Touching Grass
has healing powers...
Mars has entered the flower-picking era. Weeds, dandelions, clover, anything with a stem and a head, all of it qualifies. She walks ahead of me in the park and bends down every three feet, plucks something out of the ground, and turns around with both hands full like she has just done a service for the both of us. Then she does it again. And again. By the end of the hour she has a collection, which she carries back to the blanket and spreads out in some order only she understands, and inspects.
It is the cutest thing I have ever seen and I’m aware that’s a low bar because she’s mine, but still.
There’s a particular restlessness that builds in you when you live in Brooklyn. It starts somewhere around your sternum and creeps up. You’re walking past the same bodega, breathing the same exhaust, dodging the same scaffolding, and one day you realize your kid has not seen a worm in weeks.
Brooklyn is the love of my life. I will defend her in any room. But the city has a way of pressing in on you, and on a toddler, and there’s a moment that comes (often, lately) where I look at Mars and think okay, we need to find some grass. Now. Today.
New York gives us a lot, and the parks are her great mercy. Prospect and Central are not just parks. They are portals. You walk in through one of those stone arches or down some path lined with overgrown something or other, and the sound shifts. The horns dim. The pace drops. Suddenly you’re somewhere else. Somewhere green. And there’s a toddler in front of you bending over a patch of clover with the kind of focus most people reserve for very serious things.
I love that Mars is growing up in the city. For now. She’s cultured in a way I never was at her age. She’s bold. She’s exposed to people and food and noise and color and weirdos and beauty. I would not trade any of it. But there is simply nothing, nothing, like watching your kid run flat-out across an open lawn for no reason. watching her flop down on her belly and roll. Watching her decide, on her own, that a dandelion is worth carrying home. Letting her use nature as her backdrop as she doodles and makes up stories.
The other gift of a park day is the snacks.
Non-negotiable in our house. A park day is a snack day. Me and now Mars, we like variety. We are not one-snack people. We set up for hours and we want options, we want stations, we want the buffet experience under a tree.
I pack a variety of snacks. A few sweet treats because joy is allowed. On this particular day, we have Gildas, pickled rhubarb, fruits and pasta. Along with a rotating cast of our clean go-tos, which is where Little Spoon comes in. The puffs are a no-brainer, easy, mess-free, gone in a second. The oat bars do a lot of heavy lifting on the hungry-toddler-meltdown front. And then there are the Fruit Rippers, which Mars and I have started calling twizzlers because that is basically what they are. The closest thing to candy without being candy, which means they are extremely precious cargo. But we eat these on our way home, we share them, one for her, one for me, all the way home. It is its own little ritual now. Sometimes I think she only agrees to leave because there’s a ripper waiting.
I’ve talked about Little Spoon before and I will keep talking about them because the ingredient list is the kind of thing I can actually read and pronounce, and Mars loves the taste, and that is the whole equation. Win, win, blanket spread out, kid covered in grass, weed bouquet drying in the sun.
These little days are the real ones. The ones I want to remember. Not the big plans, not the events, not the schedule. Just a blanket, my kid rolling around like a small wild animal, a pile of found flowers/weeds, and snacks within arm’s reach.
Touch the grass. Bring the snacks. Let them get a little dirty. Let them pick the weeds.
Xx
Gina 🍅