Grandma's scolding stung worse than the thorns on the grapevines, but the sweet potatoes she handed me were dripping with honey.
On the landing of our self-built house, she hid the wine she brewed for Grandpa. The arguments in the vegetable patch bore the long beans I loved most.
The seasons turned beneath the grape trellis. The tenderness wrapped in all that sharpness had, it turned out, been planted in time long ago.