You know the really nice feeling that comes when you walk in the yard and see a pansy that has wintered over? I envy you. The only things that winter over at my place are fruit flies in my kitchen. My little year ‘rounders are a sign to my husband Bob that “it’s working”. And what is it that’s working? A repulsive heap of decomposing food he keeps in an charming cauldron and refers to as compost. 

          I figure that this big ugly clay jar on the counter, filled with molded food which has changed color at least twice since we declared it a leftover, partially satisfies his male-oriented need to grow things.

         He used to fulfill more of this need with his foot-long ponytail. Last month, in a solemn ceremony (rivaled only by the burial of my hamster when I was three) I cut it off. No, this is not because of any pathological drive on my part to sever male appendages, but I promise I will give that some further thought.

         He hasn’t liked the ponytail for years, but the reason he kept it growing was because of my mother. You see, she hated the thing. And what could be more motivating than that? I only pray his pierced ear did not play a part in her demise, although she repeatedly assured me that it would. Since his haircut, he’s had two nightmares. In both, he’s heard her call down from heaven, “It’s about time!” and he’d wake up shaking. Bob couldn’t stand it when my mother was right, which she always was and obviously still is.

         The night we snipped, Bob went into a funk. Around 2 am, I found him in the kitchen. He was pouring himself a shot of whiskey from a bottle we’ve had over ten years. He drank it in one gulp. After he finished choking, I held his hand.

         “I know it’s hard,” I said.

         “It took seven years to grow.” Then he went back to the whiskey bottle, picked it up, changed his mind, and put it down. He opened the freezer and found a bag of mini Milky Ways and began stuffing five in his mouth at a time.

         “Honey. Don’t do this to yourself.” I wrenched the bag from his hands. “Binge eating on candy is just a temporary fix. You can’t hide your feelings in chocolate. It won’t help.”

         “But you always stuff yourself with peanut butter and Ritz.”

         “That’s different. That helps.”

         Bob has a garden. I’d like to say that he grows vegetables from all his labor, but the fact is he doesn’t. The few cucumbers he’s brought to the dinner table were already shriveled and looked pickled. The only perennials he’s managed to produce annually are woodchucks.

         So why does Bob continue, year after infertile year? Does it stem from a man’s need to grow things? I’ve heard that the basis of this is the male jealousy of the female’s ability to bear children. Giving birth provides women with a sense of continuation of life. But I bet that this pregnancy-envy and it’s female counterpart would never stay in the psychology books if, in fact, each gender was given the experience they sub-consciously wished for.

         One afternoon I found Bob at the dump asking strangers for their bags of leaves, which he uses as fertilizer. He lumbered over to my car, obviously in a crabby mood. I figured since he was carrying a garbage bag and scowling, he was probably upset about something way over the top of the stupid scale.

         “See him?” He pointed to a fellow in a red sedan. “These are his leaves.” He lifted the bag.

         “Uh huh.” I looked up at him.

         He shook his head. “There are pine needles in with these leaves.” His mustache was sweaty.

         “Oh . . . well. I guess that’s a problem, wouldn’t you say?”

         He was incredulous. “Don’t you remember last year?”

         “Well, I . . . ”

         “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

         “I do, Bob. Really important leaf problems . . . I remember. Right?”

         “Of course! The pine needles. Everybody knows how acidic they are.”

         “Yes, we all know.” I softly touched his hand and dabbed his mustache with an old Burger King napkin. “But it’s all over now, sweetheart.”

         Bob spends lots of time watching me like a sentry, lest I throw vegetables in the trash and not in the compost jar. This drives me nuts. So instead of dealing with my anger directly the way healthy people do, I get an enormous passive-aggressive kick out of sneaking inappropriate things into the jar.

         Once I put a miniature helium balloon in there before putting the lid back on. When Bob opened the jar, it flew up to the ceiling casting stringy spinach spittle all over the kitchen. Another time, I bought one of those talking greeting cards that lets you tape your own message. So I put the microchip in the jar after recording the cat doing her crazy night yowls. I was in the bedroom when he opened the lid, but I could still hear that night’s surplus of stewed tomatoes plop onto the floor before hearing Bob say to our dog, “Your mother’s a lunatic.” I know this is all very sick.

         Not often enough, he empties the jar out back in a stinky pile of decaying matter. This attracts all the cute little mice in the universe. Don’t believe what you read about the building boom causing a decline in the country’s skunk population. They’re all having an antipasta blow-out bash in my back yard.

         I really hate the compost.

         Once I tossed two carrots in the garbage. Bob was behind me.

         “Wait just one minute!” he said.

         “Pardon?” I did a slow turn, postponing the inevitable.

         “What did you just do?” he asked. I remember saying that to my first puppy a lot. “That was,” he searched for the right word, “wasteful!”

         I felt shame.

         “You took my garden’s vitamins and you threw them away.”

         I hung my head, feeling terrible.

         “It’s not funny.”

         “I know it’s not funny, Bob.” Whenever he said that, I had the uncontrollable urge to laugh. Please stop talking about compost, I said to myself as I cough-laughed into a towel.

         “There’s something I’ve kept inside that I need to discuss with you,” he said, while retrieving the carrots from the trash.

         Now he picks the time to respond to my chronic ‘don’t harbor your feelings’ shtick.

         “Yes?” A little hyena yelp came out from my throat.

         “You always say that I shouldn’t keep my feelings inside.”

         “Well, Bob, sometimes it is, actually, better to keep them in. Like your compost. You let things build up and rot and in the long run, you’re a better person for it.”

         He ignored this. “I know about the pepper relish.”

         That did it. I clutched my stomach, pretending to heave, buried my face in the towel and ran out of the room.

         So, do men need to grow things? Yes. I guess most, though not all living things like to nurture. (I have seen my angelfish eat their babies.) But nurturing can take so many forms. It’s not just the raising of young, but the participation in creation such as helping a seed find the sun, building a storage shed you never thought you could, or making a sandwich with ingredients you like, but you’ve never heard of anyone combining. And ultimately, there’s the need - no the joy - in taking care of something or someone.

         But what about the man who can’t grow anything at all? Is he forever caught in the frustration of attempt?

         “Why do you continue?” I finally asked one night, as we shared Stop & Shop summer-fresh salad bar.

         “I like it.”

         “But you never get what you want.”

         “Oh, but I do.”

         I looked out the window behind him. There were four baby woodchucks playing in the Pest-Repellent Motion-Detector Water Sprayer blasting in the empty-podded snow pea area.

         After dinner, I watched as Bob walked into the back yard. First, he put the sprinkler on so the cucumber seeds might sprout. Even from the kitchen table, I could see the shimmer of a rainbow in the spray. Then, at the opposite end of the garden, he took out some sort of wedge-type garden tool and made furrows every few feet. When he was finished, the large garden had fourteen rows. Then he knelt down and made one hole in the first row. He reached in his shirt pocket and took out a seed, probably a squash seed, and gently placed it in the earth.

         I watched him for over an hour. And when he was through, I could tell he was tired. But I could also tell what he meant about getting what he wants. He turned off the sprinkler and unhooked it from the hose. Then he took a long drawn out drink from the hose, washed the mud from his hands and his boots, and came back in. Stiff and sore and exquisitely satisfied.