Love, Jimmie

So I had a garden last year.  Does that surprise you?  It surprised me.  But I like to think I have enough of Madre in me to grow stuff and not always kill everything so I tilled up a bunch of space and planted a bunch of rows of seeds.  I tried for green beans, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, okra and jalapenos.  And dill, because I wanted to make pickles (Ha! Ha! Yeah, that was successful . . .).   

Naturally, of all the things I planted, the thing that I didn’t love was of course the thing that grew well.  I could pick 5 or 6 scraggly green beans to throw in a pot of soup, or one or two spindly-looking cucumbers of a week but those freaking jalapenos that I planted specifically for a person who was a large part of my life at the time grew like wildfire.  Unfortunately, right before the jalapenos turned into a bumper crop, that person and I parted ways and I was left with hundreds of those damn peppers as a lovely, constant reminder of a failed relationship.  Yay. 

Still, I made new friends with those jalapenos.  Jose took about 500 of them and made sauces and spices for his kitchen which indeed brought us closer together as he eventually traded me a washing machine for those peppers.  I befriended Felix who liked to make salsa with them.  I put them on the break room tables at work hoping people would take them home and out of my sight.  They were taken, not as quickly as donuts were, but taken nonetheless.  In the spicy-loving crowd, I was popular for the summer.   

I also learned to make a few things with those jalapenos for my friends to enjoy.  Just because I don’t eat them doesn’t mean that others won’t, I reasoned.  All in all, it didn’t turn out so badly to have grown about a million peppers I would never eat.  All things work for good and all that . . . .

Now, fast forward to last week.  I have a co-worker, Rosita Wang, who has recently been uber-pregnant.  It’s adorable because before she became with child she weighed about a buck o’ five and from day one, that baby had nowhere to go but out.  Rosita Wang developed the cutest shelf which I often caught her using to hold her cup when she typed or as a table for writing memos to herself on post it notes.  I thought it was great fun to say, “Rosita Wang, that outfit makes you look pregnant.” Anyway, last Friday she asked a few of us how to use the bag of jalapenos her neighbor had given her and naturally, I chimed in with my two cents.  I sent a couple of recipes and we all discussed how to best use those spicy peppers in chili.  On Saturday, Rosita Wang sent me a running commentary via text on her success with my jalapeno recipes – her husband and father-in-law were impressed with her jalapeno cooking prowess and everyone enjoyed the spy-sheee.  The chili we all brainstormed on was a hit as well.   

Until Sunday.  Rosita Wang went into labor on Sunday, two and half weeks early.  The baby, a boy, is healthy and fine as is Rosita Wang, so I don’t think the prematurity was harmful.  However, I can’t help but feel slightly responsible for the birth of that baby.  Maybe if she had laid off the spicy stuff, Baby Tater would have stayed put a couple more weeks.  Instead, Baby Tater decided to come early and honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think Rosita Wang should thank me.  I did her a huge favor, right?  I made the baby stop pressing on her bladder and just come home already.  Don’t y’all think I should get some credit here?  Yeah, me too.

So, Amy Sue Love . . . .  this here story was for you.  I’m offering something here – if you get tired of hauling your own Baby Tater around on your bladder and writing memos to yourself on your baby shelf, you give me a holler.  I’ll send you some recipes involving jalapenos and you can make them and eat them and have a baby 24 hours later.  You’re welcome!

Congratulations Rosita and Mr. Wang!  Baby Tater is beautiful!