Dusk

And sometimes you just get lucky because the kids are fighting and can’t play alone, and you happen to have made a pot of soup for dinner at 8am.  So it was last night.  Henry needed a push, and he tugged me out into the milky light.  Sparrows ducked in and out of nests.  Wet grass stuck to feet black from running.  Fallen leaves.  I pushed small backs higher and higher, slender stacks of bones against my palms.  And breathed in fallen pears, half eaten by squirrels, fermenting the sweet air, while small legs pump, pump, pumped.  I have to remember it is nice to be there when dusk falls.

And then, reality.

I was glad the rain came; it poured.  Lightening flashed like teeth laughing at the sky, sending birds flap, flap, flapping.  Their brown bodies liquid.  Clouds boiled.  Tiny petals shook.  Early pears thumped the ground. 

I needed the racket.  It thatched away cobwebs, and stopped my bobbing.  It made me take charge of this ruthless month of September. The month when it’s just so easy to want summer back.  The month of drowning, surfacing, drowning, surfacing. The month when you blink, and it is 10pm.  The month when it's painfully obvious your children are one year older.  The month growing becomes tangible. 

One week later, the rain is gone, and they are now one-year-bigger-kids, and I am a one-year-older-mom.  I’ve spent a lot of the early September quiet deciphering between sadness over the start of school, or disappointment I am no longer the mom of a baby.  Either way, both are realities we have to swallow when raising kids.  I just wish they didn’t come so soon.

Denial

Summer is over my head like a hood and I don’t want to come out.  We’re so far into summer I can’t quite remember the softness of spring or regime of school, and just far enough from September it feels like it may never come.  Puddles of pjs and cereal have pooled around the sofa alongside flip-flops, small bright socks, bathing suit bottoms.  No one questions pink lemonade for breakfast, or watching too much TV.  We sleep with sand in our beds, and eat peas until the vines are empty, feet still in the garden. 

I’m trying to forget that summer ever ends and that Jane will start first grade, her first year full day.  Or that Henry will go to school for the first time.  I’m lapping it up.  Staying deep in summer, lush with denial, flooded with flushed faces, bare bodies, beer.  For now it’s summer.  All day long.

May

It’s been pouring.  Today we stepped outside to an orchestra of knotted buds unfurling, and mind-numbing, honey-thick, lilac in the air.  We swooped small inchworms, bent and neon, hanging helplessly from the sky. And stepped carefully over storybook-mushrooms, threaded together like buttons in the rain.  The kid’s feet found every puddle possible, and stood like two-legged-rabbits eating Greek oregano plucked straight from the ground.  This time of year, it seems if you stop for even a moment, you can watch life pushing through the mud, scrambling anxiously towards blue light.  Feel the earth hum.  When we were outside, the day was good.

Last bit of summer

It’s still hot.  We've been sleeping under sheets.  These balmy nights followed by cottony, humid mornings have turned my lingering green tomatoes into pretty, orange rubies.  Sweet like candy.  I have to pick them when Jane is at school, otherwise I am left with empty hands, stained faces, and one too many little sticky fingers.  Late on Sunday afternoon we gathered enough for a meal.  Doused with oil, and a fistful of Greek oregano, I roasted them just enough to pop.  Pureed and dumped over pasta, it turned out to be the type of meal I will be dreaming of this February as I scurry about in wool socks wondering why we live in such an old, cold house.

Here is the (rough) recipe.

20-30 cherry tomatoes

one very small onion, thinly sliced

¼ of a red pepper, sliced

2 or 3 cloves of garlic, pressed

extra virgin olive oil

sea salt

cracked pepper to taste

large fistful of torn, fresh oregano

basil, 5-7 large leaves

Slice tomatoes, onion, and red pepper.  Mix together with pressed garlic and spread on a baking sheet or pizza pan.  Drizzle tomato mixture generously with olive oil.  Sprinkle with sea salt, cracked pepper, and torn oregano.  Broil on low setting for approximately 10 minutes.  Scrape and turn mixture, then broil for another 10 minutes until vegetables are bubbling, golden, and slightly charred.

Dump roasted veggies and juices into food processor. Add torn fresh basil.  Pulse chop until thick and soupy.  Toss over hot pasta.

Late August Pickles

When I was pregnant with Henry, I used to stumble downstairs at six am with Janie in tow and start the day with a pickle and 8 ounce can of coke.  This recipe is really good, pregnant or not, and will help if you have an abundance of mini cukes growing in your late August garden late like we do.

Spicy Garlic Refrigerator Pickles

Adapted from AllRecipes.com

6 or 7 pickling cucumbers, sliced

1 ¼ cup water

1 ¼ cups white vinegar

3/4 cup chopped fresh dill weed

2 tablespoons sugar

3 cloves garlic, chopped

3/4 tablespoon coarse salt

1 tablespoon ground mustard

1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns

In a large bowl, combine the cucumbers, water, vinegar, chopped dill, sugar, garlic, mustard, and peppercorns.  Stir and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours, until the sugar and salt dissolve.

Remove the cucumbers to glass jars (I used clean, recycled pickle jars).  Ladle in the liquid from the bowl to cover.  Seal with lid.  Refrigerate for 10 days before eating – or try that same day like we did.  Eat pickles within 1 month. 

Eye of the summer

We barely saw the outside of the house this week, between the heat wave and a nasty bout of the flu that gripped our house.  While we lay dormant, the yard turned to jungle fed on the power of late July.  We stepped outside to a tangle of grass, bees, blinding sunshine.  Tomatoes bleeding orange from the deep heat, butternut vines creeping like hunters through burnt grass.  Echinacea full and heavy, hundreds of crowned spiky heads bowing in worship to the dead of summer sun.  And cabbage swirling itself into a river of rippled taffy, kneading wave upon wave to a knot of crimson.  Enough beauty to take your breath away.  Especially when you’ve been stuck in artificially chilled air for seven days.