Pecan Zen
(Kids • Garden)
You wouldn’t think a sick child is a silver lining, especially when she’s uncomfortable and cross about blowing her anticipated perfect-attendance merit sticker and you’re somewhat anxious about laying the foundation for a new web venture as a hedge against having to compete, seemingly, with every laid-off newspaper writer in America for even the smallest assignment.
But then you set aside your plans for the day and reacquaint yourself with this wise, ancient 5-year-old over a large bowl of uncracked pecans. The clouds part as you divide the labor – you re-remembering how much pressure to apply to the half-cylinders holding nut in cracker so as not to simply crush the insides – she quickly grasping the finger mechanics of pulling apart the cracked shell pieces so as to preserve the largest unbroken portions of nut meat.
After both of you tire of your given tasks, you trade. She makes refrigerator poetry with word magnets while you try your bigger and clumsier hand at the shelling.
“Summer see once,
one red happy baby boy went cool pink
so, cocoon day, yes,” she says. “How about that?”
“Nice,” you reply, working your way through the pile of cracked pecans until none remain but the toughest nuts to crack. “The rest of these won’t open in one piece anymore.”
She comes over to inspect, then gets close and becomes very serious. “You have to think that they’re going to come out good,” she says. “Then they will.”
→ B.Dunn, Oct 21, 2009, 12 24 pm
