A backyard vegetable garden is a thing to behold!  Fluttering in the breeze, its growing leaves coloring the ground in shades of green and purple, red, yellow and orange.  It is promise of tastes to come — a thing of growing hope.

A winter garden is quiet, sedate.  It is like a sedentary grown-up, compared to those raucous springsters that nearly jump up and down, shouting, Look at me.  Look at me! A winter garden lumbers along slowly.  It gives your mouth time to think long and hard in anticipation of its flavors.

That’s how it was for me as I watched one spectacular tomato on its vine.  He was a beauty!  We called him Mr. Tomato.  We anthropomorphized “him” and in return, he delighted our imagination.  We took pictures of him.  Daily, we checked on his well-being.  We delighted when his apple-green skin showed its first small blush of red.

Mr. Tomato was often the topic of conversation.  He was our backyard star and we were his devoted fans.  We thought he might be ready for Christmas salad, but he stubbornly held to that green coat, only giving us a glimpse of the glory to come.  Then we thought he would help us ring in the New Year like a red bell atop a winter vegetable plate of broccoli, cauliflower and zucchini wedges.  Again, Mr. Tomato made us wait.

At last, when the holidays were over and all the hoopla was forgotten,  Mr. Tomato quietly slipped on a vibrant red coat and signaled he would be ready for picking the following morning.  Hooray!  Mr. Tomato would be on the breakfast menu as the pièce de résistance atop our morning omelets.

Alas!

Except for one little detail, everything was set and perfect for the very first yield of our winter garden.  And that teeny, tiny, little detail?  Wilson the Labradoodle.

Some time during the night, Wilson must have heard Mr. Tomato singing as he slipped on his vibrant red coat in preparation for his breakfast debut.  Wilson must have heard Mr. Tomato’s shuffling into position as he readied himself for my hand to gently slide across his shoulders and … pluck! … him from the vine to which he was attached.  Wilson must have known that Mr. Tomato was ripe and delicious and succulent.

Why else, then, would Wilson sneak out in the middle of the night and EAT THE FACE OFF OF MR. TOMATO?

Sure … there are more tomatoes on the plant.  Smaller, less noble, perhaps, but nonetheless, soldiering on after witnessing first-hand that fatal midnight bite to the face of their good leader.

Dan and I have been quiet since that horrible discovery of poor Mr. Tomato, lying on his side, bled of vital juices.  And, of course, Wilson gave us the perfect Bart Simpson defense of, “I didn’t do it … Nobody saw me do it … You can’t prove a thing!”  What can we say?

Now we’re watching other garden stars just beginning to offer that sense of wonder for their promise.  Broccoli and cauliflower.  Brussels sprouts.  Parsley so big it could serve for a year.

While we wait for those new miracles that will help remove us from the disappointment surrounding Mr. Tomato, we decided to stay busy.  It helps.  We spent Friday afternoon unwinding the house from its Christmas decorations.  We carefully packed away all the ornaments and garlands and candles and red silk poinsettia plants that always serve to make us feel Christmasy and festive.

Dan loaded up the boxes and took them out for storing on top of the garage shelves.  A short time later, he came flying into the house … holding his arm, dramatically shaking, all the color drained from his face.

A quick trip to urgent care confirmed that Dan had broken his arm (the distal radius).  One temporary cast later, along with repeated admonitions for him to forever hence stay off ladders, we drove home in a quiet mood.

Dan was hurting and all I could think was … his arm would have been much stronger if he could have eaten that bone-building character, Mr. Tomato, fresh from the garden and — except for his missing face — the best looking tomato I’ve ever known.

Here is how I walk:  left leg, right leg, heel-toe, heel-toe, arms swinging front-to-back, hips swinging side-to-side.  I pay attention to the business of my legs, how my feet strike the ground, the sturdiness of my ankles, the alignment of my knees.

My legs are mostly good at walking, except for stairs and the occasional curb, which flummoxes the legs and makes them stop mid-stride.  Then they ask for directions.  My legs are female and good at asking for directions.

