Reflections on Tearing Lettuce

Summer arrived at about six on Sunday night, for the first time in probably more than a dozen years. I sat on the sun-warmed patio picking and tearing lettuce leaves for a salad, drifting away into, well, nowhere for, well, I don’t even know how long.

It all started with a routine task: making dinner. Getting a meal on the table can often be a race to the finish. We all know that. That night’s dinner prep started out no different, but ended in a place completely foreign to me.

With the chicken marinating and the vegetables cleaned and brushed with garlic and freshly picked herbs for the grill, I went outside to pick a salad. I stooped down with my big white colander and proceeded to turbo-pick my way through a thicket of overgrown salad greens. Both knees cracked as I crouched down. My neck creaked a bit, the result of a weekend wallpaper removal project where seemingly all the hard scraping and scrubbing was at the ceiling line. So I sat.

The patio was comforting and warm from the sun. Our orange cat mozied on over and sidled up to me to idle in the sun. Cats are good at this. My daughter flitted by with a butterfly net. And I sat.

For a few weeks now, I feel I’ve had a huge backlog of work, from refacing the kitchen and getting my daughter ready for camp, to weeding and writing. I’ve been meaning to update Eco-nomics with some harvest figures: three armloads of Swiss Chard, about a pound of Kirby cucumbers, and most recently pole beans that have come in earlier than expected, just under a pound of little haricot verts. And I was thinking about all of this while crouching over the lettuce pots, trying to speed my way to a 6:30 dinnertime. But still I sat.

While on the warm patio, with one cat sunning himself next to me and my daughter in her own little summer world, I was hypnotically picking lettuce leaves, reaching over for some baby chard leaves to add to the salad, and I found myself in a smooth groove of thinking. Of nearly nothing.

This never happens to me. It was utterly relaxing, and utterly human. And it was a long time in coming. Since then, I’m still feeling airy and relaxed, albeit slightly disconcerted. This is just not me. What comes next? Purchase a hammock then actually lay in it?

Any way around it, something is different. I’m relaxed and, dare I say it? Lax. Even the cats are reaping the benefits of this newfound tranquility. I barely make an effort to break up their fur-flying wrestling matches. More dinner? Sure, and extra canned food all around! The same goes for my daughter, who has plowed her way through half a box of Bomb Pops this week. Yes, I bought some junky Popsicles, those red, white and blue rockets emblematic of my childhood summers. As for the bare kitchen walls in desperate need of further patching and a coat of primer? I skipped that last night and took my daughter to a nearby park to play and ride her scooter in the twilight.

The garden is giving me far more than a $1.50 return on those lettuce seeds. It is giving me summer back.