Waiting for Avocadot

During dinner (jackburgers: 100% whole grain wheat circle-shaped flat bread buried under a truckload of colorful spring greens topped with a circle-shaped slab of grilled, pasture-fed, hormone-free ground beef, then melted pepper-jack, then sliced avocado, then slivered red onion, then a squirt of this a dab of that for the others but not for me, blah blah blah; MrZ's & mine open-faced, the Eenas' with another slice of unfluffybread on top; ample steamed Cruciferae on the side) the Black Eyed Peas came on, and they were singing that song -- you know the one, the one my sixteen year-old once remarked was about "drinking their paychecks."

"As if that's smart," she editorialized.

Lets go way out spaced out
And loosing all control
Fill up my cup
Mozoltov [sic]
Look at her dancing
Just take it off

Don't you love a good opportunity for a [sic], even if you're [sic]worthy as often as I am?

So, anyway, I said to MrZ, "I want to be Jewish when I grow up."

"Why?" he asked.

"Do you know what 'mazel tov' means?" I asked.

"I think it means 'Good luck,' or does it mean 'congratulations?'" He sounded genuinely confused around his mouthful of beef and grain and veg.

I became so excited that I nearly choked on a bit of avocado.

"'Mazel tov,' as I understand it, expresses gratitude for good luck that has already been received. We all know there's too little of that going around these days."

Maybe that's a crappy reason to want to be Jewish when I grow up, but MrZ didn't say so. He just ate. Chomp, chomp, chomp. He even cleaned up what Cruciferae remained in the serving dish while I rinsed and loaded.

He's eating well these days, he's that worried I'm already gone.

I don't know whether I'm gone or not.

Not yet.

Girls mature faster than boys, they say; and, he's eleven months ahead of me, chronologically. His mistakes have scarred my heart, probably permanently. I constantly look back and ask myself, "where was my first mistake, and how can I fix it now?"

We're going through a thing.

A painful, unwanted thing.

Most of the time I feel depressed. I dump coffee grounds into the InSinkErator, thinking, "Oh, fuck it all to hell, I'd rather not live to see the healing of our planet through the proper acidification of my own personal soil anyway."

But then some small miracle happens: I trip over a blamelessly horny-looking jack-in-the-pulpit; I witness a white riot of trillium grandiflorum forbidding the resurgence of even whiter, incapably purpling winter; I watch and become aroused as Lily of the Valley begins its quietly violent spearing of the air; I watch with lust, Apis mellifera making love to Muscari armeniacum.

These small natural happenings make me a tiny bit hopeful. I get back to composting coffee grounds and egg shells and produce parings. I bravely include avocado, both skins so tough and pits so stubborn I've never been able to coax them (suspended by toothpicks over water-filled jam jars) into germination.

I think everything might be alright, eventually, if only I can wait long enough to gain through witness of nature a little perspective on our human "failings."

Some people believe only swans are meant to be together for life.

Regarding that I would ask, "Meant by whom, exactly?"

Also, I would say, "Any person might choose to live as swan, even if that choice proved difficult to live up to."

I have to acknowledge that even the most thoughtful human life is just a giant compost heap, prone to the influences of whatever's been thrown in along the way.

I've put avocado pits and other kitchen parings into my own heap, along with yard waste (green and brown); rabbit shit and coffee grounds.

Through compost, I've grown many an accidental tomato plant, and one or two that have even produced fruit. Here, up north, our seeds don't always get hot enough to become sterile, and that's fine by me.

I've grown no avocado plant -- neither accidentally nor on purpose.

It would be neat, though, one day to discover an avocado sprouting from the heap. In fact, it would be reassuring -- reassuring that nature will always have its way, blamelessly and without judgment.

If the avocado pit, though, from within its warm and fertile confines, ultimately produces no new plant, no new fruit, regardless of its assumed potential and despite its imagined natural yearnings, then, well who is Reason -- who am I to find fault in that?