In Good Company

I have exactly twenty-two dish towels.

I only know this because today is all about the kitchen. I’ll be in it for several hours, restocking a few of our granola flavors for the market and in the flurry of gathering all the necessary supplies, I couldn’t resist a bit of tidying up. I opened the drawer of the Hoosier-style hutch where they live (alongside a stack of handmade cloth napkins) and touched each one, counting as I went.

Of these twenty-two dish towels, I purchased only five; the rest were given to me by dear friends and sisters or inherited from my mom when the family home was sorted and emptied of its tangible memories. We use each and every one of them at some point in the calendar’s unfolding. Small as our house is, the kitchen is rather roomy, second only in square footage to the living room, and there are strategic places to hang these towels after wiping down the long countertop and antique wooden kitchen table. Our stove can hold three of them from its oven door handle, as long as they’re folded lengthwise in thirds. So far, the kittens have resisted the temptation of playing with these dangling soft toys, distracted instead by food and each other’s tails. A damp one (towel, not kitten) drapes nicely over the stand mixer to the right of the sink to dry.

It’s gently surprising, in a comforting sort of way, how their presence cheers me. Laundry days are that much brighter for their presence among the line-dried pile waiting to be folded, because I remember the occasion that brought them into our home, the women friends who carefully selected each one before wrapping them up and handing them over as a thank you present for that evening’s dinner invitation. They sport mostly bunnies and bees, chickens and sunflowers in various designs from vintage to contemporary, and the holiday collection…well, those rich blue, burgundy and gold colors make a humble space look extraordinary any day of the year (I’m not a stickler for seasonal decorating; the ones with winter scenes of deer and snow-covered trees are as welcome in August as in the weeks leading up to Christmas). Function and decoration are the dish towel’s two-handed contribution to our daily rhythm and if you asked, I could tell the story behind each one.

What catches me today, though, are the feelings of warmth and appreciation for the women who gave them to me. When I hang the one Jen gave me that reads “Find the place that fills your heart and nurtures your soul, settle in and you’re home!“, I think of her baking prowess and creativity for her girls’ birthday cakes and how many other love-filled meals we’ve eaten at their table. My sister, Peggy, found a set that perfectly captures the vibe of our house in wintertime—a simple red clapboard house embroidered near the hem while snow falls softly around it, represented as a postage stamp. Peggy is all about hospitality and one glance at these towels puts me right in her generous presence. Jackie and I used to haunt antique stores together, so the ones that look like old feed sacks must have caught her eye at the Amish hardware store up north where she lives. The black outline of a rabbit rests atop a slogan for flour against a primitive tan background and it charms me every time I see it. My sister, Jane, brought us whimsical bees stitched on the border of a cream-colored towel whose texture is honeycombed. I know she wouldn’t mind that this towel has been loved through more than a few pasta dinners, as evidenced by the slight pinkish tinge to one of the bee’s wings after I hastily dabbed some tomato sauce splatters from the stovetop. We keep using it because we like bees and we love Jane. Patrick’s late aunt Gracie hand-embroidered sweet begonias on a set that she gave him at her ninetieth birthday party. Those will never see pasta sauce, I can assure you, but they do come out when the kitchen is all clean and begging for those bright yellows and greens as a finishing touch.

Of course, none of them match, not in theme or colors, and that’s the beauty of such a collection. Our days are an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of events and moods that would quickly outstrip the blandness of a monochromatic stack of pure functionality. We dress our kitchen accordingly, randomly and with memories that keep bringing us joy, wash after wash. But today, even more wonderful than all that, I will get to bake with Jen and Peggy and Jackie and Jane just a hand’s reach away, cheering me on as I measure, chop and stir, and Aunt Gracie overseeing it all in unblemished splendor.

I am surrounded by women who know what our kitchen means to me and it feels good.

Seven Deer

The hammock spinners are back.

