So I’m a stay at home mom now. It’s not something I had planned on, but with Colette’s complex medical journey, staying home became the obvious and only choice. It’s hard but I really do love it. However I am going a little crazy. I'm not stir crazy, but like, if I’m gonna stay home I’m gonna stay the fook home. I’m doing this thing.
I’m reading books about plants and cooking and getting into it. In a dream world I would like to be in either the middle of a city or in the middle of nowhere. Which is why I’m in the suburbs. Best of both? Or of neither? Or something? I don’t know but I could move to a farm right about now, were it not for Trever’s work. I’m sure there’s a rip roaring fashion industry in Paso Robles, no? But then there's the fact of his general indoorsyness that may not be suitable to farm life. **Which spell check just changed to farm wife which is a mother cussing sign if there ever was one!
But for now the farm will come to me. I live in a neighborhood built in the early 1900s, so unlike a lot of coastal southern California we have yards. Not just patios. My house is the size of a motorhome squared, but I’ve got an orange tree so I’m winning. We’ve built some garden beds with radish and butter lettuce babies growing inside. I thought they were taking too long and surely had died young, but I just saw a little green sprout and got reaaal happy about it.
Also nothing and no one is spared from my antics. Like Trever and his office for example. After getting large empty egg cartons from local restaurants (like a freak) I planted kale, leek and lettuce seeds in them and left them in Trever’s office to sprout. His office now smells a little like dirt but it sort of already did so whatever. When he tastes that crunchy fresh kale, half eaten by a squirrel, he’ll remember why he married me.
Everyone I talk to who has had a go at gardening, tells me how hard it is. All the bugs and squirrels and birds and fungus. But I’m in the honeymoon phase right now. New love is blooming and I have lofty dreams of our future together. I can see it now - all of us happily chomping on cabbages, not a care in the world.
My plant babies are part of my weird mom routine. I slip on my berkenstocks over my socks and tighten my robe, squinting my eyes at the sun I adjust my glasses and pull my hair back into a messy bun to water my herbs and garden bed, then grabbing a clump of chocolate mint to deeply inhale on my way inside. Motherhood suits me. Trever probably agrees.
Sometimes I think about poor Colette. What will she say about me? Not only am I wearing socks under by berks but I’m permanently displaying the inside of my brain on the world wide web. Actually she probably won’t care, future Brooke will super care. She’s like, “sshhhh” from 30 years away.
Speaking of being crazy. Trever and just decided I need to take some time for myself to read, think, write, and become normal again. I think it’s a pretty good idea.
Kale!