Salinas solution
Sunday April 05th 2015, 10:54 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Life

The wide expanses of farmland. White heads, some enormous with the plants sagging under their weight: “That one’s cauliflower,” said our niece. We three passengers were all trying to decipher crops from the expanses of green. We passed a proud sign: Iceberg Lettuce! (Wait, wait, let me guess.)

And the artichokes, the raspberries, the newly-planted-anyone’s-guess. The irrigation canals were dry but the fields were green.

And it rained, not much at all this first day of the incoming storm and less than we’ll be getting at home a hundred miles or so north, but any rain at all, we’ll take it.

Re the purple sweet potatoes I’d roasted in olive oil, someone wondered, “Where did these come from?”

“Here,” I answered. “Salinas.”

And so Easter was happily spent with family at his cousin’s house with her three small children running around excited at all the company. The baby, like all babies everywhere, takes especial delight in touching index fingertips with smiley people he doesn’t remember: close, connecting, just-at-length-enough as needed. (Sometimes he let me snuggle him too.) The three-year-old, after showing off the bows on her pretty shirt, played many a game. Her six-year-old sister quietly studied her grandmother’s drawing in action, intent on being able to create flourishes and flowers like that and was highly pleased with herself when she pulled off quite a decent version. Her grandma was even prouder.

I said something to (to us she’s) Aunt Mary Lynn and the three-year-old stopped right there and turned and stared at me and then back at my daughter across the kitchen: “You mean she’s yours?”

“Yes,” I smiled, “she’s my little girl.”

Little?! The kid took in how a 5’11” grown woman could be…!…and, done with that, jumped and skipped away with, “Okay!”


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