On a warmer than usual morning last week, the sun rose over their gossamer village, silken cups of arachnid architecture slung and hanging motionless from the dried tips of last year’s goldenrod stalks, the ones the winds couldn’t smack down. Thin cottony tufts of fog (known to us as the breath of God) move imperceptibly across the field, shape-shifting their way into the soft golden light of this fresh day. I move among them in silence, caught in a web of wonder.

Making my way to the southeast corner of the land on a diagonal path smoothed by Patrick’s skill on the mower, I headed toward the site where we buried what was left of the goat barn that burned to the ground one humid July while we slept. We call this spot '“the Grave” and it lies exactly opposite another memorial to the land’s pain, “the Wound”, in the far northwest corner some seventeen acres away. The previous owners leased this acreage to a local farmer who had cobbled together a patchwork of fields from different neighbors, growing the usual corn and soybeans on alternating annual rotations. We met him that spring we arrived on the land, shook his hand to continue the lease and got about planning our land blessing ceremony, not realizing he would cut down several mature trees along the property line so he and his farming equipment could access our field from the neighboring one. We discovered the damage during the land blessing and ended the arrangement the next day. It was a hard lesson in city-kid assumptions about rural handshakes and leased acreage, and a reminder that not everyone lives by the creed to ask permission before taking something. In the twenty-three years since, no trees have grown in that spot.

Somehow, though, between these two points of reckoning, a thriving and vibrant bowl of life has emerged and carries on; we get to traverse its expanse as often as we choose. The field is turning to woods one season and one section at a time as thick stands of rapidly maturing sycamore saplings fill in where the corn used to grow. Mockingbirds have made their secret nests in the uppermost branches of the black walnuts and blue beech and beneath their leafy canopies, the walking paths are a spongy carpet of moss I could easily nap on top of without a care (the minute the paths are dry, I promise). How does Spring still surprise us with its familiar newness each year? In January’s dark and bleak embrace, we wonder if we’ll ever see a hummingbird again and now here they are, buzzing us as we walk from the front deck to our car, demanding to know when the feeders will be refilled. Can the fireflies be far behind?

We need surprises these days. The shock and horror of the world’s ongoing wars and violence parade in front of our sickened faces each day and it’s impossible to look away as our sisters and brothers live through nightmares in their waking hours. If we really are all in this together and for the longest of long hauls, we need a season like spring to distract us even for a moment with her raucous avian symphonies, riots of color and warm reassuring breaths from the south that give us renewed strength for whatever will come. We cannot survive without beauty, spontaneity and moments of wonder. We rightfully hunger for spring’s generosity and kindness because we need to remember our own and then fling it in all directions.

I think that’s why I prefer to walk in the morning, just as the sky is shredding the darkness with shards of new light. I hold dawn’s hand and we step into what’s possible, what’s spread out at our feet to pick up and offer to someone else. I chase ideas through the woods, listen for new and returning winged relatives tapping holes into dead trunks and wonder what will be asked of me today. It’s anyone’s guess and I plan to show up for it, like those deer did last week…

There were seven of them and they were just ten feet away on the other side of the bathroom window’s wavy glass pane, browsing for new grass among the dead ironweed sticks. I saw them from the upstairs east-facing window first before racing down to get a better look, hoping not to startle them (need to do more research about a deer’s eyesight, how they register motion, what’s their peripheral vision like—all that stuff) as I went about my morning ablutions. Even more graceful and elegant up close, they slowly picked their way from one patch to the next, lifting their magnificent heads now and then when they heard or saw something I couldn’t see at all. A young buck was among them, seemed to be leading them farther south with his velvety antlers when it happened. I moved just one step closer to the window and all seven heads raised up, fourteen eyes on the movement they saw through the glass. As one, the herd leapt high, white tails pointing upward in near-perfect formation until their hooves found the path to the Grave, leaving me once again silent in wonder. Within minutes, I was dressed with walking sticks in hand and out the back mud room door to follow them, or at least find where those hooves met the soft chocolate earth.

Spring…it never gets old.

