by Jerriann Massey

Created on: March 26, 2008

Elephant Ears

The wizened matriarch, Erna Jaye, stood gazing at the blooming hollyhocks and irises she had so carefully tended through the decades. She leaned down to brush back the leaves and to remove the quilt that covered what looked like bare ground. The ground below the quilt connected her to her distant past. Her thoughts drifted back to the innocent times of her childhood.

The memory of kneeling on the ground while digging in the earth with her mother, some 76 years earlier was vivid. In long skirts and aprons, the pair dug a large hole in the fertile sod and lovingly interred the single bulb, which was the size of a cow patty. The bulb, mail ordered from distant lands, had arrived the previous day. Mama had told her it was an investment in the future.

On a trip to town to buy chicken scratch, Mama had seen a drawing of an elephant ear plant in a mail-order catalog. Having never seen an elephant or an elephant ear plant, she was intrigued. She wondered if the leaves were really as big as an elephant's ear. Mama saved pennies from the sweet potato harvest to buy the bulbs. Surely, with shade, water and care the plant would flourish.

And, flourish, it did. It grew and grew, and outgrew the children. The leaves were so large the girl child could have blanketed herself in them. Papa had teasingly said that the two females had loved that plant just as much as a pet and called it their pet elephant.

The years spun a web of memories of the old home place; the farm, the well, the trees, horses and mostly the flower garden. All memories of those tender times were entwined with the growth and dying back each year of the elephant ear plant. Each spring the new sprouts stirred thoughts of how much she had grown. Would she finally be big enough to stand taller than one of the leaves? Year after year she measured her own growth by the height of the biggest leaf.

Each fall, she and Mama would, just before the first frost as predicted by the Farmer's Almanac, cut the leaves and carefully cover the stalks with an old quilt that become known as the elephant quilt. Papa took this occasion to lovingly bedevil his girls about having a special blanket for the elephant when they had few enough quilts and blankets to keep the children warm.

Each spring his girls would brush back the leaves, remove the quilt, and watch for sprouts. And, each year as the perpetual sign of rebirth, the trusted elephant plant would surface, reminding them of time passing.

A score and six years later,

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