11-24-2024 4:20am

"Save the Dirt": Writer and Teacher Heather Goodman Thankful for Life Lesson

Lesley Misko Editor

Heather E. Goodman has taught writing at high schools, universities, and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She provides students with touchstones to enter their writing and encourages them to continue listening to their voice. Having attended Bread Loaf Writers Conference and winning the Loft Mentor Serioes Award for fiction, she has published in miniStories, Crab Orchard Review, Minnesota Monthly, and Whistling Shade. Heather’s work has appeared inGray’s Sporting Journal, The Sun, The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune, where her story won the Nelson Algren Award. For more information about her work as a writing coach, please see www.hegoodman.com.

by Heather E. Goodman

Beach Nan, crouched in the little garden between her house and the sidewalk in Havertown, Pennsylvania, tells eight-year-old me to “Save the dirt.” Decades later, I hear her words every time my hands are in soil. Before tossing dandelions, plantains, or stiltgrass in the compost bucket, I shake the weeds just as she taught me to do, letting the dirt fall back to the earth like rain.

Beach Nanny is so named because when I was a child, Beach Nan and Pop rented a house every summer on 34thStreet in Ocean City, NJ. My mom’s whole side of the family converged from Pennsylvania and Maryland for a week of swimming, beach combing, and even spending a night at the boardwalk— the highlight a ride in the front car with Pop on the CityJet. We caught crabs and weakfish and gorged ourselves on fresh seafood and Jersey tomatoes. It was a decadent week of body surfing and board games, including waking Beach Pop by placing cold grapefruits Nan gave us from the refrigerator on his sleep-warm skin. He would eventually appear in his swimsuit with his thermometer and announce it was “dipping time.” None of it was the stuff of Travel and Leisure, but we were rich in time and love.

Beach Nan grew up an only child of parents who lived through the Depression. When Beach’s mother died, our family found rolls of bills stuffed into her dolls. Beach Nan and Pop were more astute about their investments, but Nanny maintained her mother’s frugality. She saved every twist tie and rubber band, took uneaten rolls home from restaurants, and made cloth bags from left over material. All of this she did long before the green revolution. She had always lived in this manner because she was smart, careful, and grateful for what she had.

She was a seamstress, so she often saved scraps others might toss away; her hands were all over my youth. She sewed my family’s Christmas stockings and my baby blankets. She made my gymnastics warm-ups so I could look like the other gymnasts, except my fabric was softer, my red piping, brighter. When I was in high school, she volunteered one of her own old hats and redecorated it for me for a musical, and she redesigned a bridesmaid dress so I could wear it to prom. She hemmed the slip I wore under my wedding dress. For others she did this for money: relining jackets, letting out seams. She and my mom made braided rugs together from fabric scraps her customers left behind. Nothing was wasted at Nanny’s.

Beach Nan’s words come back to me every year. Now, I start my own seeds in winter, the ground still frozen, the promise of emerging green a balm for my impatient fingers. I cut empty toilet paper rolls in half and fill them with potting soil, and with the press of each seed into the good smelling dirt, I breathe deeper. I start far too many seedlings— multiple kinds of peppers, tomatoes, and herbs— excited and famished for spring, but I manage to give most of the extras away to Mom and friends, sometimes strangers.

But it’s not just useful plants we grow; Beach Nanny’s philosophy encourages beauty— saving doesn’t mean making do. Every year Mom and I grow gorgeous hyacinth bean vines because Nanny did, and we grow nasturtiums because Nan taught us to use them to brighten salads. The wood hyacinths and primroses we transplanted from Beach Nan’s gardens emerge without fail in both of our yards. And still, every season, Beach Nan teaches me about gardening, so that now besides the dirt, just like her, I save seeds from my peas, zinnias, scarlet runner beans, and more.

Because Nan and Mom introduced me to gardening, I can share in the love of it with others. My mom-in-law, sisters-in-law, and girlfriends and I swap seeds and bulbs, and we deliver perennials halfway across the country in flat rate USPS boxes or carry-on luggage. My friend Laura has moved a lot, so some of the plants Mom and I divided at Beach Nan’s, moved to our homes, and then divided again, are in Laura’s old gardens in Pennsylvania, Washington, and multiple places in Idaho. Nan’s reach is long and lasting.

Once the seedlings emerge and lunge for the light, eagerly awaiting transplanting, it’s finally spring. I clear gardens, and I talk to Beach Nan, pulling back old, damp leaves, shaking each weed free of its dirt, saving it just as I’ve been taught.

“Save the dirt” has become a kind of anthem for me. It’s liberating. As I have learned to value dirt, I have learned to want less. To be clear, I have much, much more than I need; we are so very lucky. But Nan’s “save the dirt” philosophy encourages the freedom to simply not want possessions. In learning to value dirt, many things gain greater worth— and some lose their appeal. The latest phone, computer, TV— seem frivolous when compared to rich ground. And the soil gives back in ways most things can’t. Again and again, the earth only gets richer as I feed it more waste. In return for coffee grounds and apple cores, eggshells and biodegradable paper towels, I receive arugula, cilantro, hydrangeas, lilacs, hostas, and so much more. Earth under my fingernails is a singular kind of happiness.

This spring, I’ll pull the dandelion, and let the good, rich earth fall back where it belongs, remembering the amazing woman who taught me to value the gift under my feet.
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"Save the Dirt" is Heather Goodman's award-winning submission to Studio B Art Gallery's 10th anthology of poetry, prose, and art featuring the work of local writers and artists : Legacy: Remembrance Matters. The anthology was released June 2023, and is available for sale on-line www.studiobbb.org or by contacting Jane Stahl, janeEstahl@comcast.net.