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| Norman Rockwell |
Brrr! It is chilly here today. Thanksgiving is on the horizon and Christmas is in queue behind. Brimfield is bustling to get ready for Turkey and stuffing, cranberries and pie and each table set across the small harbor town will be as unique as the people setting them. Mary spent most of October finding the perfect turkey and cranberry stuffing recipes. She bullied Burt, proprietor of Burt’s Fine Meats and Charcuterie, into calling all over
Mothering Nature, Part I
Mothering Nature, Part II
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| Norman Rockwell |
Mary took to gardening with an intensity most people reserve for national sporting events and primary elections. For Mary, the idea of gardening brought pleasant images of rubber shoes and pitchforks; fat, orange pumpkins; homespun scarecrows; and grateful children chomping on long, crisp, carrots. So she was surprised to find gardening to be less zen and more Sun Zu’s The Art of War. During one of rainiest springs New England had seen in decades, Mary stood outside, braving a vindictive nor'easter making desperate deals with belligerent tomatoes.
"I know the weather stinks,” said Mary. “I get it! But can't you please perk up? Just a little?" She tucked a blanket of seaweed around their shivering roots. "I am not asking for much, just some good ol' New England spunk!" Mary wrapped the plants in plastic and considered a space heater. This wasn’t working.
Now there are times in one’s life when all you want to be is a grown up. You want to handle life on your own, call your own shots. Then there are those times when all you want is to crawl under the blankets and call your Mother. As the storm battered Brimfield, Mary decided it was time to call Mom. Armed with a box of tissues and a cup of tea, Mary called her from beneath four quilts.
“Mom,” said Mary, “Mother Nature hates me.”
“What did you do this time?” asked Margie, Mary’s mother.
Mary sneezed. “I didn’t buy vegetables and I don’t like the Mayor’s wife and gardening is the pits.”
“Hmm. Well, that is a lot for her to take I suppose although I don’t understand where the Mayor’s wife fits into it all.”
“It’s just that,” Mary hesitated, sneezed again, and continued. “Everything I thought gardening would be is wrong. Corn doesn’t rustle in the wind. It falls over. Those stupid rubber boots leak and the bugs eat me and garden. Mother Nature is a petulant brat.” Mary sighed. “Then there is the scarecrow.”
“The scarecrow?” asked Margie
“His name is Bob. The kids made him for me. We have the only scarecrow in 5 counties with a Disney princess tiara, Tinkerbell wings, a light saber and an egyptian cotton head.”
“Bob sounds great. So what’s the problem?”
“I came down one morning and Bob was tearing across the front lawn. I thought maybe I was getting a migraine, you know what those do to me,” said Mary, “Then I saw Tex had Bob’s stick in his mouth. He was trying to play fetch with Alex.” Tex
Mary laughed into the phone. “You should have seen it, Mom - Tex
Mary wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “We had to lock the Wizard of Oz DVD in Mike’s filing cabinet before Alex would go to bed that night. I keep picturing Bob and Tex
Mary hung up the phone sputtering and laughing so hard tea came dangerously close to coming out her nose. Worst parent ever, thought Mary, that’s me!
The Great Gardening debacle of 2012, as it would come to be referred to in later years, came one month later over dinner.
"Can anybody tell me what this is?" Mary held up a long leaf. Five sets of eyes shifted nervously around the room.
"Um… A leaf?" asked Molly, sneaking a napkin to her lap to feed the dog her peas. Mary said nothing. The dog hated peas.
Mary smiled "Yes, very good. A leaf. Have a brownie."
"Well duh!" complained Margaret, the oldest at 13. "She can't get a brownie for that! It was too easy."
“She’s a baby!” countered Alex. “That’s like E=MC paired in baby language.”
“MC-squared.” said Mike.
“I’m not a baby,” argued Molly.
"Shhh!" Mary said, "Quiet. It’s a leaf, yes; but, here is the catch." She waved two double fudge brownies in the air for inspiration. A hush moved through the dining room. You could hear a pea drop. “What color is the leaf?”
“Seriously Mom?" mumbled Margaret. "It's green. Even the baby knows that."
“I am not a baby!” yelled Molly. The dog spit something onto the rug.
"OK, OK. I know it is green, but…" Mary paused for effect and held up one finger. "But,” she said again. “Is it yellowish-green with dark green lines or bright green with yellow lines?"
She searched the faces of her family for understanding and received nothing but vacant stares. A sick feeling rolled in the pit of Mary’s stomach.
There it is, she thought, my life in a sad, little nutshell. I give my blood, sweat and tears to these people every day; but ask for a little support in my time of need and all I get are blank faces, rolling eyes and peas on the floor.
