Puddles & Poppies 3-Ways

Puddles and Poppies

Frances-style

The other day my mom wanted to show

us the puddles and the poppies

that she had run past a few days before.

We packed our rainboots and our rain jackets.

First we walked by a wheat field and we didn't even know it was wheat at first.

I wanted to take all the wheat home to make a big loaf of bread.

I stuck the wheat into the backpack.

 See the wheat in Eleanore's hand?

That's what wheat looks like it's young.

This is a big puddle that we jumped into.

The water was warm in my boots.

Eleanore's jeans got super wet.

I got super wet, too!

Sometimes Eleanore and I held hands jumping the puddles

and splashed each other.

 

First we saw the poppies as a big red smear.

Then they were all spread out and I was surprised.

We made little people out of the poppies

and we took some of the buds and opened them up

and there were all different colors of poppies:

pink, light pink, dark pink or red.

This is when I was making one of the people.

On our way home our boots were filling up with puddle water.

That's some of my water!

Puddles and Poppies

Eleanore-style

The wheat was very cool because I'd never seen wheat before!

Frances was very excited about it.

She wanted to keep picking more and more.

Frances and I can lose our heads in between each puddle.

Sometimes, we ran through the puddles and hopped through them without our heads.

It was kind of scary because we couldn't see where we were going!

Here goes Frances. I'll bet this is going to be a big one!

Getting splashed was an awesome feeling.

Running and jumping into a big muddy gross puddle was great.

We ran and jumped so high I felt like I was flying.

And then when I landed, I felt like I was swimming.

Frances always pointed to a distant puddle and yelled, "PUDDLE!"

Then we both charged.

The field of poppies was beautiful.

The poppies were like little sparks, popping color and excitement in miles of surrounding vineyards and wheat fields.

Frances and I discovered that if we peeled open the little buds,

the petals were folded up inside and looked like crumpled-up raincoats.

Sometimes I don't like the rain.

But in this case, I loved it.

It made our day fabulous.

Without the rain, there would be no puddles.

And without the rain the poppies might not have beens so brilliant.

 Puddles and Poppies

Carolyn-style

See the green?

See the clouds in the background?

Beautiful. Heavy. Prolific.

It's been raining a lot in Uzes.

My sprout-lady says it's not normal.

But we do what we can to entertain ourselves.

We play cards.

We invent weird slalom relay races between the Platane trees

in the church parking lot, while ducking lightning strikes.

We downloaded Dumb and Dumber, made popcorn and laughed our heads off.

The other day the sun actually rose and I decided to take the "puppies" out to play.

Nothing better than mud puddles and poppy fields for restless puppies. 

Jeff went to french class.

At the first wheat field

Eleanore picked politely from the roadside, talking of making bread and pasta.

Frances hopped right into the field and yanked away.

At the puddle road--
a great dirt road
that winds between wheat fields and vineyards
and leads ultimately to the escargot farm
(yikes: I never like to think of how those things get blended and shoved back into their shells)--we pulled the rainboots out of the backpack,
they put on the raingear and off they went.

I'll bet a million dollars
that any mother would agree her very best moment as a parent
coincides with her kids giggling together.
Add mud, water and the outdoors to the giggles
and it's parental ecstasy.

On the way home, Frances decided her pants were just too wet.

The more that girl FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS, the happier she is.

In the sunny poppy field all that wild, wet energy just evaporated.

Everything slowed. 

I watched.

They played with the poppies,

showing each other

the marvels of seed and petal.

 I begged for a photo with each of them, of course...

But overall, I just tried to remain in the moment.

I just couldn't.

Why, I kept thinking, is this poppy field so special?

Is it just the contrast in color?

Is it just that I love the kids who love these poppies?

Is it the magic spell of France?

What?

So I came home and looked up the red poppy and found:

It's called the Flanders Poppy.

It was considered a weed that grows near fields of grain.

Its seeds germinate when the soil is disturbed by tilling--or bombing.

Enter WWI.

A Canadian soldier 

saw the poppies growing

through the bomb-shelled graves of fallen soldiers

in Flanders Field in Belgium.

In the middle of the war, having just buried his dear friend,

he wrote what is thought now to be the most "popular" poem of WWI.

He later died of pneumonia.

This poem inspired one woman,

Moina Michaeals,

to begin a campaign to make the Flanders Poppy

a national memorial symbol for WWI.

She won--only it's now an international symbol.

It wasn't just a symbol, either.

Fabrication of the poppies gave war-widows jobs. 

Money raised by the sale of the poppies was given to soldiers effectively ruined by war  

There's so much more to say about Moina

as well as the story of the Flanders Poppy.

But not here.

Here is John McCrae's poem

There is a desperation in this poem that

implies the horrors of life during WWI and this man's dedication to "the cause."

When I read it, I think of our little mud puddles vs. their trenches,

which were filled with rats by the millions,

lice that caused trench feaver, nits, frogs, corpses

and the smells of body, chloride of lime and poison gas.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

 The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Magnetic fields of poppies, children's laughter, lives lost, a refusal to forget.

Crazy how they're intertwined.

Lucky me to have the moments--

and then the moments to reflect.

It always floors me how everything--

and everyone--

has a story.

 Love to all.

Goodnight.

Frances Joy, Eleanore and Carolyn