I Am Isabel the Storyteller

Metaphor alert! I’m spinning three plates right now.

Mimi  asks me to keep track of Sam and Clyde while they play in the sandbox. (Each twin counts for  two plates.) AND, while I keep an eye on the twins I have to weed Mimi’s garden. Again.  In particular, Mimi said to  find the weeds I missed yesterday. So. Lots of plates.

Oliver walks down the hill from the barn. Want a hand?

I know he thinks this as a chance to talk Preliminary Hearings, but I’m too steamed to plot and scheme. I yank weeds and blurt out, We don’t even have TV anymore.

Hmmmmm? Oliver murmurs and re-plants a weed I’ve just yanked.

I give him my one eyebrow-raised look.

Wow. How do you do that, Isabel? Then he picks up one of my “weeds.”  Isabel, this is a baby Boston lettuce. It’s a late season crop Mimi started in between the pole beans. He points to a plant that I haven’t yanked. This here, though? This IS a weed. Curly dock weed. See, jointed stems?

I sniff and we work together for a minute, replanting the lettuces. Yikes, I think to myself,  yesterday I must have pulled out a bunch of lettuces. 

Suddenly we’re attacked. The twins crowd into the row with us. We do too have TV!  We do too have TV!

Oliver looks at me for clarification, but, before I can explain the twins do it for me.

They race back to the sandbox, calling over their shoulders, It’s in the closet! It’s in the closet!! Come build roads! Come build roads!

Oliver guffaws—yes “gawfgawfgawf” like some big happy Scotsman—and goes over to the sandbox to play with Sam and Clyde.

Plate-spinning, but I’m not steamed anymore.

Maybe during birding, Oliver can come back to explain what  he knows about Preliminary Hearings. (I’m not sure a big happy Scotsman will know anything about revenge though.)

Isabel Scheherazade, story-spinner

(sketches by my friend Ryan)