The power of leafy greens

Remember our garden? The no-expectation experimental family collaboration?

We've done pretty well:

The girls enjoy this project, it seems. They love the watering the most. E does well with picking the ripe tomatoes and she helped me harvest a cucumber.

It hasn't gone perfectly. As we guessed, we have too many plants in too little space. Also, the rabbits completely defoliated our bean plants and some smaller critters have enjoyed some of the tomatoes I wouldn't have minded keeping just for us. The yellow squash never materialized. But overall, it's a solid first-time success.

These are our tomatoes. I think they're called 'Sunshines' but that's based on memory. There was a Sunday a few weeks ago when the girls played some sort of scavenger hunt with the plant labels. It's all a guessing game now. Whatever they're called, these tomatoes are very juicy and nicely tart.

Up close, parts of this overcrowded garden are jungle-dense. Can you spot the peppers in there? I've had one so far and it was firm and sweet. I thought we planted yellow peppers, though. So I don't know if I should leave them on the stem longer. Or maybe we only planted green peppers. Or maybe we planted both but the rabbits liked one. I don't know.

This is...something flowering. I don't know what but the blossoms are beautiful. I miss my plant labels a little bit.

These are the eggplants. I'm not even the tiniest bit remorseful that nobody else in my family likes eggplant because I don't really feel like sharing, anyway.


This is a hearty little boxwood basil. It tastes like big basil, but a little more delicate, a little more minty. This is one of those plants that we have as a direct result of having the girls with me at the garden center. (E: Let's get this plant and this plant and this plant!) One day I'm going to tear this sucker down and make one amazing pesto. We also have some thriving thyme and lavendar and enough parsley for the rest of my culinary life.


And this, hiding behind the top of what I'm guessing is going to be one seriously obese red onion, is my golden sage. This plant falls in the category of "purchased to satisfy E's whim." I don't usually cook with very much sage and I've never before cooked with golden sage.

But tonight I'm planning to harvest it. The whole thing. I'm going to use it to brew a huge pot of sage tea. Three years ago when E made it clear that she had stopped nursing I remember I spent $25 at the grocery store to buy enough organic sage to make my own weaning tea.

I nursed L for the last time tonight. All weekend we told her that mamamilk was almost gone. Tonight I fed her and told her it was for the last time. I asked her to say goodbye to mamamilk. I gave her extra kisses and extra hugs and she said goodbye and went to bed with her daddy. I don't know if she really understood and I don't know how hard tomorrow will be. But she's nursed for 19 months and 8 days. And I'm 12.5 weeks pregnant. It's time to retire. There is some comfort in stopping her milk with the sage she helped me grow.

Treehugger

I have a friend who had her first daughter about a year before I had mine. When her daughter was about L’s age now and mine was learning how to crawl, she told me about her daughter’s kisses. “A___ loves to kiss on the mouth,” she told me. “And half the time she doesn’t remember to close her lips. So I get these full, open-mouth kisses from her all the time. And I know it’s gross. But I love them.” Um, yeah, I thought, sounds gross. Sweet, sure, but still gross.

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When L goes upstairs to bed at night it’s usually her daddy who takes her up. So before she goes she kisses and hugs E, kisses and hugs me, walks away, turns back for one more wave, then disappears. For months she’d go willingly with her father. Then she caught on that E wasn’t going upstairs, too, and now she doesn’t want to go. So the lovely husband bribes her. He holds out a pacifier, dangling it in the vicinity of the hallway. Yes, the pacifier we ought to be taking from her by now – but it works so well. She collects her paci, kisses, hugs, kisses, hugs, waves, walks away.

Recently M attempted to streamline the process. He asked L to distribute her goodnight wishes to us first, and only then collect her paci and walk upstairs. L nodded and began to oblige. She hugged her sister. She tried to kiss her sister. No!! E yelled. L, I don’t want a kiss like that!

The outburst surprised all of us and L looked confused. I gave L extra hugs and kisses and once she had left the room asked E what prompted her denial of smooching. I only like kisses from L when she already has her paci in her mouth. Otherwise she sucks a little on my lips. And I realized: it’s true. L is now that purveyor of the open-mouth kiss.

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When I was maybe six and my brother was maybe four we had a babysitter named Ellen. One winter night she took us downtown for the Festival of Lights. I don’t know why; maybe she wanted to spend her Saturday night chasing small energetic monkeys in the frosty air? The walking paths were crowded with twinkle lights and people and cigarette smoke and roasting-peanuts-smoke and ahead of us I saw a thick link chain stretched between two concrete posts. Without word or warning I left Matthew and Ellen behind and sprinted towards the chain. I saw a hurdle and I wanted to jump it. I heard Ellen scream. “What are you doing? STOP!! STOP!!” but my brain didn’t listen in any manner that elicited a response. My brain wondered, “why?” I ran and I jumped and I cleared that hurdle and I landed on the other side. Triumphant!

And then I saw I was standing not on another walking path, but in the middle of Rainbow Boulevard. To my left, a light had changed and a hundred headlights were approaching me at good speed. “Oh,” I thought, and ducked back under the chain.

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Forever now, when we walk out of daycare at the end of the day the girls break into a run. So forever now, I break into a yell: “Girls! Stop at the tree!” Because two feet beyond the tree is the curb. And just beyond the curb is the driveway of a large government building, upon which 1,000 employees in 1,000 cars are pulling out of the garage at high speed towards their personal lives, towards an evening’s freedom. And not even a chain link separates my girls from all that tantalizing open space where unannounced drag races commence in spurts.

