Had I time enough, I would write an Ingalls Wilder styled post about my beautiful commencement to summer when I drove down to Plainfield in June to pick wild asparagus with dear cousin Becky. I would add some Garth Williams style charcoal line drawings of the flora beside the creek where Becky and Brad, her oldest son of three now grown into men, taught me to find the asparagus spears. I would describe how happy the dogs were, brushing down through the thick grass that lined the steep creek bank, splashing across the shallow stream and bounding back up the other bank, over and over, their mouths in open happy panting smiles. I would describe how patiently Becky and Brad pointed out to me the overgrown asparagus ferns with their Martian branches and helped me distinguish the older brown and wispy fallen dried ferns that may signal where baby shoots could be found underneath. I would write about how happy I was to be with Becky, the daughter of my mother's sister, my country cousin, the girl I played with when we were children, then separated from in the 80's when she had children and I had college, then reunited with when I moved back to Chicago and keep reuniting every year we get together and realize never really were separated. Her mother was my mother's only sibling and her mother tried to take me and my siblings after the plane crash in '69, but my father's family fought her in polite and vicious letters and with lawyers and Aunt Joan resigned.
Aunt Joan reading to Nancy and me
After we had gathered pounds of spears by the creek, we backed up the bumpy dirt track out of the cornfield and back past a house on the main road that Brad had pointed out to me on the way out.
"See that house? The front yard is full of asparagus. See there? There? And there's more," Brad had said when we first passed the house. "I think that's a rental house. Last year I pulled in the driveway and and the guy comes out with a rifle."
I saw a mid-century ranch set way back on its corn field acreage, with a unpaved driveway and an overgrown yard. I hadn't learned how to spot the ferns yet so I couldn't see what Brad was seeing.
On the way back from the creek, I've found the eye. I can see gorgeous low spears and overgrown ferns.
"Let's pull over and I'll do the commando crawl through the grass!" I say, all excited at my new skill.
If I had time, I would give you the pickling recipe with ginger that I used to put up the asparagus spears in tall glass jars. I would tell you about the quick visit we made to Aunt Joan and how it hurt to not be able to hug her and how awkward it felt, that early in the summer, to wear a mask. I would tell you how I came back to her place last Saturday, this time with the girls and Nora's friend Billa, this time with masks that felt fine on the face and the girls brightening up Joan's face with a coordinated cheer.
Mia, Nora and me at La Esquina in Todos Santos with Ted Hughes' The Iron Giant
