I thought the most interesting thing about today would be the beet.
I pulled four beets from the vegetable drawer because I knew if I didn’t do something with them today they’d go bad tomorrow.
I have a strange relationship with beets.
I want to love them.
I want to savor them like my friend Allison, who once said to me,
“Mmmm…I love beets.”
But I can’t. I just can’t. At best, I can tolerate beets when they’re roasted just so and soaked in a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
But beets are so incredibly beautiful that I will wash them and peel them and slice them and stand over them in wonderous amazement even if I won’t eat them.
The red pink of beets should not exist in nature.
It should be synthetic, it is so beautiful.
The spiral designs inside a beet, however, should exist in nature.
Beet innards are exactly the kinds of puzzles that nature produces and we call God.
I love beets, but I can’t eat them.
After the beets, I tried to take a nap.
Two of my kids were sleeping: one sprawled on the couch in a beet-colored dress with wrinkled flowers on the strap and the other with his head hanging off the bottom bunk.
He fell asleep in the middle of a tantrum while I tried to soothe him with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chapter 1, page 1.
There was a knock at the door.
It was Nachum.
Looking for my son.
I knew it was Nachum because I heard his fingers drumming on the metal railing outside.
I liked that I knew it was Nachum and didn’t mind so much that he was rousing me from my almost nap.
My son was not at home. He was at a basketball game with his dad.
I told this to Nachum. He turned around and left as quickly as he came.
I tried to take a nap.
There was a knock at the door.
It was not Nachum, but a man whose name should have been Nachum.
He was in a rumpled white button down shirt and black pants.
He had a long black beard, too.
He might have had a black yarmulke but I didn’t notice when he turned to walk away.
I was too busy remembering his smile.
I gave him 20 shekels and he was happy.
I was happy, too.
So happy, I stopped trying to take a nap.
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(This post was written in less than 15 minutes. Wanna take on the Friday 15-minute challenge? Write today for 15 minutes and leave a link to your post in the comments below and tag your post 15-minute Friday.)