A Cautious Spring Unfolding

The avian air traffic over the meadow has increased delightfully and exponentially in the past week. I know that birds returning to the area are not tethered to the calendar like we are, but they did arrive exactly on the day of the spring equinox, leaving us to wonder which of them had the planner cued up as they made their way from anyplace south of the Ohio River. The soundtrack of my morning walks is now a rich symphony of robinsong, finch calls and woodpeckers who take their role in the percussion section rather seriously. In the swampier areas that line the footpaths by the woods, the spring peepers’ high-pitched chorus slides easily over and around the cardinal’s insistence that warmer days are coming, adding a literal and poetic spring to my step as I move from the field into the creek-blessed meadow. When I arrive back at the house, I’m soaked with the music of all things living, grateful for the season tickets and front row seats we’ve been given (and the mockingbirds aren’t even in the mix yet. Oh my heart…).

Getting to know this land (and she getting to know us) has been a sustained and evolving dance through eighty-nine seasons so far where the somewhat predictable is interrupted by the occasional “what the heck was that ?!”, in the form of a mid-February lightning sky show or a late June derecho that yanked once-sturdy cottonwoods from their sentry positions along the creekbanks and plastered the west side of our house with leaves on its way across the eastern field. Over the years, we’ve tilled and planted, built barns and placed lawn furniture at strategic spots along the walking paths in case we need to sit down in the middle of a morning’s mosey to contemplate the delicate emergence of spring beauties or estimate how many batches of garlic mustard pesto we’ll make between May and July. In the usual lopsided shape of the human-and-natural-world relationship, our side is clearly marked by humble deference (what human can stop a straight line wind with her hand? I mean really…) while Hers is all showy abundance and mystery and a gentle tolerance of our absent-minded and distracted tendencies. I have no intention of trying to balance the scales. Such folly is best left aside and in its place, deep wordless respect, the kind that leaves one’s mouth agape while starting upward into the inky black space above. That, and a promise to return the garden tools to the shed is about all we can offer most days. She seems to understand, or else what was last night’s grand sunset all about?

This morning, she’s dressed in browns and grays, with tiny pearls of early spring snow gadding about in a stiff north wind. A handful of robins march in stop-and-start fits across the just-greening grass, stopping to turn a hidden ear to what might be crawling beneath (at least, that’s what it looks like from the bathroom window) while the green tips of those family heirloom tulips my uncle gave me last fall stand bravely in a line as if guarding the living room windows. Should I wrap them in little tulip plant scarves to ride out this week’s colder temps, or leave them to it and trust, once again, that they have what they need, no help from me? It’s so hard not to intervene.

Inside, the space heater hums warmly with two of the kittens jockeying for the best spot in front of it while Patrick reads next to me on the couch. Breakfast dishes are done, and we’ve committed to a walk later, no matter what the predictions say about where the thermometer’s red line is going to land before it’s time to tuck in the chickens for the night. At day’s end, we’ll lay our heads on the pillowed reassurance of a tulip bulb’s intuition, keeping hope alive for the season that’s only just beginning.

The Relentless Pursuit of Stillness

So one morning I’m racing to get to my massage/acupuncture appointment on time (I’ll just let that sentence sit there for a moment, so you can take in the pure absurdity of it), tapping my fingers impatiently on the wheel as I miss the first of five traffic lights between me and my therapist’s office. I’m not in the proper mindset for this at all but how exactly does one prepare for an hour of lymphatic cleansing and the rebalancing of one’s qi? Should I arrive all chill and relaxed? She’d have nothing to do. It’s like brushing your teeth before you go to the dentist (which I do, religiously, including a double-round of flossing). I arrive all keyed up and unsettled. Now we’re talking noticeable impact when that hour’s done, right?

I’m glad you’ve stayed with me this far.

