a power tool). I never could have engaged in a conversation with them on the street, but I knew I could do it here.

“Can I show them something?” I asked their teachers. They nodded, and I stopped what I was doing and approached one of the beds that rests up against the fence. The children came over to watch. I pointed to the green fronds that were growing in the bed and told them to watch closely. I pulled it gently, and out of the soil popped a bright orange carrot. They looked at me as if I had pulled a rabbit from my hat as I handed it to one of them through the fence. Suddenly, seven other little hands were reaching towards me. They all wanted carrots. Talk about magic.

I pulled several more and gave them to the children, their teachers promising to wash and cut them up for them to eat. I found out from one of the teachers that the kids were from a daycare across the street. These kids think food comes from cans, she said. I told her to bring them back, and we exchanged contact information so that she really could.

I watched as the children walked away, still staring at the magical soil-coated carrots between their fingertips. I’m not sure which of us was more in awe.