So we’re eating dinner as a family, a rice, broccoli and cheddar concoction with beef. Quite tasty – even the kids seemed to enjoy it! Jodi and I were taking turns asking the kids what they liked best. Gabe is a broccoli hound, so of course, he said the green stuff.
“Gabe,” I said, “do you like rice, too?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Cheese?”
“Yeah.”
“What about dirt and sunshine?”
Gabe twisted his face into a question mark. “Huh?”
“Isn’t that what broccoli is? Broccoli takes nutrients from dirt and energy from the sun to grow – so aren’t you eating dirt and sunshine?”
Gabe grinned. “Yeah!”
I turned to Brendan. “And it’s that way with all plants. So if cows eat plants, isn’t beef dirt and sunshine, too?”
“Yup!” said Brendan.
“And if we eat broccoli and beef, aren’t we also dirt and sunshine?”
And then I stopped. I was acting silly, of course. But then I looked at Bren and Gabe laughing together. And at Trevor, smiling back at me.
Dirt and sunshine.
And the next morning, I watched Emma walking to the bus in her girlie clothes and grubby shoes …
And me. And you, even.
What are any of us except dirt and sunshine?
Archangel Stomp 
And a soul . . .
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Yes. Now you're touching on what I saw when I looked around the table — when I realized I wasn't *just* being silly.
Dirt and sunshine. Ashes and light. I hadn't forgotten … 🙂
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More dirt than sunshine on to many of us….
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jinglebob, that's what I was going to say (she says, watching her sunburned sun eat dirt, a more direct method…)
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