A friend brought her child over for a visit. We spent time on the deck, while her son swung on the swing, and after a bit he made it known that he was hungry.

"I am so sorry! I should have offered a snack before this. Would you like crackers and cheese? Or a banana?"

His eyes lit up at the mention of a banana, and I went to fetch it. He chewed it slowly, as if he was mimicking a cartoon where the monkey smooshes the fruit between his teeth.

I smiled at the memory of holding my fourth baby when she was seven months old. I had a banana in my other hand. A man asked if she had started solid food yet, and I said no.

"Well I think she just did!" the neighbor laughed. I noticed that my daughter had gotten her mouth around the banana and was chomping down. 

My friend and her son and I went inside and she tossed his peel into the trash. I did not want to correct her but I do prefer to put food scraps in the compost. Was it a silly thing?

When an apple core, or the dregs of the vegetable drawer end up in the garbage, they get carried. First, Ben totes it to the bins by the house. Then on the night before collection he pushes it to the street. Early the next morning a man on the hip of a truck hoists the contents into the back, which travels to an unknown destination a few miles away to rot with broken toasters, plastic wrap and gooey containers. Maybe the ubiquitous sea gulls find edible bits, but mostly it lingers like an abscess tooth in the mouth of the hillside.

When a peel goes into the compost it travels thirty feet, gets turned over a few times, and decomposes into soil that feeds the tomatoes. Which feed my family.

The other day I got an email that raised my hackles. Someone complained about a message I had sent. My instant reaction was to get defensive. To make her wrong. I carried her words around in my head like garbage, and they made my interactions edgy. Instead of listening to the person in front of me I was refining snarky replies to the woman online.   

By the third day of lugging around my annoyance I considered what she said. I turned it over, and looked again. She had something to teach me. The concerns she had raised broke down my position, and I began to see things in a new way. 

Which fed me. Like tomatoes, not being thrown but tucked beside the lettuce.