It’s a good thing these legs like to walk because they’re going to get to do a lot of it in the coming days.

There are all those extra holiday pounds.  Then there’s that unfortunate cholesterol count.  The stamina.  The balance.  The urge to get up and be part of something other than a conduit between the couch and the television.

G.M. Trevelyan said, “I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.”  I like that.

I’ve picked a far-away point on the horizon as my destination.  My point keeps moving away, but when I do finally find the edge of the earth, I’ll know to stop.  Remember the movie, Forrest Gump?  One day Forrest decided to run and he didn’t stop until he decided he was done.  While he ran and ran (as I recall the story, simply because he decided to start running), others joined him.  He decided to do something … he did it … and, because it was a good and fun thing, others jumped in too.

So, consider me now the Forrest Gump of the walking track at my gym.  The Forrest Gump of writers.  The Forrest Gump of whatever strikes my fancy.   If it’s a good and fun thing, maybe you’d like to join me like we’re all little drops of chocolate in a box of life and we never know what we’re gonna get until we do it.

Let’s walk the good walk and allow those constricting braces to fall away as we stride out.  Let’s get up off the park bench and … and … go climb a tree or chase a squirrel or throw a net out for shrimp … or something.  Anything! Let’s write a poem or a story or an article or a book.  Something.  Anything.  Let’s go out and make this the finest year we’ve ever lived.

Because living inside a box of chocolates with the lid on only serves to widen our hips and narrow our viewpoint.  I’m heading for the horizon.  Are you with me on this?

Yeah?  Then, let’s go!

Because you are a two year-old, your legs and arms and milky kisses still stick out like parentheses from your frog-like middle.  You count things and sing Twinkle, Twinkle, over and over.  You know the moon.  You are an entire body that says No.

You are short.

Because you are a two year-old, you dance.  Here’s how you dance:  squat, stand … squat, stand, wiggle, wiggle … squat, stand.  It isn’t necessarily rhythmic, but it is dancing, nevertheless.  You’re a good dancer and when the song ends and your body notices the music is over, we clap and say, Yay!  And then we do it again.

Because you are a two year-old, you are the center and your home and your world whirl around you.  You have a mommy and a daddy (or in the case of some other two year-old, whatever combination of mommies, daddies or singles we can think of) who foster your whirling, spinning, kinetic core.  You have a Nonnie, a Neema, and a MeeMee.  You have two Papas, one you know and one you don’t know quite as much as the other Papa.   You have one baby brother you call DeeDee, because that’s how you say baby.  Everyone perpetuates that name and now your brother is forever maimed by that unfortunate pronunciation.

(We’ll figure that one out later.)

Because you are a two year-old, you have squishy food and pointy food.  You prefer the pointy food because you can take it with you on your travels through the house.  Now and then, you take up a spoon and push the squishy food into your mouth.

The spoon into the squishy food happens rarely, but is celebrated, nonetheless.

Because you are a two year-old, you learn words wherever you can.  From your videos.  From the adults who nurture you.  From your own ears.  One day you wanted a sweet cookie, but as you jumped and pointed up into the cupboard, the word came out as  …  Hoggity.  Sweet Cookie.  Hoggity.  Since you have adults who adore your every whim, now ALL sweet things are hoggity things.  You have hoggity baabaas and hoggity cereal … and best of all you give hoggity kisses.

You love your hoggities.

Most recently, because you are a two year-old, you love balloons.  No.  I mean, you LOVE balloons!  You cannot make it through the grocery store without noticing all the Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary and I’m Sorry, Baby balloons tied here and there for people who need something to tie to those oops-I-forgot-all-about-it flowers.

Then, because  you live in Northwest Phoenix, you know that hot air balloons take off only paces from your home every Saturday and Sunday morning.  And … because you are a two year-old you LIVE for balloons.

Here is how you say the word, balloon:  NanNoon.

Your voice rises in pitch on the second syllable and draws it impossibly long as you say the word.  NanNooooon.  The excitement in your voice is somewhere much higher than High C; the dogs cringe and tuck their ears when you sing the balloon word.  You draw out the second syllable as if it should hang in the air as high and as long as those balloons which your voice follows.

