i keep having this beautiful memory about Mr.Tepley circa 1986.
He was Ukrainian, like our family.
Mama, my big brother and i rented the apartment below where he lived on Fable street.  He owned the building and every summer, tended to the garden in our back yard. I remember rhubarb, cucumbers and tomatoes so juicy and delicious that no local farmer's market since could do justice toward.

Mr. Tepley was old. He was older than my grandparents.The oldest man i had probably ever encountered as a six year old child. He complained a lot. He shouted when he spoke. We had to repeat everything we said to him at an alarmingly loud level. 

i remember once, during the dark ages of the pre-recycling revolution, Mama was throwing away some old cushions of ours. As she walked them out to the curb, Mr. Tepley stopped her and said, "I'll take those!"

"Oh... what for?" she replied, "they're so old and dusty."

"To put under my ASS that's what for!!!"  he shouted back in Ukrainian.

i was shocked. it was the first time i had ever heard someone swear in the sacred language of my mother tongue.

Mr. Tepley was old. He complained a lot. And he shouted profanities in Ukrainian when he spoke.

The only time that Mr. Tepley didn't shout, or complain, or seem annoyed at just about everything, is when he was working in his garden.  He would be out there under the blazing summer sun weeding, pruning, picking, and tending his plot for hours.  I would watch him, amused, from the balcony where i played and sipped on juice boxes...
Contemplating the creases in his skin.
Scrutinizing his long sleeved flannel shirts despite the heat.
And i would listen very carefully and giggle  as he talked to himself,  " yea, yea, yea...gotta work, gotta work, gotta work..." repeating it like a mantra.

All day long , stooped over in the garden, " yea, yea, yea...gotta work, gotta work, gotta work..."

And every now and again, he would call me down into the garden from the balcony where i sat perched, spying on him from my inconspicuous vantage point. i would descend the stairs and he would walk toward me, palm cupped with an offering. The mid afternoon sun crowned his head like a halo as he approached gently. "Give me your hands" he would say.  As i obliged he  would pour a beautiful red mound of ripe raspberries into my open hands. They were big, bright, juicy and sweet... but what i remember most is how warm they felt as i savored them individually like one cent candies melting slowly on my tongue.

When i was little, i remember thinking that the warmth of the raspberries came from Mr. Tepley's hands. Years later, logic told me that it was probably because they sat beneath the sun all day. 
What I believe now is that it came to be from a great feeling of love and compassion.  Because even today, though I might never find a raspberry that will taste quite as delicious, every single one that i eat fills me with a warm memory of an old man's love and his heavenly garden.
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January 2012.