"Momma, momma look!
I got a weed for your weedy pile.
Should I put it in the pile?
I got the roots.
Look! They're white!
Why is this weed growing here?
We don't want this weed!
Is this weed trying to hurt our plants?"
I wished for some quiet gardening time. I quickly reminded myself that I'll have lots of quiet when she goes to kindergarten. I wondered if it makes these moments easier to know that they're limited.
Then I thought of my husband's Sunday afternoon. He was in the cool of our air conditioned house watching a Formula 1 race. He wasn't fielding questions about bugs, weeds, and plants. He was doing his own thing.
By the time Julia and I went into the house, I had decided that it was a bad time out there in my garden. It wasn't peaceful. I felt like Julia would have done well to go off and play, but she wanted to be right with me no matter what I was doing. She couldn't be quiet and forced me to answer so many questions. I was jealous too. Jealous that my husband was alone and uninterrupted with his TV time.
Then Tim says to me, "you two were so cute out there. I took some pictures."
Stunned, I picked up the camera and looked at the silent, still images. There we were, close together in the shade of a tree. We were concentrating hard with our garden gloves in the dirt. The picture showed a Mom and her daughter gardening without any of that annoying stuff that was disturbing my peace."This is the way you'll want to remember your summers," Tim said.
It is just the way I'll remember them. Perfect, just like the picture.
