worms, french fries, science textbooks and legacy

I remember standing in my grandmother's kitchen with my girlfriend when we were fourteen and fifteen. Jenn persisted in believing in fairies. Grandma, frustrated at her inability to get us skinny irresponsible people to put food in our mouths, asked what fairies eat.

"Oh, regular food," Jenn said, adding, "vegan though."

"Maybe in different shapes," I said. "Being much smaller, they wouldn't be able to assault the vegetables with the same tools we use."

Today I made round french fries the way Grandma did for us that day. The smell of them has been the smell of Jenn-and-Grandma-in-May for all these fifteen years. It's the first time I've made the fries since Grandma joined Jenn in the afterlife. Crying was inevitable.

That's just how it goes, though, isn't it? People die. Other people remember what it smelled like to be with them. Then those people die. Someday my children will remember what it smelled like when I was in the kitchen with them.

They will remember raw wool waiting to be carded, I think, or else compost waiting for worms, or maybe the dishes that wobble in the sink all our days while I read and sew and hold my head on with both hands. Probably the dishes. Poor kids.

All those peeled potatoes produced a bunch of compost. Our little kitchen tub was overflowing with asparagus butts and half a head of lettuce I couldn't finish by myself and that one organic banana that never gets eaten even though I bought one less this time. Maybe it was finally time to make a home for the worms.

I called the Scientist over to help. Really I wanted him to learn to do it, at least to someday think, "yeah, worm composting, I can do that," but I told him I needed an extra hand. Following the instructions that have never failed us (others have stunk [literally]) in an older and better edition of Oak Meadow Environmental Science, he nailed holes in the bottom of the tub, laid down soaked newspaper strips, gathered sawdust from yesterday's replacement of pieces of door that were lead... en. Lead leaden? Contaminated.

I did the horrible job of emptying the juicy compost pail into the giant box. But I got the best job of decorating the box. Our resident cartoonist had fallen asleep.

(I probably would have had Scientist help me because I miss him while he's at school, but with Storyteller asleep and Hero and Gamer out of town, Scientist was the only man left for the job. Anyway Gamer made one when he was studying with that science book.)

While we were making the worm bin, I almost burned the french fries. Maybe burned food will be the smell they associate with their mother. I don't care, as long as they remember enough to comfort them when they turn the compost, when they cut the french fries, when they clean the wool, if they ever clean any wool.