Pickles, Pralines and Other Acts of Generosity

When they’re still attached, a tree’s branches can’t help but resemble lungs, bronchi and bronchioles and all, and isn’t that really what they are, helping the earth breathe? But when those branches fall and come to rest on the ground, they look more like arthritic fingers, bony and knobby with knuckles and brittle joints.

Strong winds from last Thursday night, continuing well into Friday, helped the trees on the ridge shed what they no longer needed, and after a post-market nap yesterday, I stooped to gather them. We’ll use these to start some future sweat fires and be grateful for the trees’ sacrifice as we carry armfuls of them back to the lodge where they’ll be added to a growing pile of similar kindling. I wonder what our prayer life would be like if we needed to wrestle these bones from the trees before they were ready to give them up? Humbled once again by the way the land has it all worked out. She gives and we stoop to pick it all up, with thankfulness.

I was a solo act at the market yesterday, from loading up to setting up, bantering in the most friendly way with our sweet customers and then dismantling it all before hauling it back out to the car for the ride home. Patrick had a rough week at work and needed the rest so I kissed him on the forehead before heading out in the dark, my heart gladdened by how this side hustle of ours can easily be managed by one. I pulled up U2’s “Magnificent” on YouTube and sang my way to work, honking only once to keep a trio of young does from crossing the road in front of me and changing my plans. On impulse at a traffic light in the first small town I passed through, I texted my sister Peggy to see how she was feeling. She and her husband Rob had returned home from their holiday trip to Tybee Island with head colds that were lingering far too long into the new year. If you know my sister, you know that she pushes through the hard times with a determined grace, so I wasn’t surprised by her near-instant reply. The worst of their symptoms in the rearview mirror now, they were thinking about coming out to the market and would we be there? A few more texts and we’d be seeing each other at our booth down the way from the pickle vendor in a couple more hours.

Let me insert a small public service announcement on behalf of the good people of Savannah and Tybee Island. A candy shop on the Savannah river (aptly called “River Street Sweets”) concocts the most exquisite pralines and I’ve grown far too fond of them from our previous visits to the area. When Peggy asked what she could bring back, I answered before she even finished the question (and might have mentioned something about the chocolate ones), and if it wasn’t too much trouble, would they be making their customary stop at Chu’s gas station/quick mart on Tybee across from the condo rental office for a large styrofoam container of Cajun boiled peanuts, that delightfully messy-to-eat but oh-so-salty-good southern road trip snack? Another smiling “yes” and it was all arranged.

When they arrived at the market, Peggy was carrying a small canvas tote bag and that same knowing smile. Hugs all around in between our first customers and then she started unpacking. First out was a pair of copper earrings etched with a rustic tree design, then a large plastic container of boiled peanuts which she’d made herself and the family had voted—they like them a bit better than the gas station ones (apologies to whatever employee at Chu’s has the honor of taking the 5lb bag of pre-seasoned peanuts from the freezer and putting them in the heated crock on the counter between the chips and the soda for customers to help themselves. When we visit Tybee again, I’m sure they’ll do just fine as an end-of-the-trip snack). I spied the red plastic bag at the bottom of the canvas tote and knew what was coming next—a pecan and caramel treat fit for the gods.

It didn’t stop there. Peggy offered to get me coffee from the vendor a few stalls away, and when she brought it back all steaming and cozy, asked if I wanted cream or sugar and she’d go back and get it for me (which I did, so…she off she went). After a rush of customers and more catching up, she asked me if I wanted pickles from the vendor down the way whose lines tend to wrap around the market hallways (yep, they’re that good) and after I’d hedged a bit, said “garlic, or anything dill”, and she was off again, returning with the goods that would later add flavorful crunch to my tuna salad lunch back at home. Another rush of customers, two lines at one point, with Rob swiping the credit cards and Peggy bagging up the purchases.

If you look up “hospitality” in the dictionary, you’ll see our mom’s picture. Peggy learned this trait at her knee and infused it with her own deep commitment to generosity (look up that word and there she’ll be). She married in kind; Rob’s heart is consummately cheerful and his genuine desire to be helpful enters a room before he does. In their almost forty years together, they’ve raised three children into adulthoods marked by humor, food and thoughtfulness without limits, and these young ones plucked for themselves spouses who keep the domino effect of kindness unfolding into the futures they’re building. I can only imagine the lives they’ve touched with this good spirit of helpfulness, an ember that warms strangers and friends alike with its inclusiveness and unassuming bent toward just making someone’s day a bit better.

