Photographs and Text by Corey Amaro
When my children were little, we had
a magical, organic, vegetable garden. We had tomatoes until December,
green beans that made Jack-in-the-bean-stalk, look like any
Tom-Dick-or-Harry-kind-of-ordinary-guy, and spinach that made Popeye,
green with envy. Our garden was the talk of the neighborhood.
Our neighbor to the right of our home, asked the neighbor
to the left, "How does that American potato-head, produce such a
beautiful, vegetable garden?"
The neighbor to the left said, "I heard she doesn't use pesticides."
The neighbor across the street threw in, "I heard she uses fresh cow pies?"
Mr. Porte, my elderly neighbor, my vegetable gardener-mentor, swelled with pride at his student. I loved that
our organic, vegetable garden gave him an extra sparkle in his eye.
Mr. Porte gave me wise gardening tips: He told me to put a piece of
copper wire in the base of my tomato plants, to prevent the tomatoes from have a grayish, brown bottom, to water the garden only three times
a week, and to pick the snails off.
Bugs give me the creeps.
Luckily, I had little helpers. I
told Chelsea (who was 6 at the time) and Sacha (4) to pick off the
snails and put them in a bucket.
They did.
It dawned on Sacha that this
was not a happy little game, that these snails were doomed. That his
Mother had failed him. With tears in his lollipop eyes he asked me,
"Mommy, what are you gonna do with these escargots (snails)?"
There comes a point in every child's
life when they realize that their Mother is not
perfect….unfortunately for me, it happened when Sacha was four.
I didn't know what to say. I wanted
to lie through my teeth. I wanted to make up a story. I wanted to say
something to reassure him. In my long silence, with a look of extreme guilt, and all the while biting my lip, he started to cry. "YOU are
gonna KILL 'em!"
I thought to myself, "Great, I have
psychologically, damaged my child. He is going to have nightmares…he is
going to hate me forever, what can I say, what can I do? Why didn't I
use bug spray?"
Just then, to the rescue, Chelsea
stood up. She wiped her brow, looked at me like I was the child, shook
her head and said, "Sacha, either they eat or we eat?!"
Sacha looked at her, bent don't, and continued picking the snails off the tomato plants.
Children can handle truth better than we think.
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