NanNooooon!

So, this is how I shall always remember you.  Even when you are thirty-five and a Dermatologist living in Scottsdale.  Even if you hover like a last-minute, apologetic helium balloon over my bed as I am dying.

You will always be my Twinkle, Twinkle two year-old  boy.  My singer.  My dancer.  My perfect count-to-nineteener, pointy food, no, no, hurl-your-body-to-the-floor-eater.  To me, you will always be a two year-old, singing in your high little voice — NanNoooon — into the morning Sunday sky … and I will always be your MeeMee.

Always, your hoggity MeeMee who — I can only hope — will some day become your NanNoon in the Sky.

NanNoooon!!!!

Sisters — we are generous.  We place our arms around the shoulders of each other.  At every opportunity, we nuzzle down into each other’s neck and pull our scents into our respective hearts.  We’re meant to be wild with our emotions and soft with our judgments.  We were designed to be necklaces about one another.

Each New Year we vow to better practice the art of being human.

Two days later, we usually mess up.

Why?  I don’t know.  I don’t have the authority to mention why we might be so odd to one another.  But I do know about this — I know only about myself.  I know only about my own mess-ups and my own oopsies.  My whoops that made others shake their heads and wonder about me.

My lovely older sister — the one who still thinks I was adopted, or at the very least, the progeny of 0ur mother’s possible indiscretion with an unrelated uncle — says I don’t fit the family mold.  I’m not the physical blueprint, she points out.  She says I’m bold, while she is soft-natured; she says that her eyes are dark and mine are not and that fact alone makes us different.  I’m fair skinned, rather than olive like our parents … and her.  I’m blue eyed.  Blond.  She’s dark, like a black-eyed pea.  She remembers I was the one who always flew into Uncle Randolph’s arms — his light-skinned arms — rather than to sit begrudgingly on our father’s lap, his arms, covered with swirling dark hair, curled around my small, light frame.  Of course, Uncle Randolph was a Congregationalist preacher, so a liaison with our mother would have been an unlikely occurrence.

Highly unlikely!

At our age now, I suppose,  it doesn’t matter.  In fact, what if our mother did have that liaison.  What if she did?  Maybe she needed it, deserved it.  She certainly would have been discreet for it.  Oh, did I mention that my father was a doofus who had megalopolis issues?  It was common in those days.  Uncle Randolph was the gentle dude who engaged me with fart jokes and jesusy passages, while the father I knew was a nutcake with a permanent scowl and a desperate need to prove himself.

Is it really possible Uncle Randolph could have been my dad?

Wow.

Then there was the sudden death of our mother.   Sudden!  A quick cremation.  Uncle Randolph looking so terribly haunted during the funeral.

These are the things that make good fiction — a young unfulfilled woman, a fruitcake husband with a bad attitude … and a willing preacher/ Lothario who ended up marrying the older sister just so he could stay nearby, within hand-holding range. Then, of course, the surprising , hasty death of the beautiful young wife, a no-residue cremation of that young wife who told everyone she was terrified — TERRIFIED — by fire, her stunned children, bereaving and questioning for years.

If there’s not a mystery story that doesn’t arrive from this scenario, then Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are nothing more than older siblings to Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Nevertheless, my sister and I still enthrall each other with made-up mysteries like this.  We’ve done it since we were kids.  And we hang on to each other in that generous way that means we’re sisters, regardless of our really interesting, made-up, can’t-prove-a-thing, mysterious,  now-and-then, who’s-father-is-yours, sideways glances that have always kept us invigorated and laughing and laughing in spite of our family Sherlock Holmes mystery-ness.

But that’s the story we made up to amuse each other, under our blankets with flashlights held under our chins.  Our father really wasn’t a butcher knife wielding maniac, but our story needed a ready villain and — other than Uncle Randolph — Daddy was the only tall man we knew.  It was true that I was an unlikely blond, blue-eyed child in a family of people with dark hair, swarthy skin and eyes the color of olive pits.  It was true that it was only my mother’s profile that showed up on my face as I got older.

