“To get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”—Mark Twain
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They brought along the cardboard carton recycled many times. In it, eggs of various kinds and colors: some white, some brown, others a yellow tan of almost-green with brown flecked specks, and others still brown with an almost-rose whose specks reminded her of freckles over summer skin across cheeks hued and tinged in an under-blush.
She liked the variety, the difference, rejection of the need for outward same and to know from where they came. More in life should be that way, she thought and mused to self as they passed the open country along the two laned highway, flat of the plains beginning into roll and rise and folds of hills again.
World was changing with the spring. There was a difference in the sun, daylight and dawns in northern rise from its winter low. Green of the pastures, visible work of the fields, tinge on the trees of opening leaves, only beginning, not yet grown and full in form.
There seemed a ceremony and sacred ritual of the season. Like Easter of Sunday before—restore of life again into world and life that seemed a loss. It showed on the land. It told in the soul. She felt her growing then. It was not something she could deny, even if outward testimony stayed unspoken. But as the works of miracle-spring, even silent, changing showed.
From two-lane pave to white chalk gravel, they turned as destination neared. Wooden gates, opened then closed, and down the cedar lane—home hidden in the trees, fan of farm and fields in span around.
Joy and peace and a light elation, she felt all upon arrive.
They settled again, second home again, where they went to slow and feel life full, place where roots and belonging retained their bond and she felt as soon as there.
Child slept swaddled in blanket and tucked into safety of loveseat corner, shade of its back softening sun bright shining through window above. Child at peace, just as she, at rest in home and place.
Asparagus sprigs shone in their places, where over years, she’d learned and knew to search. She cut from the crowns and gathered in, returning to the country kitchen. Asparagus and eggs and food brought with, she drew a pan from topaz door beside the kitchen sink and placed upon the kitchen stove, adding shallow water over surface then raising it to heat.
Another pan, of deeper well, she drew and warmed to lower state and began with it: hollandaise that tasted to her as spring.
Begin of the sauce in mix and stir, her watch as the texture took.
Hollandaise in heat and make, she turned to the larger pan. Open of the carton recycled many times, she looked upon its choices and drew the yellow tans of almost green and the two of summer freckled hue undertoned in the faint rose-blush. They were the prettiest, her favorite in the gathering, and she wished to enjoy them then, not just to see, but to savor entirely as intended and meant.
Break of their shells and pour into pan of simmering water’s heat, she poached the eggs—two for her, and two for him—listening to water’s simmer and small bubbles’ rise from floor of pan.
They at them there at kitchen island, in the home where they belonged. Hollandaise over poached eggs’ shape, its taste mixed with soft yolk’s run. Hollandaise upon asparagus too, uncooked and pure from gather.
Savoring, she heard the sound of child’s wake, stir and coo in loveseat-lie. She went to her and brought her too, little eyes waking and adjusting to new sights around.
Child looked in fix on the yellow hollandaise.
She smiled, reading her child’s stare. “Would you like a little?” she asked, dabbing sauce upon her finger tip and raising to child’s lips.
Jolt of little body into her own, and in her hold, in effect of first-taste sense. Squinch of eyes in close, then wide-response of open; still of the little body, her hands to her mother’s chest—making sense out of what was new—then little body’s forward reach in lean for her mother’s finger to taste and experience all again; same little bodied response that made both her mother and father laugh.
In freshness of tastes and spring, world and spirit, she thought on gardens then: French gardens she once had seen, beauty hidden in nooks of walls in ancient homes where lives were lives were lived, more than show, but an enduring of something classic and which modernity aspires and imitates but, in haste, never achieves.
She thought of gardens on banks of a river, high in mountains and near to head; trellises in rise from earth like churches and castles from the land.
Would she ever see them again? Would she share them with her child? Or had they found their home—rooted, grounded, and belonging—in where it was they were right then?
Was such enough? Were there not infinite wonders, pleasures, and enjoyments wherever one found their self in world? Could one not make and create and manifest further pleasures that one sought?
She imagined garden there, in blend of ones she herself had grown and what she loved of the French and mountain ones from adventures-past and memories.
She could make it there.
Spring affirmed it in her soul.
Outside window, spring wind stirred and swayed limbs of the trees in lawn, sunlight’s change in sight and warmth to eyes and skin sensed as a dazzling dream.
She relished full-live and taste of joy right then with her loves with whom the joy was shared.