Constancy

One afternoon, many years ago, when I was still living at home, I went down to my parents' chest freezer to search for something. I don't remember what. I looked and looked -- tubs and tubs and tubs of blackberries, applesauce, green beans, broad beans, blueberries, raspberries, nuts, seeds, dead baby robin.

imagine sound of record scratching and the entire world halting

Uh. Gross??! 

My mother is a park naturalist, and sometimes keeps things ... strange things ... for use in displays. Dead baby robin bones are, as one might imagine, a great thing for a display. 

Not so much for someone's freezer, though.

Fast forward to yesterday, we're out in the garden. My son is helping my mother weed one of her herb patches, and I notice over in the rose garden that there is a thistle bigger than any I've seen before. "Hand me the little trowel", I say. "I want to get out that big thistle!"

My mother looks at me nervously. Which one? She asks. Where are you digging? she asks.

That one, I show her. 

She hands me the trowel and says -- just be careful, close by there will be some great blue heron bones I'm saving. I found it and brought it home to bury. I'll dig it up in a few months and get the bones for the nature sanctuary.

I hand back the trowel. I'm not that interested in getting the thistle, I say.

It's good to know, I suppose, that some things never change.