After some tumultuous teen years my Mother and I have become close friends. Over the course of the last sixteen months I have been going to her house five times a week to help her prepare it for sale. This has involved painting, cleaning, and sorting through almost forty years worth of stuff. Now that her house has been listed and it looks like she has a sale pending the need for me to be there so frequently has been eliminated.

I find that I miss the almost daily contact with her.

We do talk on the phone frequently, and today the topic of our respective gardens came up. She asked me if I had any ripe tomatoes yet, and I responded that I had, as well as peppers of various types and zucchini. She said that her tomatoes were still green and she had discussed the subject with my brother, himself an avid gardener with an enviable garden. After telling him that her tomatoes had yet to ripen he let her in on his little secret for beautiful, red, vine ripened tomatoes. According to him, he hangs red glass ball Christmas ornaments in his tomato plants and the green ones ripen because they want to keep up with the other “tomatoes” in the bush. He claimed it was a scientific fact that he had read somewhere and that it never fails him.

My first response was to laugh, certain that he was pulling our legs. My second response was to do a Google search on it to see if it was in fact true.

I ultimately decided that it was harmless to let my Mom believe this. I like the vision of her pulling out the packed away ornaments, digging through them for the red balls, and carefully hooking them onto her plants in hopes that it will cause a jealous rush in her green fruits to keep up with their brilliant competition.

I sincerely hope her tomatoes start to turn color now. After all, don’t we all need something to believe in?