On Mornings

Routines, disruptions; bowls with fermented vegetables

On a good morning, after my workout, I can finish everything I need in about thirty minutes. That’s putting away the dishes left out to dry, unloading the dishwasher, packing up the kids lunches for the day; putting water on to boil, grinding beans, cleaning the French press, composting yesterday’s grinds. If I’m lucky, I can even get the kids’ bags in the car.

Of course, I’m rarely lucky — in this regard, at least — and those thirty minutes compound. Doggie gets up, scratches at the bedroom door. A minute here, a minute there, walk up, open, close, walk down. Back to the dishes. She wants to go outside. Over to the slider, out she goes — start walking back, and she’s returned, scratching. Too hot, already, not yet 7:00am: we’re in a heatwave. She makes her way to the dining room, surveying the world from the nose-height windows.

I’ll have replaced the last teaspoon — we’re down to seven now, from our set of twelve (a wedding present) — when Doggie barks. A squirrel. Or a chipmunk; a turtle, a rabbit. Does it matter? It’s woken up the Warthog. So up to his room. He wants to read a book and who am I to — how can I — say no?

We finish the book and then another. He wants to help me downstairs, so downstairs we go, him helpful as he hands me one-two-three-four-five forks at once. He hands me a bowl — but drops it. As I finish picking up the shards, Kiddo wakes up. Up the stairs we go — can’t leave Warthog alone — and into Kiddo’s room for another book. Doggie jumps on the bed — the horror! — and we have to shoo her out, for now, at least, since there are still goldfish on Kiddo’s bedside table from the four or five snacks I had to bring up to her last night.

She was still hungry.

We’re back downstairs and just as we get there, the Monkey wakes up, so back up we go, all of us now, one child in each arm (the reason why I do so many weighted carries — I want to do this forever), Doggie tailing behind. We pick up the Monkey, change him, kiss him — all of us, enthusiastically — and then into our bedroom where I throw the whole lot on to Mrs. CWD, waking her from her blissful rest — my only goal prior to this very moment being to ensure she can get ample sleep — and head unceremoniously back downstairs to press the coffee.

It’s been steeping for a few hours, now.

I have an image in my head. It’s from a children’s version of Le Morte D’Arthur, illustrated. In it, there’s a knight convalescing in a tower. A sorceress, Morgan Le Fey, perhaps, is nursing him back to health. Each day, she opens his veins, letting his blood, curing his ails. Each day, he grows weaker. She lets more. The knight’s body can’t regenerate, the sorceress’s healing has been inverted. As he lays dying, the last thing he sees — the beautiful face of death.

We talk of a death by one-thousand paper cuts. Sometimes, that’s how losing my patience feels as a parent. In isolation, I can handle almost anything. But the accumulation of minor inconveniences, those minuscule nicks to the cephalic vein — eventually, like the knight — Accolon, Gawain, even Arthur himself, in some retellings — your patience succumbs, you find yourself staring at that beautiful face of frustration.

(Your kids’ faces are always beautiful, even when they’ve driven you to the brink.)

A silver lining, though. A trick from Milos of Croton, from powerlifting, from your Peloton trainer. Progressive overload. Each day you go through this stress testing — in the most literal sense — and each day you tolerate it a little better. At least, you try to. There are ups and downs — no avoiding that — and some days the cycle seems to last for weeks, but little by little, there is progress. Kiddo’s help becomes helpful; the Warthog gets potty-trained; the Monkey sleeps through the night. And in these sometimes imperceptible advances, the slow march of time, you realize that yes, maybe there were bad humors that needed to be released. The leeches served their purpose. Sometimes, you need to empty your cup in order to fill it.

And you finally press your coffee, still hot, amazingly, steaming, and as you pour it you remember that a longer steep leads to a stronger brew. And even if there isn’t a metaphor there, that’s fine — because the coffee is still good.

We’re back this week from a holiday weekend on the Shore with Gma and Papa CWD (and Auntie CWD, eMD). A lovely weekend: great weather, good food, warm water, and decent waves. But, the rides to and from were perfect encapsulations of the thousand paper cuts on Mrs. CWD and my patiences. By the end of the drive home, our nerves were frayed from the back and forth, needing this and needing that, the fights over blankets and toys and songs and stories and markers. It was enough for me to throw the kids right back in the car and take them to the pool to splash some pent up energy out. And, as flipped as my lid was when we arrived, just watching them play with reckless abandon — seeing their smiles — that was all I needed to reset.

Still didn’t make dinners any easier, though. So — as we’ve been wont to do lately — we made some grains, some meatball, threw them in a bowl, and dolloped an assortment of fermented veg on top (for both the nutrients and gut health).

If you, too, are swimming in CSA vegetables¹, here’s an idea to make use of them.

A week before you want to eat, finely chop a bunch of alliums (garlic scape, onion, leeks, scallion), some kale leaves and stems, and some bok choi, and toss it all in a bowl. Massage 2% salt by weight into the veg until they start releasing their liquids, and then — once the liquid begins to pool — dump all that into a mason jar. Ensure that the liquid covers the veg (adding a 2% salt brine if needed), and then seal the jar and let stand for 5-7 days (opening the jar daily to ensure that it doesn’t explode).

When you’re ready, cook some grains (we used a riff on risotto using steel cut oats and fish stock), some meatball, and put them all together — topping with that fermented kraut and any other experiments you’ve been working on.

So there you go — an easy bowl. Even if you don’t ferment your vegetables, this works equally well with sauteed or fresh greens, with a salsa, or just a spoonful of sour cream and some hot sauce. It’s summer: there are no rules.

With that, I’ll leave you to your weekends. Enjoy them. Get outside; let the sun warm you; dip your feet in the water, get dirt on your hands — even when it seems inconvenient. Don’t stress about them, these fleeting moments gone too soon.

1. Because you accidentally signed yourself up for two weekly farm shares from two different farms.