BIGGER IS BETTER?

 

                                                 Eileen Cichello

 

 

Moderation is a virtue that I am not particularly familiar with.  It’s more like “All or Nothing.”  This can lead to some interesting dilemmas.

 

For instance, there’s the matter of having seven kids.  Sam says I told him before we were married that I wanted a dozen kids.  I insist that I said no such thing.  Obviously, even with just seven, I never projected ahead to that meaning that in the future some 22 people might be staying in our house for the holidays.  That’s a number that might have daunted even me!  And there’s this house we live in, 14 rooms at the start, increased to 18, plus full basement and attic.  Not to mention a very large two story barn

 

Our gardening endeavors started off small, with a little plot at the side of the barn.  This grew to a larger plot at the back of the yard.  The ground there yielded mostly stones and the kids insist to this day that we had an arrangement that for every 100 stones they picked up, we would give them a can of soda.  Well, all I can say is money was tight and we never actually counted the stones!

 

Gardening became horrific the year Sol and Bea Leonardi offered us the use of some of their land for a garden.  Operating on that good old premise that bigger IS better, Sol rotatilled an enormous plot for us and we planted corn, beans, tomatoes and sundry other vegetables.  We now had two large gardens, one here, one there.

 

It was a hot, humid summer.  I’d drive the kids up to Leonardi’s to weed.  We wouldn’t be there five minutes before the whining started.  “It’s too hot.”  “I’m thirsty.”  “I don’t feel good.” “I gotta go.”  I got an inkling that things were out of control the day I flew over several rows of beans to pound our son Anthony for one whine too many.  The next summer, we had a small garden at the back of our yard.

 

There was the canning and freezing.  Among other things, I got into making applesauce to meet the vacuum-cleaner appetites at our table.  I bought a metal tub at the hardware store and my husband Sam hooked up a motor to a machine that scrunched the apples.  A friend walked into our kitchen as the machine spewed applesauce from the machine into the tub sitting on the kitchen floor and said, “What on earth are you doing?”

 

 I don’t remember how many jars of applesauce I produced that season.  What I do remember is that the overloaded cellar shelves the jars were on collapsed and my applesauce ended up all over the cellar floor.  As did the jars of tomatoes that had gone through the same process.

 

Then there was the summer when, for one solid week, we had 13 kids staying in our house.  There were our seven, two Fresh Air kids who didn’t like each other, two nephews visiting plus another niece and nephew.   Of course, they broke into factions and declared war on each other.   Accusations flew  “He’s picking on me,”  “She called me a bonehead,”  “He took my ball,” etc.   They whined, argued, fought, picked on each other and elected a scapegoat that everyone picked on.  Well---you get the idea.  Before the week was up, I seriously considered sneaking out of the house and disappearing into the sunset, leaving no forwarding address. Being an Irish Catholic, of course I didn’t.   

 

There’s a lot to be said for the virtue of moderation!