Of Green Beans

If you're looking for something meaningful, you may want to try back tomorrow.  I'm not making any promises for the future, mind you, I'm just saying don't look any deeper into the following tale than is necessary, and, trust me, to dig into this one, you'll be fine with a toothpick.

Philip's grandparents are farmers.  This is actually true on both sides for him (May I interrupt this otherwise meaningless meandering to briefly mention that I always dreamed of having grandparents who lived on a farm.  Many of my favorite books growing up included a farm, and I was always jealous.  So, believe me when I say, inheriting two sets of farming grandparents was a minor highlight to putting that ring on my finger.  Now back to our regularly scheduled programming), but, while Nenaw and Papaw raise cattle, Grandpa and Grandma throw in a working of the land to produce fruits and vegetables, as well. 

Literally since our wedding day, we have been showered with the fruits of Grandma's garden.  Corn, plucked, shucked, de-cobbed and frozen for future use; jellies made in the kitchen of the very home in which Grandpa was born (though the food itself doesn't date back that far, don't worry); and green beans, harvested and canned by Grandma's loving hands.  All these have graced our table, but the green beans have darn near been a staple.  Until I ran out of the most recent batch.

Now all that remain in my pantry are empty glass jars waiting to be re-filled.  Meanwhile, I've come to realize that my family must find another means of ingesting vegetables until the time when we see these wonderful loved ones once again (loved, mind you, for being who they are, not merely for the bounty which they so graciously share).  This evening, therefore, after steaming frozen store-brand green beans in the microwave to be blended for Emmett's consumption, I set aside a few for those of us who enjoy solid foods to have alongside our own meal.

I issued Philip (a known hater of all things green, anyway, but a lover of Grandma's beans, naturally) a warning, "These are not Grandma's green beans . . . and they taste horrible."  He sighed.  We both knew that the day we became parents, or, rather, the day our daughter began sharing our food, was the day we needed to grow up and eat what was good for us, whether we liked it or not, for the sake of a good example.

The two of us dug in, silently detesting the squeaky chewiness of the "vegetables" on our plates.  We encouraged Micaiah to do the same.  Unprepared for the horror to come, she popped one bean happily in her mouth and it promptly came shooting back out.  To make a long story short, we made the best of a bad situation all around and even little girl did pretty well for awhile, but by the end of the meal, I spent a solid half hour convincing my daughter to swallow the last five green beans on her plate. 

My son, a lover of all things food, was the next to try these atrocities and he came to agree with the rest of us.  The little man threw a fit and finally refused the last four bites before we, weary chewy-green-bean-haters ourselves, threw in the towel and let him move on with his life. 

Philip's final word on the matter, "I'd like to sue that company for mental distress."

All that to say, we miss your green beans, Grandma (and, well, you and Grandpa are missed, as well).