From his car seat, my son asks, “What do weeds turn into?”
As I merge traffic, I glance at the sun-bleached grass on the median, as if it might answer for me one of the hundred questions I’ve tried to solve today. How many minutes are in four days, why is it always hot now forever, Mama, can I have can I have can I have. I intuit what he’s asking now—he’s watched our scraggly tomato plants and cantaloupe vines sprout flowers that turn into little green bulbs that turn into fruit he won’t eat. My oldest son, five years old, understands that plants become something more.
But I’ve spent the day measuring my shortcomings against the onslaught of his needs and the needs of his little brother, who is threatening to fall asleep just three hours before bedtime. Even this—the mundane but unrelenting job of keeping always before me their elusive schedules—is a reminder of how often I fail to get it just right. I can only picture weeds bursting with seeds that ride on the wind to lace trouble on someone’s pristine suburban lawn.
“Just weeds,” I say.
“They just keep growing?”
“Uh, pretty much.”
“If nobody cuts them the weeds will grow all the way up to heaven,” he says. “They’ll grow right through outer space!”
I don’t correct his science or his theology. I’m too tired, unaware that already within me, his newest little brother is taking shape.
While written a year ago, this is a companion piece to an essay published earlier this month.
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