Alison (and her copilot Maude) are staying for us for a couple days on Alison’s solo cross-country road trip. Today I took her over to Bainbridge to visit Sacred Groves and my mom.

Mom made us nettle soup, and since I was in tour guide mode, I asked Alison if she knew about nettles. “I know them as an abstraction,” she said.

Maude on the road“Nutritionally, nettles are like spinach or kale,” I explained. “But they sting you.”

“Oh, they don’t sting,” my mother’s wife Tere said.

“It’s just a sensation!” my mother explained. “It’s a nettle experience.” I scoffed and said “Bullshit! It hurts!”

Later, as we walked around the property with my mom, we passed some nettles. I asked Alison if she wanted to experience the “sensation” and she agreed.

She leaned over and gently petted a leaf with the tip of her finger. She frowned a little and looked at me. “It doesn’t hurt at all,” she said. I was baffled. “Maybe you’re weak and delicate,” she jokingly shrugged. Why, I never!

Another step down the path we saw another nettle. “Try this one,” I said, and then added somewhat cruelly, “and try using the back of your hand instead of your fingertips.”

Alison shot me a dubious glance that said “…weakling!” and wiped the back of her hand across the nettle’s fuzzy green leaf.

“OW!!!” she shouted, yanking her hand away and holding it protectively to her chest. Then I got to show her how rubbing the back of a fern leaf on a nettle sting relieves the bite. Yay! Alison’s been inducted into the club of the nettle stung (and nettle eaters). We are not weaklings, and it’s more than just a sensation.