Spinning Pins

Dear Christopher John,

The night you were born we stood in the laundromat folding our clothes together, and the door was open to the heat and the bright dinnertime light. And we drove over blue ridges, one mountain lighter behind the closer one, and past the gardens and horses and creeks and into the valley, over the bridge, up to the farm and there was a rainbow leaping off dark sky.

And we drove home with our sunflowers, peppers, potatoes, coxcomb, and put them all away and looked at our plants and our cat. And there was a pile of dirty dishes which I started to do. And your Uncle John weighed our tomatoes, one batch seven pounds, the other batch eight pounds, and you weighed six pounds. And when the dishes were clean we boiled water and cut Xs in the tomatoes and boiled them briefly and took off their skins. And the skins made an angular mound in a blue bowl, their flesh was firm and sometimes it broke and cicada sounds were rising and falling outside the back door.

And three big bowls of boiled tomatoes slowly became six clear jars of skinned tomatoes, as we listened to music and slipped off the skins and toasted you with champagne and got tomato pulp on the outside of the glasses, and seeds and juice puddled on the counter and the big canning kettle started to heat and murmur on the stove. And we waved a moth away from the fragrant tomatoes. And we sealed the jars and put them in the boiling kettle and covered it up to wait.

And it was late and black and heat came off the steaming stove and in from the deep summer night, cicadas, owls, crickets, silent raccoons nosing through the weeds. And this day, July 30, became a pin on the calendar because you were born, in Florida, to Sarah and Chris. And we made a dinner with sweet corn and meat and yellow summer squash, and ate at our table under our ceiling. And the wait was over and we pulled the jars of tomatoes out with oven mitts. And I wish for you a night like this.

And the next day the moonflower bloomed.