nothing is wasted

Women who grew up in the midwest in the dust bowl days buy their broth now. Swanson cans. They wait stacked neatly on the store shelves, bleating their fluorescent convenience at the passing coupon holders. But I know by the way my grandmother counts the potatoes out that it was not always this way. She'll stand in the kitchen, this woman who whistles through her teeth, who got a shotgun for Mother's Day the year she turned 81, who was the first woman in the state of Kansas to coach a winning little league baseball team, and for all her certainty, she still counts the potatoes.

In her head, after all these years, one is for Annie, two is for Cass, three is for Al Junior, four is for Jerry, five is for Dan, six is for Mark, seven is for Nick, eight is for Becky, nine is for Dad, ten is for Mom, plus one, always one extra, for creaming, and just in case. And even when the numbers grew or shrank, and she wondered, are Dan's coming to dinner tonight? With 23 Grandchildren, forty odd greats. An army of well fed and well loved progeny to bring her all the potatoes she could dream of, and she counts.

In the summertime, my grubby little bitten nails, and little bowl cut bowed in concentration, learning to peel with paring knife, scolded for taking away too much of the white with the gritty brown, on the back porch swing, swaying lightly over the garbage can. "Rachel, did you count? One for each of us, plus one. Count them out, honey. Remember, Dad's coming in tonight."  Because nothing could be wasted.

Even the minutes. Eight in the morning was far too late. I'd wake up in on of my daddy's old t-shirts, down to my six-seven-eight year old knees, in the room he and his four brothers slept in all together until the girls started leaving home, and Grandma would sing up the stairs to the attic that still held the sweet-dirt smell of a little girl's summertime night sweat. Because even the morning was too much for her to waste. There were sparrows to catch. Cheerios to eat. Trees to climb. Stories to tell. Books needed reading, Gardens needed tending. Treehouse picnics needed preparing.

And so I've carried these things with me, like moth holes in a shirt, paint splatters on my "night gowns". I earned the knowledge she woke up inside me like the scars on my knees from the locally quarried gravel on the road where I learned to ride a bike. I live marked by the knowledge that to waste anything is to give away a days worth of sunflowers growing in the ditches. It's to give away yourself. I know this the way a tadpole knows it will be a frog. She gave that to me. She counted every potato.

And still, some days, I cannot write the story. I cannot tell the tale, run the miles, paint the treehouse. The bed is too comfortable. The wind is too cold. I've spent years squandering the moments, forgetting to count my potatoes. The long walks down rusted railroad tracks halfway to Jamestown and the carrot peelings boiling for hours with the chicken bones for stock seem faraway. Those things are lessons taught to a different girl; someone made of sterner stuff, of endless gumption and cans of worms. These days I wake up with feet long separated from the bark of a cottonwood tucked deep inside a featherbed and it is so hard to believe that these are same freckles given to me by those prairie summers in my thrift store bathing suit.

And I waste the days. And it becomes harder to love this girl who stares back in the mirror.

I walked home tonight under a moon bloated with the dripping golden light of the spring equinox. It looked edible, like the dazzling over-ripe fruit of the Tree of Ignorance. I wanted to burst this whole fermented globe of flaxen forgetfulness on my tongue and let it burn away these things I don't want to know about myself.

It looked as if it could be taken down and tossed, a great sagging balloon filled to bursting with the light of moments slipped past without having to be counted. I wanted it to splat on the icy cement and for my laughter to bounce of the silent walls of my neighbor's houses. I wanted to pour out this lunar delirium and across the carrot peeling days I'd been dropping to the bottom of my sink and make them shine.

I stopped short at the sight of my front gate. These days are not wasted. Nothing is wasted. I can use these stutter steps, these celery leaf afternoons. These are the dregs. But they must be put into something better. The coffee grounds must go to compost, the old paint on the new treehouse door. These days must be milked for their fattened spring moons. For laughing out loud into the cold nights. The sadness, the loneliness, stewed into something to warm myself by, when my fingers, and nights are cold.

Nothing can be wasted.