Change of Season, Land of Promise

I’ve cozied up the living room, replacing the thinner spring and summer couch throws with vintage quilts and flannel blankets you’d never want to leave once you’re ensconced in them. A pot of Italian tomato and butter bean soup is warming on the stove and the aroma is trying to pull me into the kitchen. I’m resisting but barely, on the knife’s edge of temptation. It’s a simple recipe from my late father-in-law, Larry, that includes half a cup of red wine to mingle with the caramelized onions and crushed tomatoes. Hey, any day that begins by adding a half cup of Cabernet to something is going to be a good one.

Autumn is in full technicolor swing here, making the daily commute to work even more of a pleasure and the morning walks nothing short of stop-you-in-your-tracks spectacular. As I pass beneath the towering cottonwoods in the far northeast corner of the woods, I’m craning my neck to see if that one last leaf at the top is going to finally unhook itself in the wind and free fall to the forest floor. But walking while looking up isn’t the best combination if you’re wanting to stay upright. My feet meander aimlessly into a randomly corrugated and mole-hilled section of the path and, still looking up, I careen into a sycamore sapling that refuses to step aside. Looks like that leaf will need to fall without my bearing witness to it. I rub my arm where it met the sampling’s hard cold trunk and keep moving.

On a bright and cloudless Wednesday morning last week, heading across the front porch to the car, I turned and watched, mesmerized, as the silver maple behind the house set to dropping her leaves in a hypnotic swirling spectacle, each one a glowing topaz jewel catching its own thermal on the way down. They landed soundlessly, one after the other in silently rapid succession. I couldn’t look away, didn’t want to be anywhere but there in that moment, pure gold collecting at my feet and hers in a soft pelt of summer’s remembrance. How I even made it to work that day, I can’t tell you. I must have, because our checking account reflects a direct deposit from payroll. But I was rich even before I pulled into the parking lot.

It occurs to me on a humbling and regular basis that this place we call home has kept its promises, each and every one, since we unpacked the last box on that Easter afternoon in April and gathered family in a circle for the land blessing on that unforgettable Sunday in July some twenty-two years ago where my devout Catholic mother took in the prayers of our tiospaye when the firekeeper handed the pipe over to her. In that arc of time, we’ve slept beneath 283 full moons, shoveled and mopped up and planted and harvested our way through 88 seasons and kept a 100-year-old farmhouse standing through it all (fingers crossed, we’ll see it through to the other side of its twenty-third winter). We’ve been sheltered, challenged, protected and stunned in equal measure by what a landlocked rectangle of cornfield-turned-woods and meadow can offer up, from hidden yet vocal coyotes to comical squirrels to red-tail hawks and their flap flap glide…flap flap g-l-i-d-e flight patterns over our grateful heads. If I’m quiet, I can hear the echoes of family cookouts, bonfires down by the old old goat barn and impromptu scavenger hunts with our friends’ children as they laughed their way through the meadow looking to fill the grocery bags dangling from their fingertips with acorns and those ankle-turning fallen black walnuts that collect pretty much everywhere. In the spaces between the projects and obligations in our over-scheduled days, these sweet memories rise and settle themselves in full view of our consideration. We give them our attention and our time without hesitation.

Ever so often, I find myself in the grip of my own worries, wondering how we’ll manage as we keep getting older, where we’ll end up if we can’t stay here until our last breath. I imagine that final trip down the gravel driveway and a deep, piercing sadness closes itself around my heart. I’ve fallen inextricably in love with this place, no hope for recovering. Love. Nothing less than helpless, in up to my neck kind of love, the seed of all grief. We’ve handed over the keys to our happiness and this place just keeps outstripping our dreamy expectations, getting under our skin with its generous beauty. As the leaves keep falling, so do I.

Such love comes at a price and I’m willing to pay it. I’ll keep walking, noticing, planting and harvesting, reveling in it and carefully tending to it, as often as I can, for as long as I can.

That’s my promise to her.