So they each hurl themselves towards the tree, one arm out, and slingshot themselves around and back at me. On days when the magic is right, they slingshot around simultaneously and into each other’s arms, a four-way embrace of trunk, girl, girl and giggles. And so it has come to be that we cannot get in the car until the girls have hugged the tree.

Daycare traffic density being what it is, sometimes I cannot get a parking spot right near the tree. There are days when we might have to walk the length of four or five cars to reach our own chariot. Down the length of this driveway there is not just the slingshot tree; trees are planted at about every ten feet. And so it has come to be that we cannot get in the car until the girls have hugged each tree along the distance to our car.

One evening this week, L, who so strongly associates hugs with kisses, slipped a little tongue to the bark of the last maple. She began to wail, a funny open-mouth wail, a wail that had her fingers wiggling across her lips. Yuck! she bawled. Mouf! (That would be ‘mouth,’ for those of you who need a translation from One-ish to English.)

I wiped the grit from her mouth and tongue and knelt on the sidewalk to pull her milk cup out of her backpack. E’s contribution to the recovery effort was better, though. She took both her sister’s hands in her own. She looked her eye-to-eye. And she passed on some sisterly wisdom: No, L. Trees are not for kissing and hugging. People are for kissing and hugging but trees are just for hugging.

Family planning

Earlier this week I found out via her teachers that E believes our Groundhog is a girl. “How do you know?” one of them apparently asked her. Because we’re not a boy family! We’re a girl family! So we get to have another girl!

Yesterday one of her teachers asked E to tell me how many babies she has been opining we should really have. Three thousanty and nine! she sagely nodded to me, reaching her arms to the sky. I assured her that that is not to be. Well, why? she whimpered, crestfallen. “Well, for one thing, you have the biggest kid’s bedroom. So we’d have to move out your bookshelves and your dressers and your toy bench and all of your toys and books and everything to make room for so many cribs.” No, we wouldn’t, she asserted. We would just put all those babies in my bed and I’d rock them all to sleep because I have a lot of might. She flexed her biceps '80's-Venice Beach-style as evidence.

This afternoon one of her teachers asked E to tell me the name she has selected for us to bestow on the baby. Shahkshee Shahkshee, (sp?) (???) (?!!) she pronounced definitively. I asked her, “how do you spell that?” She spelled her own name. Because she’s the biggest sister, she explained. So the baby should have her spelling.

As a creature who truly believes she should dictate Manifest Destiny, we were apprehensive that news of our modifying family tree wouldn’t please that child one bit. But I’m starting to think:

she’s a teeny bit excited.

Gestures

The girls and I got home first tonight. We set up dinner, we played, we read books on the couch and I indulged the elder's request for a TV show.

The lovely husband got home second tonight. He walked into the house with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Oooh!! what are those? E asked. L echoed: oooh!! Their daddy said to them: "they're flowers for Mommy!"

E asked: can I see? and her daddy said, "come here, you can give them to her."

L ran faster. She grabbed the flowers from her daddy and repeated herself. Oooh!!

E moaned. I wanted to give them to Mommy!

The daddy replied: "Come here and hold them together and you can both give them to her."

And so they did. From the edge of the kitchen to my corner of the couch, they walked slowly together, flowers in hand(s), looking like lovely conjoined flower girls in a solemn wedding processional. Slowly they walked, carefully, step by step by step, clutching the beautiful roses so carefully, so deliberately, walking in sync and slowly, until they delivered their fragrant parcel to me.

All without ever once averting their eyes from their beloved animated playmate.

Flowers for Mama. But don't look at Mama.

They did it half-right. But Lovely Husband, you still get full credit. 'Twas a sweet surprise.

Start spreading the news

This weekend we told E about her future sibling, Groundhog. She received the information well. Yay! Yay! Yay!

And then she questioned: she lifted my shirt and poked me in the navel. There’s a baby in there?

And then she saddened: But I don’t want there to be three of us. I like us now, not with three of us.

And then she vacillated: I don’t want you to have three kids. I want you to have SIXTEEN kids!

And the she sought validation: but I’m still your first baby, right, Mama?

And then she found her niche: I’m a big sister and I’m going to be a big BIG sister and L’s never been a big sister and I’m going to teach her EVERYTHING I KNOW!

All week long we passed a candy shop on the boardwalk selling Uglydolls and a bright purple one kept beckoning to E. Yesterday while L napped I took E back to the beach one last time so we could collect a few more rocks and shells and say goodbye to this place that has so captured her heart. As we passed the candy shop for the final time on our last walk away from the beautiful Atlantic waves, I paused. Thinking why not get the girls a memento, I bought the bright purple doll for E and a pink counterpart for her sister.

We ran into the house one last time just as L finished her nap and the lovely husband finished our packing. E rushed to her sister (who, yes, was so thoroughly tuckered from our morning adventure that she fell asleep half-naked on the floor) and presented her with her new pink bundle of joy.


Having delivered her sister's gift, E then ran to find her daddy. She proudly held her purple doll up high for him to see. Daddy! Daddy, look! This is my new kid. I just got him. I just got him out. He was in my belly.