The tale of the two tomatoes

My son picked out a huge tomato plant this last spring. With the help of his Uncle Lee and Aunt Linda it got planted along with a few other vegetables. After much patient anticipation the first few green tomatoes started to turn red. Soon we were picking 3 or 4 per day from this plant. They were delicious.

One day my son and I were doing our picking when I found a large tomato that some bugs had gotten to before we did. I picked it off the plant and tossed it on the ground. This greatly upset my son. He really wanted me to keep it. Then I found one more that was undesirable and also tossed it. I explained that we couldn’t eat buggy tomatoes and it was good just to leave them there on the ground and let go. An argument went on for awhile. Him explaining that he wanted to use “every” tomato his plant grew, no matter what, and me explaining why we couldn’t use the bad ones. Finally he reluctantly gave in and we went inside with our harvest.

The next morning around 5 a.m.; I heard a noise that woke me from a sound slumber. I got my eyes open just in time to see from my bed my son putting something on the floor by the door to his room. Then he vanished as quiet as a mouse. Perplexed, I got up and looked in his room. There I saw the two buggy tomatoes behind his dresser. Egads! What do I do now?

I went down the hallway and looked over the stairs to see where he was. I couldn’t see him. So I went down to look and as I approached our family room a very cheerful “hello Mommy” greeted me from our recliner. The TV was on and he managed to look like he had been watching NickJr for hours. He had taken his jacket off….how at 5 a.m. he had the calm mind while pulling off such a caper to put on a jacket and shoes is mind blowing to me.

I asked if he was okay and he said “yes, just wanted to get up early and watch some TV”. Being exhausted myself I said “okay” and told him that I was going to go back to bed for a little while. He said that was fine and he would just stay there and watch TV. On the way back up the stairs I stopped in the kitchen and grabbed a couple of zip-lock bags. It was way too early in the morning for me to deal with the situation so I thought best to contain it and figure things out later.

I snuck in his room; crawled down and reached behind the dresser to get the tomatoes. Ugh, gross… I sealed each one in a bag and then put them back behind the dresser. Still mystified why he would do such a thing; I rationalized that it was probably a little way to feel like he was in control when our situation has been so out of our control. It’s scary when your Mom is sick. He’s a tough kid, but he still gets upset when he hears me cough or something, and he gets nervous when I have to get my infusions each month. I think he is afraid I’ll have to stay in the hospital again. So; I think a few buggy tomatoes; no big deal. I figured I would just talk to him later. And with that thought I went back to bed.

Now here we are almost the end of October. Yes, I completely forgot about the tomatoes. I am walking down our hallway and suddenly get hit with a strong smell that to me smells like cat pee. I have 2 indoor cats and neither of which have ever done their business anywhere other than were they are supposed to. I start to worry about the oldest one that I had for about 12 years because I know going out of the box is a sign of illness. I start looking for the source of the smell. I kept coming back to my son’s room. That was where the smell was the strongest.

So I called him and our nanny upstairs to ask if they could identify where the smell was coming from and help me find it. Still thinking it was a cat thing, I looked all over for anything that looked like it… nothing. Just a smell. I bought a large air freshener that afternoon and hoped that if it was the cat I would see her in the act and could take her to the vet.

That evening my son in the midst of playing a game with me says “Mom, I know where the smell is coming from and it’s not cat pee”. What? I’m confused. He continues to tell me that it is something he hid in his room. Then my memory comes back to me…the tomatoes! He was being candid and so sweet I let him tell me about as if I didn’t know.

He concluded saying that he still didn’t want to give up the tomatoes and asked me to help him think of something to do to save them. After brainstorming for a few minutes I tell him he can freeze them. He is a little concerned that someone would see them in the freezer and freak out. So we concoct a plan to wrap them in white freezer paper that I happened to have on hand, write that it belongs to him on the outside and place it in a spot on our freezer that is sort of hard to access and see if you don’t know it’s there. This thrills him.

We gather our supplies and approach the toxic tomato area. He grabs his gardening gloves to wear so he doesn’t have to touch them. It’s hard not to laugh seeing him in all black clothes, he was trying on his Halloween costume earlier, and his garden gloves; like a spy ready to unearth some hidden biological weapon.

He reaches in and brings out the first bag. Ohhh my. You do not want to see a buggy tomato that has been in a zip lock bag in a warm room for 4 months…trust me. He says the bag is leaking and we hurry and put it in another bag. The second one comes out and it looks even more horrid than the first. I ask him if he is sure he wants to keep them and he very firmly says “yes”.

I wrap them up in the freezer paper and he writes his name and “private” on the outside. We take it down to the deep freeze and put it in the secret spot. Which is where they will stay until he gets married. And then I plan to give the package to his bride along with a copy of this blog.

Later I asked him why he did it? He said he really just wanted to keep the tomatoes and he wanted to see what would happen to them. I asked him if he had anything else in his room that could turn out badly and he said he had a few secret things hidden but nothing that would go moldy or rotten and start to stink.

I’m relieved that it wasn’t a dead mouse or something…..