The Saplings

As always, I was struck by the postcard beauty of her property: the old broad barn, perfectly preserved; the 18th century clapboard house standing strong and straight and prim as its owner, its double chimneys taking no guff from centuries of New England weather. And then, the surprise! The whole scene so overrun with daffodils as to make me forget any other possible use for the color yellow.

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After the Salad

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I dream of salad bars; spinach and red peppers and pickled beets and croutons, chunks of feta cheese and marinated mushrooms and a variety of creamy oily dressings. I think salad bars may be gone for good. It seems like a bearable loss, for sure, considering what others are losing and considering the losses all of us are sustaining: a sense of the inevitable, the natural, the normal and the belief in a future that bears resemblance to a past.

Still though, I think of the salad bar and crave its easy luxury. Veggies plucked from the ethers, chopped by fairies. The dressings poured magically into labeled cruets. The waxy, cardboard to-go boxes, stacked and waiting for the likes of me. All of the salad bar’s offerings somehow filled and refilled, and the surfaces wiped clean so that I never once had to think about the kind of labor that goes into a system maintained by many for the ease of some.

These days I make salads at home, clumsily and with very little grace. I have to concentrate hard at the market to remember to buy red peppers and feta cheese. I don’t much like chopping vegetables, so my salads look sloppy and rushed and sometimes I eat open-faced peanut butter sandwiches instead. I think I am starting to understand the immutable correlation between engagement and reward. I understand so much more now.

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