Unplanned Accomplishments

The creek was a chuckling whisper as I passed by one of its many elbowing curves on my way through the meadow-turned-woods this morning. I could have sworn the run was lower last night when I walked the path that hugs its steep banks. Maybe it rained. How did I miss that? Oh, right. Sleep.

In a rare alignment of our schedules, Patrick and I both had the day off last Friday and in true starry-eyed fashion, spent the late after-work hours of Thursday evening building an ambitious “what we’re going to do” list with at least nineteen of those blank slate twenty-four hours. It was a lovely mix of gardening, baking and packing the cars for Saturday’s market gig, some time in our respective studios finishing some works-in-progress and a couple of medical appointments. Maybe we’d squeeze in a leisurely stroll through the nearby arboretum and stop for ice cream on the way home. When the sun had set on our time together, we were going to congratulate ourselves on yet another un-squandered day and fall asleep in the glow of our accomplishments.

There’s the trip you plan, and then there’s the trip you take.

I slept in Friday until 9:15, roused only by the mews and batting paws of four over-hungry cats (when left alone to their own unfed devices for that long, the living room and kitchen can be transformed into the most curious of feline crime scenes. I braced myself on the way downstairs). Patrick joined me around 9:30 and we adjusted our expectations for the remains of the day. I did bake a couple of trays of granola for Saturday’s market while Patrick dialed in for his 10:30 telehealth appointment. After that, it’s anyone’s guess as to where the rest of our time went. Earlier last week, we’d loaded up the old stove in the back of the truck and installed the shiny new one, with every good intention to make a quick stop at the local salvage yard to put the old one to rest. But hectic work schedules and a couple of rainy days put that off and on my way down to release the chickens into their ambitiously-planned day (peck, scratch, cluck, repeat), I noticed the stove still sitting patiently, strapped in near the tailgate, contemplating its future. Maybe we could swing by the dump on the way to Patrick’s other medical appointment (not telehealth—kinda tricky when it involves massage and acupuncture). So that’s what we did and once we were back home, loaded up the cars for the market and declared a “dinner on your own” arrangement before crawling into bed, the sun winking knowingly on our day’s attempt at Ambitious Accomplishment (I’d like points for not dissolving into pouty disappointment and embracing a new definition of success).

The market was low-key and chilly, a sobering sales forecast as we head into its winter season where we’ll still be outdoors for November and December (a long story involving new management of the old indoor location and construction soon rendering it unavailable). After four hours, we packed up our equipment and what remained of our inventory, stopping long enough to trade a couple of bags of the Maple Pecan for some sweet peppers and poblanos from the vendor next to us. Next stop was Patrick’s mom’s place, where pizza and good family conversation awaited. Patrick would spend the night there and I’d return home to tuck in chickens, feed cats and collapse. I did at least two of those three and could easily have scrolled my way through the last minutes of daylight, but dag nabbit, this was a long weekend and one way or another, I was going to wake up Monday with some evidence that I lived a purposeful life here. Instead of returning directly to the house after locking up the hens, I strolled through the meadow and finished the loop past the sweat lodge and the garden, rewriting Sunday’s to-do list in my mind. A batch of mom’s no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies, some turkey barley vegetable soup, vacuum the living room rug. At least two of those would help with part of the week’s meal-planning. I drifted off to sleep with a fresh commitment to ambition firmly in hand.

Woke up this morning, made the bed and from 6:30am until just past 11:00am, I put that new stove and its oven through their respective functioning paces. There’s something about baking and cooking that renews a lagging spirit and I showed up for it, in spades. Some Gala and Fuji apples just on the edge of mealy are now tucked into a warm bed of oats, ground almonds, cider-soaked cranberries and a crumbly butter-laced topping. A stockpot full of turkey barley vegetable soup is keeping warm on the front burner while a granola-crusted yogurt and strawberry flan is cooling to room temperature before I’ll wrap it and set it in the fridge. A baker’s dozen of mom’s no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies are resting proudly on the waxed paper-covered kitchen table, and while I had the bag of pearled barley out, cooked just enough to add to a rough chopped mix of fresh kale, rainbow chard and thinly sliced red onion. With some feta and chopped apricots added to that, tossed in a white wine vinegar and olive oil dressing seasoned with basil and oregano, I’ve got lunch for the week (I would also like points for a clean kitchen, trash emptied and the living room rug vacuumed).