It is also true that my sister and I have vivid imaginations, fostered by growing up with books in our laps and parents who encouraged us to read and read and read.

Maybe one day I’ll write down our make-believe story.  I’ll credit my sister for its inception and I’ll take a bow for letting the story become wicked and wild and altogether mysterious.  Then I’ll thank my mother and father for the good sense to allow their children to sit under their blankets at night and tell spooky stories until we laughed ourselves to sleep.

Have I mentioned I like mysteries?

The days are short and the shopping list is long. But thanks to a dear and lovely friend for pointing me to this, I pass along the acapella musings of Straight No Chaser as today’s smile-inducing offering, thus relieving me from actually writing anything meaningful … or of any length whatsoever.

Enjoy!

For years, it’s been tradition at our Christmas table to set one empty place setting.  It started when the children were little and we wanted to find a visible way to express that the day signified more than a red-suited Santa and a bazillion presents and a plate of cookies left out on Christmas Eve, only to magically disappear some time in the night.  We wanted to impart that there was another magical experience that marked the day.

Thus, began the Empty Plate.  The extra chair.  The magic of belief.

When my mother, the children’s grandmother died, suddenly and oh so sadly, the only way to mute her profound and palpable absence that year was to add her spirit to the empty plate.  We figured Jesus wouldn’t mind sharing.

The following year, we added Stanley the dog, who had somehow escaped the back yard and, during a night of wild abandon only a doggie Lothario would understand, ran lustfully into the street and was hit and killed by a car.

Each year, it seemed more lovely spirits were added to the empty plate;  Rocky the gerbil who was squished accidentally in the door, assorted fish who found heaven at the flush of a toilet handle, a clumsy snake who had the misfortune to become a mouse’s quarry instead of the other way around.

My father.

The kids’ paternal grandparents.

We added a lost cat to the growing list … just in case, as well as, two desert tortoises who dug under the fence and ran off together.  Then there was the year we added Pork Chop the calf who we had raised specifically to fill the freezer.   I spent the day preparing a beautiful rib roast, courtesy of Pork Chop.  As I recall, that was the first year the kids ate all their vegetables, while hardly touching the main course.

After the kids were grown, the empty plate tradition stuck.  We just keep adding souls to that crowded place setting.  Friends who became ill and died way too young.  Unnamed homeless men and women who suffered under the weight of the streets.  Loved ones and strangers alike were remembered with equal measure.

The worst time was that no good, rotten, horrible, terrible, very bad year when one of the kids passed away.  We didn’t think we could get through that Christmas.  That empty plate seemed half misery, half blessing.  Nevertheless, it was set with extra care.  The dinner blessing was mostly just gulping down tears and not saying anything … because we simply had no words.

Two years ago we added Dan’s father.  This year, we’ll add his mother.  Through all our years we’ve just kept adding people to that empty plate.  It’s gotten to be a pretty heavy platter piled high with all its years of memories of loved ones missed during this tender season.

I think this year we’ll go back to Santa and his reindeer, with a little plate of cookies and a side glass of milk.  I’ll happily volunteer to magically “disappear” those cookies.  And the empty place setting at the Christmas table?  Well, on second thought, maybe one more year …..

I don’t know when we added the  “Miss” onto Scarlett’s name.  It just seemed fitting and, when once used, it stuck forever.  Miss Scarlett.  She’s always been a beauty, so perhaps that’s why adding the distinction of her station seemed only proper.

Miss Scarlett.

Except she’s not at all prissy or all girly-girly like the kind of dog one is compelled to dress in pink sweaters and hair bows.  Rather, she’s kind of klunky and ungainly.  She’s more large bone than high prance.  Her gait is thick and heavy; an unusual Golden Retriever who neither retrieves nor willingly steps into water for a swim.  There’s never been much sprightly about Miss Scarlett.  She does, however, have a lilting bark that sounds something like music.

Like singing.

