Gardening saves the damn day. Also, tucking in and then cooking a squash.

I awoke with a vise-like headache and the familiar achiness of a cruddy cold coming on. My body felt stuffed with cotton, my humours peevish and off. Tom was sneezing and sounds raspy. The boys had circles under their eyes and were both listing toward the wrong side of behaved.

One slammed my bedroom door and stalked off to nowhere. I don't know why. The other set up an enormous fake-food snack bar called Buttville on the floor next to my bed. He forced me to buy pizzas and sandwiches and to consider making something with his blender. 

There were moments of promise. Ol decided that I should have a real breakfast in bed, demanded I stay put, and asked Tom to make coffee and chocolate chip pancakes. He made place cards, brought up TV trays and joined me to dine. We are "table 40" because "you're 40, Mom." Indeed.

But there was also world war level bickering, and at some point, we all blew. I grabbed Oliver and desperately zoomed to the nursery. 

I off-gassed for the entire drive, fuming silently about how damn hard it is, more than ten years in, to complete a newspaper article or two on a weekend morning, steaming about just how stupid (and therefore even more irritating) sibling squabbles can be.

As we turned into the nursery's parking lot, I felt my blood pressure start to drop. We chose a cart and hurried through Annuals, slowed momentarily in herbs and veggies, and then regained focus: Perennials. 

It is still quite hot here, but a definite tinge of fall is in the air.

I sense the awakening of my acute need to roast and eat huge quantities of root vegetables and their kin. This happens every year, and I always go big before gastric distress reins me in to reasonable quantities. For christ's sakes, I roasted a huge butternut squash last night (try this recipe!)and almost finished it at lunch today. (As an aside Oliver had become very attached to this squash and actually shed a few tears when I cooked it which I only did because he'd been carrying it around for days [we even tucked it in next to his bed one night; not even joking; WTF?] and dropped it several times and it had a small crack which would have turned into rotting nastiness and so duh, I cooked it.)

Heirloom pumpkins, decorative gourds, and to-be-Jack-o'-lanterns spill from bins and tables. Halloween decorations seem to have bred overnight; ghouls and ghosts and gravestones beckon from every variety store in town. And with it all come new plants, bulbs, grass seed, and towers of folded leaf bags. 

It's all very exciting in some way, and I felt my heart skip a beat with anticipation. (Then I blew my nose for the 93rd time. Damnit.)

Long story short: perennials, dirt, composted leaves, a white pumpkin, renewed spirits, an absence of inane anything, and we returned home.

Several hours in, Tom called from the front door: "Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit out there, Em? You have a cold. Drink some water."

I gave him the hairy eyeball from behind the enormous, gas-powered saw I had vrooming, vroomed it with gusto, and returned to the hedges and trees like Sweeney fucking Todd on speed.

"Honey, you've really been out here for quite a while," he called another hour later.

"Help me put on this backpack leaf blower thing, man."

"Mom, can I stuff Pop-Its in my Nerf gun and fire it and see what happens?" Jack asked. "Sure, hon." I replied. "Just stay over there in the median."

I really think that kid was working off some negative energy today. 

I blew and raked and dug and planted. Two neighbors drove by slowly and said, "Do you know your children are in the trunk of your car?"

"Yes, thank you."

The neighbors looked a bit confused.

"They'll be fine. I'm over it!" I said in a tone that I now believe sounded slightly insane.

They drove away.

I shoveled and hacked and fertilized (organic, natch) and mulched.

A couple walked past. "Say, aren't you flexible! Those knees!"

"Thank you." Lovely and a bit odd.

When my arms started shaking and I ran out of mulch, I considered it might be time to go in. Turns out it was 5:30pm.

Mother of god. I think I had some negative energy to work off today. Thank god the soil is such a generous taker. I don't know who or what I'd be without land to work.

I showered, sat on my bed, blew my nose for the 154th time, realized I couldn't quite get up because my legs felt wobbly, and so ordered a side table. You'd have done the same.

And now, a couple hours later, I'm back in bed, this time with Tom, Oliver and Nutmeg too. Ridiculous, sweaty, and slightly delightful. Just like today. 

**Bonus pics.

Waiting for the birds.

Celery, fennel and apple salad; bacon chicken done in a cast iron pan; lightly creamed kale with toasted breadcrumbs.
 

Back to school!

Lawd a' mercy, the day has come. The children returned to school.

I prepped them well last night with a delicious meal of gumbo, fruit salad, and blackberry pie. Then stories and snuggles and an early lights out. 

This morning saw the rest of the pie for breakfast and an early start to bring the boys to two different campuses as Jack is now officially in middle school. I am telling y'all what. That precious kid, armed with a backpack and a binder so big it comes with a shoulder strap, hopped out this morning at a different spot than he has for the past six years, said "I love you, Mom" and "I'll figure it out" when I asked if he was sure he knew where he was going, and scampered off with nary a backwards glance.

My heart positively burst with pride and love. What confidence, what appropriate independence. And when I picked him this afternoon? "Mom, that was the best first day ever. I LOVE SCHOOL!"

It simply doesn't get better.

Meanwhile, Oliver was still happy to hold my hand as we walked into the lower school together, and I am not even kidding, the reunions for both of us were as happy and marvelous as could be. It was so good to see so many people. You think these two were jazzed?

I went to a meeting and then came home to a quiet home and a few hours to organize and snuggle with Nutmeg, and by god did it feel good to take off the Mom hat for a few. 

