There is a partially wrapped English cucumber on our brand new couch. The couch that we purchased for our brand new living room, where, every Saturday and Sunday mornings I joyfully sit next to Jesse – he drinking tea, I drinking coffee, both of us reading books – real, paper books – and every so often we share a line or two with each other, and it is quiet and lovely, but now, midweek, my weekend getaway has a cucumber the length of my forearm on it and I don’t know why, and I’ll probably never know why, but I ask anyway.
“Why is there a partially wrapped cucumber on the couch?” I ask aloud, to the air, to the Christmas tree, to the piano, to the woman across the street walking her dog because even though Hadley and Harper are at the dining room table, the chances that I’ll get a rational answer as to why there is a piece of food on my – I mean our – couch from my offspring is slim.
“Because of science,” Harper says.
I am afraid to ask. I know teachers are doing their best to make learning during the pandemic relevant and fun, but I’m wondering if I should real quick shoot an email to Harper’s science teacher letting him know that if at all possible, it would be great if science could stay off my – I mean our – brand new couch.
“What does science have to do with a cucumber being on the couch?” Hadley asks, and I appreciate that she asks it because, as per the previous paragraph, I am afraid.
“Because I had to find an example of something that is different on the inside than it is on the outside,” Harper explains.
“But why is it on the couch?” I pursue, pointing to the cucumber, as if the visual will prompt Harper to give me a better answer.
“Because I had to take a picture of it,” Harper says, a little more slowly now.
“But Harper,” I plead, “why is it on the couch?”
“Mom, because of science,” Harper says, and she’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I have lost my mind. My mind is a memory. I am running on fumes of brain cells that quickly disappeared with every fart, poop, and butt joke that have been eternally streaming since March 13, 2020.
“Can the cucumber go back to where it belongs,” I ask, “or must it stay on the couch?”
“Oh! I’m done with it,” Harper says, getting up from the table and walking toward the cucumber. “I’ve been done with that assignment for awhile.”
I’m staring at the spot where the cucumber once lay in an effort to make sense of my life and my days now, when Harper asks, “Mommy, what does this song mean?” She is referring to Fleet of Foxes’ “Winter Hymnal,” a carol that comes on a lot these days, but that I hadn’t paid much attention to. I listen to the words for a moment, but I don’t have much to offer, probably because my analyzation skills have been simmered down to considering why vegetables are on my brand new couch.
Ours. Dammit!
I tell Harper I am not sure, and walk to my phone to look up the lyrics. They’re horrifying.
“These are scary!” is my eloquent response.
“Why is the music upbeat, when the words aren’t?” Harper asks.
It’s all too much – stray cucumbers and kids getting left behind in the snow, and also I’m really hungry.
While this is happening, Hadley is coming up with palindromes. She’s doing this because I told her to get off her phone and do something creative, and so she’s considering words that are spelled the same way forwards as they are backwards.
I’m impressed, and I’m waiting for her to tell me she’s found words like, “Hannah,” and maybe “radar,” or “civic.”
Toot and poop are what she’s come up with thus far.
“Shoot,” she says. “Butt doesn’t work.”
Shoot indeed.
Suddenly, the basement door flings open as if we are on set of some Disney-like sitcom, and Jesse says, “BUTT TUB WORKS!”
First of all, does it?
Second of all, what is a butt tub? Do I even want to know?
Third, why are there so many hard questions right now?
Finally, an observation: Of the four of us, Jesse is supposed to be the most mature. It is literally too much to ask me to be the CEO of Feyen Maturity. I cannot.
“Well,” Hadley says, “would you rather figure out palindromes, or the lyrics to ‘Winter Hymnal?'”
“It’s a metaphor,” Harper says quietly.
We all turn to look at her, sitting on the couch in place of the cucumber.
“What?” I say.
“The song is a metaphor. It’s about loss of innocence and the pull to follow the crowd.”
The three of us say nothing, so Harper says, “I did some research.” She adjusts her glasses and says, “I’ll send you what I found.”
“Thanks,” we all say.
“You’re welcome,” she says. “I hope it helps.”
Maybe the science lesson is not to distinguish the difference between the inside and outside of things, rather, that there is so much to discover what a thing holds.
Mariah Carey’s, “All I Want For Christmas” comes on next.
“I can totally tell you what this song means,” Hadley offers.
I’ve no doubt.
Callie, I loved every word of this.