Meditation: On Green Beans

When green beans are ripe, they snap off the vine into your hand with just a little resistance. When they are overripe, long and hilly like the eastern Nebraska landscape, they fall off into your palm at the slightest touch, as if they are tired of hanging on the bush and just want to lie down for a bit. Sometimes we throw these to the dog, who doesn't eat them. It's unclear if this is because he doesn't like them or because he can't find them; the grass where we throw them is too high to tell. He pounces through it with great glee when we fling vegetables, but the outcome is a mystery.

My father's garden has two kinds of green beans: bush beans and pole beans. Bush beans grow close to the ground on their little shrubs, and they often become entangled in the stalks of their plants. Unable to escape, they're forced to grow in curves and curls that are hard to harvest. You have to hunch on the ground and bend the little bush back and forth, and pull the curvy beans away without breaking the stalk. It's somewhat painstaking and the crouching makes my calves burn. Later, we will take one or two of these curly beans and throw them on the kitchen floor, where the cat will bat them about until they fly under the pantry door. Then she will sit in front of the door, staring expectantly at the doorknob, reaching up a paw to pat it or occasionally sliding an arm under the door to grope for her lost toy. If no one rescues the bean, she will mope for a few minutes and then attempt to get into the cupboard that holds the extra grocery sacks.

Pole bean bushes are more attractive than their midget siblings. The stalks twine around the pole in a criss-cross pattern that looks too complicated to be achieved without a loom, and the leaves have fewer holes in them. My father can't keep the rabbits out of the garden, despite the electric fence, and they chew the bush beans. They're too short to do much damage to the pole beans, so the leaves and shady stalks are healthy and rife with ladybugs, although I can't see any aphids. Do aphids eat bean plants? If they don't, why are there ladybugs here? I remember that old rhyme: "Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children are alone." The babies are probably on fire, too, I think. Ladybugs don't crawl very fast.

In addition to being prettier, Pole beans are easier to harvest, because not only do they grow long and straight, but they are far enough off the ground that you can stand up to pull them off the plant. At the top of the bean is a little curly cap. You can tell it used to be a white flower before it became a bean. If you pick the bean correctly, all that remains on the stalk is a small green stem that ends in a little flourish. If you pick a bean that is not quite ripe, though, the cap and stem hold on, and the bean snaps off at the first joint. It is decapitated, frilly cap still in place. It makes me think of the guillotine, and wonder how many people were wearing hats during the French Revolution. It's gruesome. Beans make me think of gruesome things, like ladybug babies flambé and disembodied, hatted heads.

My mother is getting tired of beans, because she's had to prepare them every night for a week, and there's no end in sight. She promises to send some home with me.(Fortunately, she will forget, and I will go home with no more produce than a Walla Walla Sweet onion. I won't have any room in my suitcase, anyway.) She fixes them the same way every night, steamed with a little bit of salt and pepper. When beans are steamed, they change from their decorous medium green to a deep kelly. Sometimes my mother adds small pieces of bacon before steaming, and, when my brother and sister aren't home or aren't paying attention, diced onions. The beans taste very faintly of dirt, but mostly of green and salt and nutrients. We eat them gladly, and my sister's not-boyfriend endears himself to my mother by having a second helping. My sister picks them out of the serving bowl with her fingers, and my mother glares at her. My father pokes her with the serving fork for the chicken, since she is too far away for my mother to reach. We laugh, and continue eating our beans.