Both boys already love their teachers and are beside themselves excited for the year ahead. I'll leave you with this footnote from Oliver, which I treasure.

Several hours after I'd picked him up...

"Mom, second grade feels different from first."

"Oh really, Ol? How?"

"We have quiet time after every recess and lunch."

"What's that?"

"We pick a spot and sit and think. You can't use a pillow even if you're in a spot where there are pillows, like our classroom library which has LOTS of pillows. And you can't talk, and you don't draw or do anything. You just think and be still, and I really like it."

Is that not such a gift? The weaving into full and busy and exciting days moments of stillness and quiet and thought. That such time is valued so much by teachers and school that each day allots space just for it. 

We're off to another wonderful year. What good fortune we have.

A Mother's Taps

I'm halfway reclined on a charcoal gray leather couch, trying to read a Cheryl Strayed essay for a class that begins Wednesday. I'd wrongly bet the ranch that Wednesday would be relatively free, given that it's the second day of school and all. But now I'm thinking, Wednesday is the second day of school and all, and why do I ever count on the first week of school for anything except some mayhem. When will I learn?

But class, and a small procedure which I'm choosing not to contemplate too much, is coming. And at the other end of the gray couch is a little boy in a pink-striped pajama top and vehicle-themed undies. His head is just shorn, freed of the three months of summer 'ponytail' growth we'd come to brush away from his eyes and out of his ears.

All that hair, that clogged his goggles and frizzed so dramatically each morning, is gone. Cut and vacuumed away while his older brother and I grocery shopped for back-to-school gumbo and the always-needed new gallon of milk. 

I didn't even get to see a cut or finger a lock. Didn't say goodbye to that street urchin wig. And like that, one vision of summer is gone.

I glance down at this pink-clad wonder, one hand clasping his iPad, the other wrapped around his only slightly pudgy thigh. He's going on seven-and-a-half, and pudge is hard to come by these days. Adult teeth are coming in, his legs and feet are looking terribly manboyish, his slightly dirty nails, the ones on the hand clasping his thigh, seem older. I don't know how or why. They just do. 

“Do you want me to blow this thing up?” his precious, perfect, magnetic voice asks.

“No,” I say, wondering what he's talking about now. I pay attention to just about 40% of all Minecraft-related jabber these days. Now that I write that, the number seems incredibly high.

“Why not?” he asks. “I am going to because I can rebuild it. Also, I have a safe room. And do you know how well bonemeal makes things grow? You should see my carrots."

He is so little and yet not. What does he know of TNT and bonemeal and safe rooms and tidy nails? Not yet past the first page of Strayed's essay, I am so ready for school, and yet these moments.

They strip away the fatigue and the mind-numbing boredom, the bickering and the Legos everywhere. Strip, peel, slough, toss, leaving behind glossy, exfoliated memories, ephemeral snapshots that focus on the sweet and trim away the rest; the rest that ages, wears, begs to be forgotten. 

All I can hear and see and want to know is this precious creature who is mine. But Cheryl has just lost her mother, and the US Open is on, and this darling, blue-eyed Frenchman who looks straight out of 1983 is head to head with Rafa Nadal, a man I admire so much but who tonight reminds me of a balding rat, and Tom and I have only been teammates for days, nothing more. And carpool and schedules and my god the unread emails.

I shoo Ol upstairs to brush teeth and get ready for bed. I eat a salad of garden tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. I’ve had several glasses of wine. I've taken a bite of an offensively disappointing butter cookie. I've given it up with disdain.

I can hear the kids sorting Legos, as if their arms and hands are plastic-brick rakes. Will the raking yield the longed-for piece or does it matter? Is the raking meditative? Purposeful in its own way? I hear them talking and chatting, no longer fighting and ear-clapping out each other’s words. They adore each other. I hope they always do. But have they brushed those teeth?

I've not bothered to mark my place in Cheryl's essay. I'll just start over tomorrow-isn't that what I always say? Which is why I have so many hopefully saved articles to read on Facebook and on my night table and strewn about the house.

I've returned, instead, to Oliver Sacks' last book, On The Move, which I'm well into and love. What a man he was. I wonder, with regards to people like him, what might have been different if they'd had children. Would anything? Everything? Would their accomplishments be less? More? Quieter? 

How would I be different were I not a mother? Would I have not received that writing rejection today? Would I even be writing at all? What is one without the other? What would either be on its own?

Impossible to know. I have never for a second regretted having children, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes wonder about motherhood's costs. They feel mammoth in dark moments, irreplaceable gifts in the next. All the onions to chop for a big gumbo- the mound of tear-inducing alliums: will it ever end? Just a bit later all that work is but a stew of translucent rumors, there enough to make you sure of their crucial presence, mysterious enough to keep your doubt aflame.

One toddles downstairs-"I'm hungry, mama!"-as the cat starts to gag. I put away my book, relocate the cat from carpet to wood floor, wonder aloud if a cinnamon apple and an ants on a log will quiet the rumbling tummy. 

"Mama, did you invent ants on a log?"

"No, sweetie, it's been a snack for as long as I can remember."

The ants and their what? Mud? tumble to the floor. "It's OK, pick it all up. It's fine." And he laughs as he mashes the ants and peanut butter and whatever else is along for the ride back into the log. And he howls as fibrous ribbons stream away from the celery as he bites and chews, green ribbons going every which way.

Cheryl and Oliver and Tom and the cat and the Legos wait in the other room, as a little one and I dance, sticky with muck and rogue ants and streamers. And my sweet other comes down and says, "I'm hungry too."