When I was ten years old my grandfather told me an old family story. Long before I was born, his grandfather had had a farm of avocado trees near Guadalajara, Mexico. The trees were very fine, delicate and beautiful, the pride of the province. The Moraleses in Mexico were so good with the finicky plant that our last name became synonymous with the pulgar verde: Spanish for green thumb.

The second son of my great-great grandfather, and the father of my grandfather, left Guadalajara for America. Leaving behind the beautiful avocado grove, he jumped the border and looked for work. True to the Morales pulgar verde, he became a migrant farmer, got married, and started a family. My grandpa was the firstborn of a migrant worker, in the fields as soon as he was able to stand by himself and out of them as quickly as the government could consider him an adult. He served in World War II and ended up in the Midwest working for the auto industry. The first thing Grandpa did when he arrived was start an avocado seed in the window of his dusty room.

For those who don’t know, the avocado is the most finicky tree known to any gardener. My grandfather had transplanted easily to the Midwestern climate, but the avocado tree wouldn’t blossom so easily. To begin an avocado tree without the benefit of the Mexican climate you have to be ridiculously careful. You take the pit seed, stick three toothpicks at equal points around the top, and suspend the seed halfway in water. If it’s left like that for two months without being moved at all, there’s a chance the pit will split open and blossom. If it doesn’t, then you have to start over again. And again. And again. So he did.

On the day of his wedding he began a pit in the kitchen of his new house. Their firstborn son helped toothpick the next pit. When grandpa was promoted he began a pit in the window of his new office. At the birth of his first daughter, after waiting through seven sons, he began another pit. The progress of his life was marked by the failure of each small, oval pit.

His work was hard. He left each morning before the sun rose and returned from the dark halls of the factory after the sun had set. He barely noted the passing of seasons. His world became factory: cold, grey, dead. Each day he lay down in his coffin, awakened only by the whistle of the end of a shift. His hands were dirty with oil and scarred by machinery; all memory of sunlight and childhood passed away. He made green now. Desperately needed money fed thirteen children and financed a house he rarely saw. His sons mowed the lawn. The small plot of soil in the backyard lay stagnant.

In his years working for Chrysler, he grew in experience and prestige. He learned how to run a line as a manager, keeping track of a shift of men. His common sense and humble attitude led him to relationships with the CEOs and founders of the Big Three. He matured. But within remained a pit-brown, hard, dark, with something inside that couldn’t be reached by all the promotions in the world. He drank every evening. He beat his children and his wife. He went to work the next day and repeated the cycle. He divorced and lived alone. He retired after nearly half a century in the factory. He remarried, and his heart cracked. Green shown through.

By the time I was born my grandpa had been retired for almost a decade. I knew him best as a short, smiling, browned little man, with the darkness of soil so ingrained in his hands that his palms were permanently stained. All I knew of him was the smell of wet tomato leaves. On the knees of his beige coveralls were brown streaks. He and I struck out together when I turned ten years old, and he placed my avocado next to his on the windowsill. When another two months passed without a crack, he told me, we’re missing something m’ija. The Morales secret : el corazone verde . The missing ingredient. Not the green thumb, the green heart.

To grow anything means to love. When I was a kid, Grandpa used to tell me about his time in the fields. How he didn’t mind it as much as his siblings, the peace that it brought him to be in the green, to feel the soil. He told me what a Texas sunset looked like beyond the vines of grapes. With smell, with heat, with dirt on his hands. And before he ever put a trowel in my hands he made me feel the plants, made me dig in the soil, made me water with my own sweat.
“Krysten, you have to feel. Feel. It lives.”

So the Moraleses keep beginning avocado pits. With hope of finding what we have lost, my family searches, in the small act of cultivating the most difficult seedling possible. Without roots or boundaries we cling to what we know holds the secret of our own growth. A tomato plant, a plot of soil, a piece of corn, or a rosebush. An avocado seed. They live, breathe, feel. We plunge our hands into the earth to know that we still can. We search for the peace of el corazone verde, inside the shell of an avocado seed that won’t blossom. For the green heart of the plant which is sweetest, most delicate, and most beautiful of all.

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