THAW
by Suzanne LaFetra
Triaminic and echinacea and Infant Tylenol clutter the kitchen counter and some mysterious pink goop that is failing to kill off my daughter’s recurring ear infection sits in the fridge. My life seems littered with crumpled tissues and aspirin and wool socks and not much else. Even my garden looks sick; just a few sorry, straggly kale plants amidst the puddles and ecstatic worms.
And now, the midwinter gardening catalogs arrive to taunt me. Nyah nyah, plant after all danger of frost is past they chant. On an anomalous warm afternoon I skip to the naked flowerbeds and dump seeds onto the ground, humming a little ditty about summertime. I optimistically hang a crisp new linen dress at the very front of my closet. Two days later, icy rain frosts our lawn and I’m sporting a muffler. The dress is now clouded in humiliation, a girl who’s arrived at the dance a half-hour too soon. No tiny green lace of carrot tops, no cloverleaf of fresh basil peeking through the muddy black earth. My bare-armed antasies are drowned out like the soggy seeds. It’s too damn early, and it’s too damn cold.
Buying dinner groceries, I cast a bleary glance at pathetic tomatoes and pointy tropical fruits I have no idea how to eat. Uninspired by the hearty, stout produce I longed for last fall, I feel a toddler tantrum rising in me—I WANT A PEACH! I WANT ASPARAGUS!
I crave the dense creamy sweetness of the spring’s first peas, dropped straight from the vine into my blender, whirled with the simplest of ingredients: milk, salt, pepper. Magically, they’re transformed into the most heavenly soup this side of September. Instead, I fling a droopy parsnip into my cart, and begrudgingly settle on some sort of winter stew for dinner that thrills me not an iota.
Back at home, I cook while my three-year-old plays with his baby sister who’s at that stage where she falls down every eighteen seconds and doesn’t seem to mind a bit. They’re banging plastic yogurt containers with a red speckled ladle, then clanging a metal mixing bowl on the floor and having a rip-roaring time of it. I stop chopping the dull, lifeless roots for the dinner I don’t want, and watch my children for a moment. They are oblivious to me, lost in a world of play. My daughter scoots over and peers down into the heater vent, blinking and then giggling at her hot, windy game. My son is engaged in a cientific study, fogging the windows with his breath then wiping dark circles on the steamy glass. I lift dripping emerald broccoli from the pot and turn to y son, “Hey, want to help me pick a lemon?” He jumps up as if I’ve just invited him to the best circus on earth.
“YEAH!” he shouts and is out the door tugging at a bright round fruit. It smells fresh and tangy, sweet. For the moment, no one needs a Kleenex. Dinner even smells inviting. The heater clicks off, but now I don’t feel so cold.
Suzanne is a Berkeley writer, with recent work appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Skirt! Magazine, Literary Mama, and KQED fm. Contact Suzanne.