If Miss Scarlett could have a human equivalent, I think she would be like Julia Childs … large and clumsy, yet altogether delightful with her high, trilling voice and laughter that always spins your heart rightward.  Yes.  She would be a magnificent woman, boning chickens and stirring up kitchen scents to die for.

She would make French pastry.  And Beef Bourguignon.  But unlike Julia, her kitchen would be filled with song!

Miss Scarlett is slowing more each day.  Her hips bedevil her now with terrible unremitting pain.  We give her medication twice a day to help, but we can see the pain is gaining over her.  She’s down now to twenty paces at the most before needing to curl over her legs to recover from the effort of those twenty small and wincing steps.  When once she gaily followed me all over the house, tail waving behind like a big red flag,  she now only follows if she knows I’ll be somewhere for a while.

It’s tough watching her slow, but steady decline.  We’re pretty sure this will be her swan Christmas.  We’ll try to make it special for her — a good and meaty knuckle bone sure to give hours of chewing pleasure, a new stuffed toy, a bag of special organic cookies.  This coming Monday she’s being treated to a doggy spa day with her favorite groomer.

Then on Christmas morning … we’ll sit in front of the fire and I’ll read a selection from Tennyson:

The wild swan’s death-hymn took the soul

Of that waste place with joy

Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear

The warble was low, and full and clear; …

But anon her awful jubilant voice,

With a music strange and manifold,

Flow’d forth on a carol free and bold;

As when a mighty people rejoice

With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold…

Then we’ll hold each other and we’ll sing … and sing.

Let’s not think about it yet … that coming New Year when we’re obligated to make resolutions based on what we’ve learned from the previous year.  Let’s instead sip another Caramel Macchiato Latte thingy that fusses with our blood sugar and our already trembly fingers and our thumpy, thumpy heart.

Let’s have another cookie!

But then, that’s been the problem this past year — too many cookies and too few ambles around the block.

Yet, there are lessons here … no?   Lesson being:  It’s not safe for hubby to mention how much more room wifey takes up on the couch.  Nope.  Not safe at all.

But then, I’m projecting onto another soul’s lesson.  So in the spirit of expediency, may I offer the following resolutions for the coming year.  (Please note:  these are YOUR resolutions, not mine.)

• If the kitchen needs spiffying up, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed will appreciate your ministrations toward all things cleanliness.
• If you’ve left your used undergarments on the bedroom floor, you deserve The Look from your Significant Other (SO).  (The same applies for unmowed lawns and things inappropriately placed in the way of your SOs car in the garage.)
• If your SO has gone a year without a mani/pedi, it’s time to man-up and arrange a glorious full spa day, holidays or not.
• Surprise your SO with a special corner in the house.  She/He deserves grand moments of private time, without question, without exception.
• Never, never, never hold up Tiger Woods’ extraneous behavior as your new standard of behavior.  Big trouble.  Big, Big trouble!
• Try to remember to shave now and then.
• Read books that expand you and cause you to think.
• Support your local bookstore … and your local writer.
• It’s okay to have a cookie.  Now and then.
• It’s also really, really okay to have a giant piece of chocolate cake — as often as you want!
• Eat a vegetable.  Vegetables are your friends.
• Don’t disparage your wife’s wrinkles, saggy places or her newly-diagnosed diabetes/breast cancer/osteoporosis.  (I’m sorry, is that mean?) If you accidentally do so, RUN to Jared or your local jeweler for a proper and propitiatiive  high ticket gift.
• Love your wife’s Chihuahua.  In fact, buy her a special carry bag for the little dear.  It”s the only safe course.
• Wipe down the shower when you’re done.
• Be sweet.
• Give something to your favorite local charity,  especially if your gift stays local.
• Eat potatoes.  The Irish will LOVE you for it — I hear Idahoans will love you too.
• Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

That’s all I can 0ffer.  If you have other thoughts, please bravely share them.

In the meantime, enjoy your holidays and think carefully about those full-throttle resolutions for the New Year.  Remember, I don’t care about your full-throttle hips.  I’m, in fact, roaring through life myself!

These high-schoolers say it all.