Somewhere between last night’s promise and this morning’s food marathon, I reclaimed the gift of a blank slate that was our long weekend. Patrick’s making his way home from his mom’s and the cats have settled into their well-earned Sunday afternoon naps (all that eating and gamboling about the field behind the chicken coops sure does take its toll. Bless them). As I write this, it’s not even 1:30pm.

I wonder how that “bread proof” feature on the new stove works…

Litany of Validation

Been thinking about people lately.

Fellow humans. Folks.

With my eyes closed, I imagine us gathered in one place big enough to hold us all, posing for an unseen camera with a 30,000-foot view and somehow, it manages to catch everyone in the frame. I’m this close to using the word “huddled” because the events of the past nineteen months have wrapped us up in an uncomfortable common embrace of vulnerability, leaving no one untouched. I know not everyone will get along, packed together like that. Some are pushing and shoving others out of the way, fistfights break out on the fringes of our raggedy village and brave voices call for peace. But someone is baking bread and the aroma helps soothe our raw nerves if only for a moment.

I open my eyes to look into the faces of each person my imagination conjures up, and I see mostly tired goodness looking for affirmation and just a shred of relief. Laughter may seem an undulating mirage on the horizon, but it’s there and we should keep walking toward it. There’s an ache for the aching to stop, for the walls we’ve built to come tumbling down, but not on top of us. In every face are a thousand stories, piled up reasons for an out of character short-tempered response or a lane change without using a turn signal. It seems distant and cold to insist on an explanation for such behavior, to condemn with “why?” instead of nurturing with “how?” as in “how are you?” Don’t we all need a measure of grace that sees the fragility first, the attempts at doing better, even when we fall short by our own short and harsh yardsticks? How about a little benefit of the doubt instead of instant judgment?

Perhaps we could reorganize our reactions, recalibrate our compassion just a nudge and give each other a nod of understanding and validation, just through the simple act of acknowledgement. What could that look like?

Hey parents of young children, doing your best to let them learn things on their own and also guide them with enough structure to keep them safe while you brace yourself for the rough edge of every critic’s tongue…I see you.

Dear caregivers, who know that the next time you’ll get to sleep in will be after your loved one’s funeral, and so, setting that inevitability aside for now, you get up in the brittle pre-dawn darkness to change linens, empty the bedside commode and open the day’s can of liquid breakfast because that’s what love does…I see you.

Sweet teenagers, on whose shoulders we’ve placed the burden of another generation’s poor judgement and ingenuity alike, with your feet trying to find purchase on the shifting sands of optimism and the overwhelming Unknown…I see you.

School employees, from bus drivers to teachers to cafeteria workers, for the grand enterprise to which you belong—transporting and shaping and feeding the future—sometimes not knowing the difference you’re making…I see you.

Any and all of you in the healthcare continuum, after working your third twelve (sixteen, really) this week, or listening to details you have to (HAVE to) remember from one room to the next while your stomach grumbles for the lunch still waiting in the breakroom fridge…I see you.

Newlyweds, with the big day’s celebration just over your shoulders and the path ahead strewn with the fragrant possibility that yours truly is the Greatest Love Story Ever Told, as you write thank you notes and can’t wipe those happy smiles from your faces…I see you.

Road construction workers, who stand for hours with your “Stop” and “Slow” signs as we drive past you, more or less compliant but still inches from your hardhat-covered head while the sharp acrid smell of fresh tar sinks into your very skin…I see you.

