Wholesome

This is a word that, to most of us, has lost its luster. It’s become a dowdy, old-fashioned, and really, altogether undesirable adjective. We don’t want it to describe us, for fear of sounding prudish, nor our lifestyle, lest it make us seem irrelevant (God forbid!). Wholesome food makes us wrinkle our noses and expect a nasty, perhaps fibrous mess; wholesome television programming promises to put us to sleep.

But let it be known that I am, from today forward, pulling for a renaissance—if not for this word, then for what it comes from and what it implies. Think about where it comes from. Whole. What does that even mean? For starters: “In an unbroken or undamaged state; in one piece.” Hello!

How my life feels compartmentalized, broken in pieces! Work. Home. Family. Boiler Room friends. College friends. Other friends. Cooking. Exercise. Entertainment. Prayer. All are like little drawers with parts that rarely touch. This feeds discontent and loneliness in a way I don’t understand fully. All I know is that socializing is relegated to sitting in a coffee shop or across a dinner table, and the other activities are done mainly alone.

Today was a perfectly lovely day. I had time to myself this morning, then did some food preparation since we’ve had little food prepared in the fridge this last week. Early afternoon, I headed out with two roommates to the KC Community Gardens to sign up for a membership and get some seeds for the spring/summer garden. We talked garden all the way there and back, discussing various methods of fertilizing and pest control, and by the time we got home I was fired up to get started.

My roomies and I chatted while I tested the pH of the soil of the soon-to-be garden plot our landlords have given us access to next to their loft building, which is feet away from Troost, a ghost-town-like avenue that is Kansas City’s line of demarcation between Black and White, wealth and poverty. I cooked some beans that had been soaking and got bread ready to put in the oven before heading down the block to the garden, galoshes squeaking and shovel in newly-gloved hand.

For an hour and a half, my roommate Dana and I attacked an area of maybe 4’x6’ within the 20’x30’ plot we have permission to use. See, the space used to be covered by a twenty-four-plex apartment building, which was demolished years ago, leaving the soil littered feet deep with rubble like a bombed-out city. Some of the stones are huge and would wreck a tiller, so we’re essentially clearing the debris so that it can soon be tilled for use. The sun, hidden for several days now behind its covers of mist and clouds, came out of bed to join us and bathed us in golden, late-afternoon light. Dana and I shared life stories and prayed for our neighborhood while getting some serious exercise and actually doing something productive.

As I dug rocks, tile, brick, and muddy strands of 70’s-orange carpet out of the soil, I was happy and enthusiastic in a way I haven’t been in months. That little bit of dirt scattered with massive pile of dog poop and weeds is hope to me, and it’s bigger and more complicated than I can easily explain. Suffice it to say that I have come to believe that simple, time-consuming work done in the company of dear ones is a balm to many of the things that ail us in this day and age. I cook from scratch, mend clothes, and will garden because I think that it’s more wholesome to do so. In the sense that doing these things, and inviting others to join me, brings the parts closer together.