Day: May 6, 2014

The war is my To-Do list, and, lately, I’ve been waging extreme peace.  Instead of picking battles, I’ve been letting the fights come to me, if I can’t absolutely avoid them.  Even my favorite “battle”, my garden, is only being fought because it’s the beginning of May, and this may be the last time this summer I have a jump on the weeds.

For the last 13 summers, I’ve had a decent sized garden – about 1600 square feet of beds or rows, depending on how artistic seven-year-old Thing2 and I are feeling when we lay out the veggies.  We get a lot of food out of our good earth, but thanks to the wild raspberry bush that apparently escaped from a Little Shop of Horrors set to squat at my garden gate and the weeds that begin to invade rows and paths alike, we also get a big mess by the end of the summer.

This year, in an homage to middle age, I’ve decided not to not climb that hill, but rather to move it to a smaller, more manageable spot.

Thing2 was not happy with the announcement – he loves to have a hand in the garden design.  I could try trotting out a cliche for him about how good things come in small packages. I’m hoping, however, when August gives us a slightly smaller crop and a lot less work, he’ll figure out that sometimes victory is as much about identifying the goal as it is about expending blood, tears, and sweat.

For me it’s a few months of fresh picked salad without taking on a third or fourth career.

Thing2 floats above and around the kitchen table.  A moth might be drawn to the pendant light hanging over the table, but my seven-year-old flutter-bug isn’t attracted to light.  He makes it on his own.  I think it’s light anyway and not a repressed need to go potty.

What isn’t repressed is the energy that keeps him dancing around the single worksheet that’s assigned for the night.  He does a row and then he needs to examine a bump in the dog’s fur.

“Is that a tick, Mom?  I need to hug you.”

“Sit down and do your homework.”  He smiles and slide-spins back to the table.  He never struggles with the numbers – only the sitting.  Another row of problems is done.

“I can’t get that song out of my head,” he tells me.

“You’re supposed to be having math problems in your head,” I answer.  Before his butt gets too far off the wooden seat I say, “Sit down and do your homework.”

The next three rows go faster. He’s remembered something he wants to do when it’s done, but we have one more round of distraction and reseating before the flutter-bug is done with his assignment.

“Mom, I can’t wait to go to school and see my friends,” he says as he finishes the last row, “but why do we have to have homework?”  He flits over to me to get his worksheet initialed.  The numbers are surprisingly neat and accurate.

“I thought you liked homework,” I say as he dances back to the kitchen table to get his spelling list.

“I hate it,” he says slipping the yellow sheet of words into my hand.  He pirouhettes away from me, waiting for the first word.

“Crumbs,” I say.  Thing2 is now concentrating on an arabesque, but he manages to tap out the letters, finishing the word with a kick and a leap.  He flutters from one end of the great room to the other as he taps out the letters for the next ten words, and I don’t bother trying to get him to sit.  The last letter of the last word gets a special flourish and I get a hug that should squeeze me down a jean size.  Yeah, he hates homework alright.