Happy Weekend, Bloggybirderderers

It’s quiet now.  Everything that has defined this day with its bumping and laughing and chattering and squeaking seems to have settled for the night.  This is the time – just before sleep takes over – when I think about the day and how I’m either disappointed with its outcome or satisfied all the way into my bones, depending on how well things in general turned out for me.  I’m very myopic that way.

It’s the moment when thoughts quiet to nothing and all I’m aware of is my own breath sliding in and out of my ears.  Sometimes I notice the sigh of a dog or a car rolling by outside.  There’s not much that happens right then except for the breathing and sighing and rolling that carries me into sleep.  I enjoy that moment very much.

Because, recently, the rest of the night hasn’t been so great and that’s the truth of it.

Lately, I’ve been jolted awake in the middle of the night by dreams.  Vivid, Technicolor, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride Dreams.  I don’t normally recall my nighttime dream-thoughts.  Usually, I wake in the morning only vaguely aware that some kind of REMish activity may have occurred, but now …

Boy Howdy have I been dreaming!

Furthermore, my dreams have been thematic, each whirling and twirling around a single topic – Home.  My home, to be precise.  Every night, I seem to have at least one dream about my home and its integrity, or lack thereof.  One night it was one of those lost-in-my-own-house dreams where I wandered down long hallways (make that, looonnng echoy hallways) searching for a way out.  Another night, some interloper had interloped, stolen all my furniture and belongings, gouged great holes in the walls and beat up my poor doggies in the process.  I won’t bore you with more, but just know that the dreams go on in that vein.  Every night.

If I were a psychologist (I’m not) I’d certainly have a logical explanation for all this nighttime weirdness (I don’t).  The closest I can come to understanding these home-related dreams is that the lovely woman who is renting our little house is in crisis and, beyond crafting a killer resume and offering job-hunting tips, I don’t know how to help her.

Help her? Of course.  Even though I have no familial obligation, because I can see she is working like crazy to get a job in this horrid jobless economy, I reserve my right to treat her in the same way I would hope someone would treat me were the circumstances reversed.

I’m reminded by helpful people that this is business and our little Bloggybirdery doesn’t have the chicken scratch to dole out kindness forever.  Of course these good folks are right.  But how will my nighttime dreams improve if I evict a family to wherever families go when they’ve lost their source of income and are sent to scatter like little birds in a storm?  How does it help if I’m the one responsible for their cold and dreamless nights in a car or a shelter … or the streets?  How will that help my dreams to once again turn sweet and filled with singing bluebirds and rainbows and kitties?

One thing I know from my years volunteering and working with homeless individuals, is that once one has fallen into the dark hole of homelessness, it’s more-than difficult to climb out.  There are few helpful ladders for the homeless.  There is only one very huge and dark place from which it’s nearly impossible to escape.

Imagine trying to look for a job when everything you own is either in storage or left behind and gone – your good clothes, those nice shoes suitable for interviewing, your hair dryer and shaving things, your makeup.  Your comb.  A fresh stack of resumes.  How do you focus when you know your children are in the thick of strangers and you don’t know where you’ll sleep that night?  Or your blood sugar is wacko because you’re lucky to get one meal a day?

Homelessness is a place where everything you do and everywhere you go is on display.  Showers are communal.  Meals are whatever … or nonexistent.  There is no place to go where you can be restored or refreshed.  Or private.  Your new colleagues are suspect at best and criminal at worst.  Your small belongings are often stolen … or confiscated.

And don’t think that you’d never climb into a dumpster to search for survival.

So, of course I’ll help my renter.  I learned early on from Romper Room’s Miss Molly that this is what a day is for – to always be a good Do-Bee.  My dreams won’t improve if I’m a direct contributor to more harm coming to this little family.  If we discover that she must find less expensive housing, I’ll do what I can to see that she is safely moved to a new home – a place where she can begin laying out her good dreams once again.

For if we’re talking about dreams, helping someone else realize her dreams will most likely restore me to my own happy bunny place, rainbow, puppy, kitty dreams.  I’m just selfish that way!