That’s just the start of a long list of individual circumstances begging to be noticed, loads too heavy to carry anymore and losses grieved in the darkest corners of a sagging heart that longs to be touched by the precious gift of someone else’s undivided attention.

I encourage you, dear reader, to add your own acknowledgements to this list, to share what you see, what you notice when you look through the eyes of love, in the hope that it moves us even the slightest bit closer to the exhale we all so desperately need.

This movie ain’t nowhere near over yet.

Saying Goodbye, One Leaf at a Time

From a distance, the farm fields hugging the two lane road from work to home are a soft and inviting tawny featherbed. With my eyes going just a bit unfocused, I imagine falling asleep atop a patch of their caramel-colored downy comfort. It’s also impossible to see the deer as they stand completely still in the middle of it all while I drive by. But up close and with eyes focused (as they should be when you’re driving, mind you), they quickly reveal their true nature—stick-y and poke-y with their dry rattling soybeans and papery corn husks. After hours spent scanning spreadsheets across dual monitors in a windowless office, though, I’m happy to give myself over to the illusion of a giant’s al fresco bedroom.

Autumn is nature’s long, luxurious yawn and stretch before she curls up and settles under the covers of a moth-eaten gray blanket of sky for the next four months, dreaming of spring. She’s earned a rest, after pushing bright red tomatoes out of slender green stems and colorful chard from the composted gifts of kitchen scraps and loamy soil. And all that grass she grew for us to walk through, barefoot! After spending the last six weeks without a lawnmower, Patrick finally tidied up eight or so acres of walking paths and open field gone wild. It took him two days and two levels of mower deck cutting (high first, to take down the bulk of the knee-grazing grassy weeds, and then low, polishing it to a smooth velvety green), transforming the scene from neglected to tended. We walked the full set of paths this morning after breakfast, the first of the season’s leaves slowly drifting down around us, talking as we do about plans for this section of the woods and that stand of multiflora rose in the meadow. In our usual shamelessly ambitious style, we overreach in our minds what it will take to finally clear out the brambles and give those young shagbark hickory saplings a chance. Forgetting we have full-time jobs plus a weekend farmers’ market commitment coupled with aging bones and not-thirty-year-old-anymore muscles, we make the outdoor project to-do list for fall with naive impunity and keep walking. One of us has the presence of mind to point out that whatever we rearrange we will also need to maintain; good to remember that as we look down the well-lit tunnel of our next twenty years.

Even the thought of collecting another couple of decades here makes us go all quiet and humble, filling the space between us with a rich gratitude. That’s eighty more seasons changing, 7300 sets of sunrises and sunsets (add in a few extra days to that for leap years) and forty more half-year property tax payments (a little realism to sharpen the edges of our romantic daydream). All of that too much for our minds to grab onto, it’s enough that we get to walk past a trellis full of vining spinach that needs to be harvested and prepped for the freezer as we make our way back to the house. On a brittle day in February, we’ll thank ourselves for putting in the effort as we sit down to dinner that night.

Summer was extinguished with the flip of a seasonal switch this year, humid and almost unbearable its final day, then cool relief the minute autumn’s equinox slid into place on a sunny Wednesday. A door closed on three months’ worth of warm balmy memories, from building another four raised beds for tomatoes and delicata squash to playing with Bumper in the thin grass of the old fasting site one sunny morning, a patch now encircled by maturing sycamores, red cedars and thickets of blackberry stalks. Did June even happen? It all seems so far away, blurry around the edges and idyllic. A lingering feeling of comfort rises to the surface and takes my face gently in its hands, “even your marvelous imagination, darling, is no match for the reality that surrounds you.” A reassuring lesson in trust.

When the trees are finally bare again, and this year’s harvest of leaves lies pressed and matted beneath my boots, I’m sure I’ll look back on a quiet early autumn Sunday and forget the exact date, but remember holding Patrick’s gloved hand in mine as we climbed the steep slope out of the meadow, our dreams unspooling behind us for the deer to contemplate.

Deep within every farewell is the promise of hello.