"Great, just great!" said Mary and flung the leaf down. "Thanks for nothing. When you don't have anything to eat for lunch but Twinkies and red dye #8 don't come crying to me."
A cheer went up around the table.
“You think she means it?” whispered Margaret to her father.
“Red’s awesome!” Alex cheered.
“What’s a Twinkie?” asked Molly.
“Oh dear,” said Mike.
Mary took a brownie, trying not to look her salad in the eye. She had failed, failed her garden, failed her children, failed the environment. Worst of all she had failed to live up to her image of what a practical, sensible, self-reliant woman should be. Mary figured she might as well hand in her journalism degree and cancel her Martha Stewart subscription. How could she face the Maven of Home Making now?
"Uh, Honey?” said Mike, looking from the leaf to the brownies and back to Mary. “Does it really matter? It’s just,” Mike shrugged his shoulders, “green. Leaves are green."
"Yes it matters!" Mary shrieked, slamming a manual the size of a pickup truck onto the table and opening it to a marked page.
"One means too much calcium and another not enough iron,” Mary read from the manual. “A bright, greenish-yellow with purple spots suggests a magnesium deficiency. How could you not know this, Mike? You’re a doctor." Mary picked up the leaf brandishing it like a sword. "Do you see purple spots?"
Mike seemed to think for moment before he rose and moved to the cupboard. He reached inside, pulled out a large plastic bottle, walked back to the table and set it down in front of his wife. Colorful bears danced across the white label. “Berrygood Bearivites, A day of energy in each smiling bear” it said. Mary glanced at the bottle and then back at Mike.
“They are organic, too,” said Mike and held out his hand for a brownie.
Much later, after the last of double fudge brownie had been scraped from the ceiling fan, Mike and Mary sat together on the porch swing sipping a glass of wine looking out over their gardens. The house was quiet. Flowers nodded in the warm night breeze.
“I don’t know,” said Mary after a while. “I don’t know what got into me. I guess I figured bad farmer equaled bad mother. You know, like if I can’t raise corn how the heck am I going to raise kids?”
Mike smiled and kissed his wife on the head. “You do just fine, more than fine.”
“But I don’t know what the heck I am doing!” wailed Mary.
Mike laughed. “Well, if you don’t know what you are doing we are doomed because I sure don’t,” he said.
“I’m serious Mike. I can’t grow a cucumber. How am I going to raise a teenager?”
“Lots of counting to ten,” laughed Mike, “and antacid.”
“But it’s more than that,” she confessed. “I am supposed to know what I am doing. People read my columns and assume I am some kind of expert when all I ever write about is how I don’t know what I am doing.”
“Babe, I’m pretty sure that is why they read your stuff, to feel better about their stuff,” said Mike.
Mary leaned her head back to stare at the night sky. “Do you know Alex went to school yesterday with two different shoes on? They weren’t even the same kind of shoe - a sneaker and a dress shoe- and they were both the left foot; and he didn’t have any socks on! His pants had a hole in one knee and he was wearing his pajama shirt- not even a clean one! I didn’t notice until he got out of the car in front of the school.” She lifted her hands up in a helpless gesture and let them fall to her lap again. “If I can’t get our kid to wear the same shoes to school how will I get Margaret through dating, and peer pressure and college? Ugh.” Mary groaned. “All the other moms seem so put together, so capable. I’m just - not. And their kids-“ She trailed off helplessly.
“Look,” said Mike, turning to face his wife. “I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know it isn’t broccoli and brussel sprouts. We will figure it out together and who cares if Sylvia Brooks serves organic tofu with heirloom tomatoes. I happen to know her kids stash beef jerky in their violin cases.”
Mary sighed and leaned back into her husband. “I just want to do it right,” she said. “You know, not damage them too much.”
“If we did everything right,” teased Mike, “years from now, a perfectly nice therapist would be denied his Mercedes.”
Mary laughed.
“You know what they say,” said Mike. “What ever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
“At least we will go together,” said Mary.
“Always,” promised Mike. “Always together.” He squeezed her hand and held onto it. They both fell silent, listening to the small noises of one world going to sleep and another coming alive.
On Monday morning, Mary pulled up to the carpool lane just behind Sylvia Brooks. As the kids piled out, Mary nearly sprayed a mouthful of coffee across the instrument panel of her Suburban. Someone had added their own flair to the yellow bumper sticker on Sylvia’s silver Prius. Instead of reading Go vegan and no one gets hurt, the sticker now read Go vegan and no one gets Burt with a sad face emoticon instead of a period. Mary smiled all the way to the grocery store. She was low of frozen beans.
