Heaven bless the little helpers. Bless their ambition and their spirit. But bless me, sometimes all of the “helping” makes me crazy.
My day began like this. Make breakfast. Clean up additional items pulled out of refrigerator by “helper.” Burn breakfast while returning salad dressing, soy sauce, barbeque sauce and pickle relish to the refrigerator.
Give up on breakfast. Dump the hot, scorched pan in the sink, and leave for the garden center–picking up breakfast sandwiches on the way. (I know, not frugal or gluten-free, so regretted on all fronts).
M, my youngest, age 5 "helping" with plants.
Today was the 27th sunny day of the year so far in Seattle. Please note the date. May 12. Yes, it was only our 27th day of sunshine for the entire year. The garden should have been in months ago.
Actually, I’ve planted my garden twice. Once it flooded out, once it was eaten to the ground by maniacal bunnies, (apparently ravaged by vitamin D deficiency). I’ve lost my chance to start any more plants from seed, so I had to break down and buy plants from seed. I had to do it before the garden center stopped carrying seedlings, babysitter or no babysitter.
At 8:50, we had been in the car outside the garden center for ten minutes, and my youngest daughter had already asked me fourty-two times what we were waiting in the car for. “Why aren’t we going in yet?” Me (through snarled lips) “For the fourty-second time–you have not finished eating your sandwich yet! We are waiting on YOU!” (Truthfully, the garden center didn’t open until 9, but I didn’t want her food congealing and stinking up my car while we were in there either).
Sandwich eaten (or sufficiently picked at) our youngest decided that we could go buy the plants now. I pulled out an unwieldy cart, and lurched and turned it around to head into the store. I was promptly hit in the back of the ankles by another cart.
How in the hell does this happen? What’s the big freakin’ hurry? The place just opened and it’s empty!
I turned around to acknowledge my assailant (deciding if I should take the “please pardon me” or the “where’s the fire” approach), and found my five year old daughter pushing the offending cart. She couldn’t even see through the back of the cart, and held her little hands at pig-tail level to push the thing.
“Melat! What is our rule here?”
“No touching anything?” She responds quietly from behind the cart.
“Yes. Why do you have a cart?”
“For the stuff that I buy.”
“Did you bring your allowance?”
“No.”
“Do you need to plant green bean plants?”
“No.”
“Why do you have a cart?”
“Ummmm….” she says as she begins backing away from me with the cart.
I sigh, dislodged my cart from whatever it was stuck on, and heave it into the garden center. Tomatoes, bean starts, pumpkins, and a few annual herbs destined for our patio herb garden went into the cart.
Chili peppers, flowers, and little pink garden gloves came out of the cart and went back on their proper shelves.
I then pushed the cart with my “helper” awkwardly. She walked in front of me–between me and the cart handle “helping” me to push the cart–her little hands under mine (firmly) on the cart rail so she will stop “helping” with items I cannot see.
I saw a garden center employee behind me pulling aside several tomato plants that appear to have had their tops lopped off about halfway up the height of the plant, and hoped that had nothing to do with our arrival on the scene.
I finished the shopping trip by nodding my head in the rough direction of plants and dictating to my twelve-year-old (reading, instruction-following) daughter. “There, Pink Lady tomatoes–two of them, top shelf. Bottom shelf, one pumpkin, your choice of variety.” ”On the herb shelf–dill. It will smell like the tartar sauce I make.”
By the time we arrived at the checkstand, I was exhausted.
Miraculously, everything in the cart was mostly undamaged, and only items I actually planned to buy. I was proud of myself for paying with exact change, cash and totally within budget. “Yes!” I murmered to myself and pushed the cart to the car…wondering if I was actually on budget, since it was the third time I’ve had to plant the garden this season. At what point should a gardener throw in the towel and determine that it is more frugal to buy the produce at the supermarket?
I breathed a sigh of relief that we had gotten to the car without incident. I told my youngest to “assume the position” (like in the television show COPS my rule is “put a hand on the car” in the parking lot). She put one hand on the car, and one on where her hip is gonna be one day, and I started loading plants carefully into the trunk of my station wagon.
And then it happened. Dirt hit me. It splattered me, everywhere. I froze, startled. I hear my oldest say “whoa” behind me under her breath.
This could only mean one thing.
More “helping.” I turned around just in time to catch my youngest–one hand on the car, one hand into the basket of the cart–getting ready to chuck the second six-pack of Blue Lake bean starts over the back seat of the car so they can “ride up front with us mom. I’m just helping.”
Deep breaths.
I turned to my oldest, asked her to load the car, and I picked of my youngest at the waist, set her into the carseat and told her “Don’t touch anything!”
We got in the car to go home and my oldest daughter says “Wow, good job mom–we only spent 14 minutes in that store.”
::whimper::
Arriving home, I sent my little helper in the front door first. “Run inside and make your bed before lunch,” I said, and she eagerly complied. Before lunch? I thought. I’ve got three more hours!
I grabbed the herb starts from the back of the car, the trowel from the garage and headed out to the back deck to divide and plant them in my containers. A quick transplant of dill and cilantro, not a complicated task. I headed to the deck thinking that this was just what I needed after our harrowing fourteen-minute trip to the garden center.
I patted out the dill and began dividing the clumps, and set the little plastic bucket aside.
I hear “I got it for ya momma” from my youngest. That was some quick bed-making I think, but she’s happy and busy, so whatever. As I stood up to start on the cilantro, I saw it. Through the patio window, into my beautiful cream-on-cream colored house–light furniture, light floors, everything had been clean simultaneously for the first time in weeks.
What she “got,” was not the bed making, it was the little plastic container from the plant. She went to “help” me by tossing it in the trash. In the kitchen.
To accomplish this task, she traversed through the dining room, foyer, living room (to pet the cat on the sofa from the looks of it) and to the trash in the kitchen.
There was a distinct trail of little globules of damp potting soil through the whole house. The whole freaking house. It was about four-feet wide, and using my highly-trained mommy-forensic skills, I take this to mean that the trail was formed by skipping rather than walking through the house.
She is a cheery helper.
I went to the bathroom, filled a bucket with water, and found an old scrub-brush. I needed help with a very important task.
My happy little helper spent the rest of the afternoon happily enjoying the warm sunshine and scrubbing away at our outdoor patio, while inside, I scrubbed away at the rugs, counting my blessings.
Dear Jesus,
Help me to serve you always with the same joy of service that my children serve me with.
Help me to count their service always as a blessing.
Help me to remember, that when they serve me, they are practicing to serve You.
Help me to be a kind and patient teacher as they blossom into the people they are to become.
Amen
"Helping" me by incubating the seeds I planted.
