a fig in a pot—
Mediterranean dreams
take root on my deck
Somewhere along the glittering belly of the Mediterranean, on a family trip I can no longer locate precisely—maybe Greece, maybe southern Italy, maybe that quiet village with the cheap grilled fish and the loud waves—my father picked up a fig branch.
Not a fruit. Not a seed. A branch. Just a piece of living wood, snapped at the right place, still wet at the end. He carried it through customs like it was just some leftover twig, wrapped in an old sandwich bag and the stubbornness of someone who refuses to let things die.
We had spent that holiday walking to beaches with plastic chairs and palm-sized beer cans, ducking into shade like stray cats. The rental house smelled like salt and citrus. My mother made lentils with whatever she could find. My father drank the local wine and talked about soil as if it were an old friend.
In the mornings, we would walk down to a seaside restaurant that opened early. The coffee was dark and thick, almost like oil, served in small cups that forced you to sip slowly. My father loved that. I remember dipping bread into the garlicky broth of školjke na buzaru—Dalmatian-style mussels, steeped in white wine and parsley and enough garlic to make your mouth sing. We’d wipe the sauce from the bowl with hunks of bread, eating in silence, the kind that meant satisfaction.
On one of those days—maybe the day the power went out and we ate watermelon by candlelight—he found the fig tree. It was on a small island nearby, one only reachable by a rugged path that wound between scrub and sunburnt rock. We’d gone out for a walk, no plan, just the pull of a distant view. My mom was behind us, carrying his cigarettes. She gave them to him on strict ratios, otherwise he would smoke too much. And there, between two rocks, the fig tree stood. No business being there. The roots gripped the stone like an argument. He stood in front of it for a long time. Then broke off a branch.
He brought back a grapevine, too. And at first, it didn’t seem like much would come of it. But he potted it anyway, with that quiet faith of his. Summers passed, and against all odds, the grapevine grew. It wrapped around the trellis and started to fruit—little green grapes, tight and tart at first, then softer, sweeter as August deepened.
These days, he brings saplings of the grapevine to me, too. Says, “They’ll grow. Just give them time.” I nod but don’t always believe it. And then they do. Little leaves pushing out like promises. Maybe in fifteen years I’ll have my own grapes. Maybe more.
The fig, though—she led the way.
He put it in water the day we got back. Then in a small pot, then a larger one. Every season, it stretched. Even through the brittle Swiss winters, even when the light came late and left early.
Fifteen years later, it shades my balcony.
It leans slightly south, as if it still remembers the direction of the sea. The leaves are broad, with edges that seem drawn by a child. They make the light dapple, which I like. I drink coffee under them in the summer and sometimes nap with my feet tucked under the chair like a cat.
There are days when I look at it and think of all those long car rides we used to take. The ones where my sister and I fought over who got the window seat. Where the maps folded like origami in the glovebox. Where time slowed the closer we got to salt air.
I remember one summer in Croatia. We camped by the water, and a storm blew through so suddenly it ripped our tent clean out of the earth. My father laughed, holding the metal frame like a kite. That same summer he taught me how to skip stones, to find the flat ones by their weight.
The fig tree now grows in the same motion. Skipping, almost. It doesn’t rise straight. It coils a little, like a sentence he never finished.
What surprises me most is not that it grew—but that it thrives. It gives fruit. Wrinkled, sagging, dark-purple things that taste like summer held too long in the mouth. The older and uglier they look, the better they are.
My father taught me how to cut it. He said, “Never waste a branch. Each one’s a maybe.”
Every spring, I cut it back and root the cuttings. I give them to friends, to neighbors, to strangers who ask about it. Once, I brought a cutting to my friend Yuki in Kyoto. She planted it on her tiny balcony, and now it’s part of her morning tea ritual. She texts me pictures. Says it looks like it remembers me.
There’s something strange and soft in knowing a piece of wood carried across borders now lives second lives in other homes. That somewhere in Tokyo, in Ljubljana, in the back of a friend’s house in Zurich, the fig has children.
On its limbs hang wind chimes I brought back from Asia. Glass furins from Japan, thin as breath, each with a clapper that sings when the wind remembers to move. I bought one at Kasusai Temple, during a sweating August afternoon, the air heavy with crickets and incense. It rang once, sharply, and I knew I had to carry it home.
In the hottest months, when the air swells and time feels syrupy, the chimes remind me—it gets cooler. Wait. It gets cooler.
The fig drops another leaf. Bears another fruit. Holds another shadow.
I watch it from the kitchen window. Some mornings it seems older than me. Other days, just beginning.
One summer I forgot to water it for five days. I was in Berlin, distracted by music and strangers and the shape of the sky at night. When I came back, the fig looked tired but not defeated. I whispered to it. Apologized. It forgave me like only plants do—slowly and fully.
Another summer, during a breakup, I repotted it. Needed something to dig into. I trimmed the roots, held the heavy base like it was a person. Dirt under my nails. Quiet work. My hands stopped shaking. By autumn, the fig had new shoots.
It became a rhythm.
To water the tree. To check the leaves. To let it speak in the way only silent things speak.
There’s an old story my father tells about a tree that remembers every word spoken under its branches. I think of that sometimes when I sit beneath the fig. What does it know about me now?
It has heard my phone calls. My confessions. My half-finished songs. It has seen me sick, dancing, bored, in love. It has seen me leave and come back. It has watched the years pass like trucks on a highway—loud and unremarkable.
It knows when I’m not sleeping. It knows when I’m trying to.
I wish I could go back to that moment. My father in his sandals, sweat on his neck, breaking off that branch. Me behind him, impatient, wanting ice cream. My mother with a towel over her head, carrying oranges in her beach bag. And the cigarettes, of course, tucked in her hand like small secrets. She rationed them strictly, knowing otherwise he’d burn through them by noon.
The sea was warm. The sky too blue to describe.
We didn’t know what we were carrying.
Just a stick.
Just a maybe.
Now it grows on my balcony. In a country it didn’t belong to. In a life it never asked for but claimed anyway.
The last time I visited my parents, the grapevine stood proud near the shed. Twisting, strong, bursting with fruit. What once sat in a crooked pot now climbed, bloomed, and spilled light green clusters across a wall.
And in a paper bag, my father handed me new saplings. “They’ll grow,” he said.
I looked at them, unsure. But I planted them. Now they stand in quiet corners of my terrace, waiting. Maybe one day, I’ll be writing about them too. Maybe in fifteen years, I’ll sit under their shade.
And remember.
life 