A few days ago, I came across a scalloped-edged, sepia-toned photo, the kind of print that instantly reminds how fleeting time is. In it, my Uncle Pete squats in his beloved vegetable garden in rural Connecticut where most of my family migrated to after leaving the city behind. Five feet tall and nearly as wide, my uncle bore a smile that made him seem playful, if a little scary to a young girl used to the long-standing misery of other “old-world” relatives too full of loss to lighten up. Aunts and uncles who’d escaped Italy and immigrated to New York, obliging the next generation to suffer the world war experience, word-for-word, so that whenever I heard them coming, I’d draw back and hide.

A contemporary writer might describe Uncle Pete as in-the-now or in-the-know, or candidly European, the kind of enthusiastic behavior too often looked down upon in polite American society. He’d talk with his hands and belly laugh, convey head-on honesty instead of niceties. But what I loved most about him was his unique way of making others feel as comfortable with him as he was with himself. He was my first example of an unorthodox man for he led a daring life others only dream of. Not a life others tried to make him live or the kind convention celebrates for he had no money to speak of. What he did possess was an enviable way of always being on his own side. A generous partner to himself, he had, to my mind, a relationship that far exceeds marriage, parenthood, and friendship combined.

Funny how I sat down to write about basil, its intoxicating fragrance so potent I can follow it through any market because more than I love the smell of basil, I love eating it. Yet, all I have is a description of my favorite uncle because, as any writer can tell you, this is how the process works: it’s not my conscious mind that dictates, but a voice that lives way deep, surfacing only when I tune in and listen hard.

 And I learned how to ‘tune in’ in Uncle Pete’s garden where I wasn’t allowed to help, exactly, but I was involved. By witnessing his love for tomatoes, peppers, and his favorite herb, basil, I sort of became a gardener-by-osmosis. It wasn’t vegetables I longed for, but the ease I saw in his eyes, an expression I didn’t see in the eyes of my friends or in the rest of my family. Inspired by the idea of concentrating on an effort until it gave me back an absolute sense of myself, he was my vehicle into a confident world which was far more desirable than the universe I mostly lived in back then: a peer-pressured world of fear

Having referred to my uncle again, I realize this will never be about basil other than the model of discipline gardening set down for the rest of my life, but about a man who looked inward and showed me how to do the same, which has pretty much been the aim of my life ever since. It’s about finding an inner strength in the center of a busy life; more about a writer than a gardener. And certainly more about a man than an herb, but whatever it is, my thoughts have settled down and that’s all I ask when I focus first thing in the morning, trying to make something whole in order to put it behind me. Before heading toward the next.