I’ve been taking massages regularly for the past 20-some years (not counting a pause during the first few months of the pandemic) and credit much of my energy, outlook and general good health to that discipline. I added acupuncture to the menu once my massage therapist completed her training and licensure in that practice several years ago (Patrick tried it first, my little canary in the coalmine) and could go on for days about the difference it’s made. Those bi-weekly treatments are the reason I’m fairly tolerable as a wife, friend and party guest. But it’s not a magic trick. Like any good healthy lifestyle component, I’ve got to pony up some effort to the equation and keep my eye on the desired outcome. Driving pell-mell through our rural area into a small-ish town’s morning rush hour traffic (that means two dozen cars and a solid handful of trucks) on the way to a place that promotes and encourages calm isn’t helping. Thankfully, Nicole knows me well enough now to reassure me that I won’t cancel out the good work she’s about to do for my muscles and that high-functioning lymphatic system of mine. I settle in on the table, exhale and disappear into her skilled kneading, looking forward to the thin needle she’ll insert in the space between my eyebrows and know that whatever was ailing me will be remedied soon.

At the risk of prying, how much time do you spend at rest? On average, and not counting sleeping? What does inertia look like for you? I’ve taken to noticing lately just how constantly in motion my life is, wondering how it got that way and how I’d cope if it came to a screeching halt. Most days I wake up refreshed and ready for what the day is offering, see my energy levels dip a bit after lunch and then rally about thirty minutes before the commute home. Once there, I shed the work clothes and slip into something more “farm work comfortable” before heading out to the garden or down to the chicken coop for egg-gathering. Along the way, there are downed branches and sticks to collect and carry over to the burn pile just north of the barn, and as I pass ransom piles of this and that, I make a mental note of projects waiting for the dryer days of mid-summer. I swear, we’ll get the rest of the antiques out of that barn and into good homes, somehow and finally, finally turn that old wooden headboard we trash-picked into a lovely sitting bench under one of the meadow’s finest and shadiest mulberry trees. Back in the house, in a laundry basket next to the washing machine, is a jute hammock I bought when I was in Nicaragua and it’s never seen the light of day in the thirty-four years since then. If I did put it up between the two black walnuts down by the creek, would I even take an afternoon to recline in it? Only one way to find out.

I dance in the tension between a life with ample moving parts and a desire to settle in for a nap with no expiration date stamped on it. I don’t recall feeling that when we lived in the city/suburbs. Lawn care was easier, we didn’t even think about having chickens and our trees at the time held onto their branches. What is it about the open space of a meadow or the secrets of a black swamp woods that shift our agendas over to a never-ending list of chores that are truly anything but? I welcome the sweet aches that follow a morning’s work planting tomato starts and mulching around their tender green ankles, then putting the fence around the raised bed to deter any ambitious rabbits or climbing groundhogs. On the days when I do wake up earlier than I’d like, the morning walk always—always—sets me straight, erasing the temptation to climb back into bed and snuggle down further beneath the blankets. I’m vertical, the sun is pulling on the day and if not now, when? I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Stillness in our lives is elusive or fleeting at best, and I’m learning to be fine with that. During the week, I sit in on meetings where my clinical teammates—hospice nurses, social workers, chaplains, aides—provide details about the people in their tender care who are bedbound, unable to assemble a complete sentence that makes sense and eat mechanically pureed food, if that. Their weight is barely in the triple digits while my lunch waits patiently chilled in the stockroom fridge, all three containers of it. Sure, I could stand to lose some pounds and would feel better if I did, but I’m not as hell-bent anymore on reaching a goal and posting the results on Facebook. The bathroom scale sits still most days, episodically employed like a consultant. We take its digital data under advisement but haven’t changed our policies and procedures just yet. As dinner winds down to the last few peas on our plates, we tend to a little scrolling to make sure we’re not missing any of the Big News and then call it a night. We do sleep, of course, but our bodies are still at it, making repairs at a cellular level, moving toxins through our livers into our bowels and bladders while our minds unspool the most vivid and unrelated images from our daytime interactions with others: the quick glance at a candy apple red Corvette that whizzed past us on the way home, a song hummed by a coworker as we passed each other in the hallway and the blurry silhouette of a raccoon bumpitty-bumping its way toward the compost pile. How all those become knitted together behind our eyelids is still a lovely mystery I have no intention of solving.

Once every two weeks, I get to lie down on a warm table under a cool sheet and give my very bones over to a settling down that has ripple effects for the days that follow. Maybe that’s all I need for now. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.