All of these feelings and realizations came to me Saturday afternoon as I bent over to pick up the next tree fingerbone scattered by a fierce wind’s hand. The land gives constantly. My sister and her generous family give and it’s impossible not to be changed by it, inspired to pay for the next person’s latte at the drive-thru or give a coworker my undivided attention and not hijack their story with one of my own. For the better part of a weekend morning, I was wrapped in this most tender of gifts, a lesson worth repeating day after day after day.

When I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be looking for a chance to do the same.

May the circle be unbroken indeed.

In the Shadows

It was too tempting to resist.

After nearly a week’s worth of cloud-shrouded sunrises taken on trust, a full, bright and unfettered moon gave its best face to the landscape, lengthening the trees’ shadows across field and forest floor in a stretch that even the most practiced yogi would envy. I hadn’t planned to get up yet but certain bodily systems had other ideas and pulled me downstairs in a not-quite-awake stumble. Through the bathroom window with a view to the east, a stubbly grey and sepia world crooked its finger at me and I obeyed, forsaking all the elements of my precise morning routine (save for feeding the kittens—they’re rather hard to put off at that hour). My own breakfast and fastidious commitment to a clean kitchen would have to wait. Dear reader, I have no regrets.

A thick silence enveloped me as I headed down the path to the far southeastern corner of the field toward the Grave (what we call the place where we buried what was left of the goat barn that burned to the ground in 2018). I feel like an intruder whenever I walk the land and try to keep my footsteps light, but at this rare hour, I almost tiptoed, my feet connecting with frosted-over remnants of summer’s grass and goldenrod stalks that a Christmas windstorm knocked nearly flat. Somewhere between “plenty” and “just enough” light, the moon sat comfortably on my shoulder, a gentle and glowing companion as I walked where the deer had been, the edges of their hoofprints ever so slightly distinct in the fudgy field soil. No morning commute traffic on the two-lane road a mile away, no jets overhead, no birdsong or squirrel scuffle. Just me and my thoughts, which I tried to keep quiet or at least at whisper level since it seemed I was the only one awake. Wiser living things were still abed and a-nest.

The path to and around the Grave ends in a needle’s eye loop and provides a most reassuring view of our home on the rise four acres away. Buttercream-colored siding makes it look like a boxy sort of candle, softened by the backlight of that moon and I stop for a moment, considering all the winters we’ve sheltered betwixt her wonky walls perched atop a settling foundation of hollow clay bricks. From my heart to the front door, I send her my thanks and keep stepping forward toward the sleeping garden area and the woods. A wooly patch of clouds gathers around but doesn’t cover the moon and magically, I think “respect” as the sweat lodge circle comes into view.

Turning the corner and heading into the mouth of the path’s canopied western corridor, I rely on sound rather than sight to carry me up the hill. My feet know better than my eyes where the exposed tree roots are and I don’t stumble (I have my phone with me, and a plug-in safety light from the kitchen socket by mudroom door just in case, the kind that comes on when the power goes out, keen on keeping our streak of no trips to the local emergency department solid into its second year). Wouldn’t it be lovely to just sit right in the middle of the path and become part of this scene, sinking into the sycamore leaves beneath me until I wear the face of the woods, indistinct from my own? The second temptation of the day, but I resist in the name of warmth and whatever lies ahead waiting to be discovered and gazed upon in wonder.

There are a few trees off the path and into the forest that I visit each time I walk, and I find my way to them with no trouble. Not sure If they’re surprised to see me at this moon-shadowed hour, but I keep to my ritual of standing below their magnificence, leaning into their heft and pressing my forehead against their rough-skinned bark. We share a moment of that thick silence and whatever stress I might have brought with me is now theirs to recycle and repurpose. They receive so much of what I can’t control, and I send my gratitude up their towering trunks until it disappears beyond their topmost bare and bony fingers. That felt mighty good indeed.

When I get to the place where the path empties into the north entrance of the meadow, the moon has sunk to just three hands above the tree line and I’m determined to get back to the house while it’s still dark. I skirt the banks of the creek, lowering the hood of my ratty sweatshirt and taking off the unicorn headwrap I always wear (supremely warm, and lets me carry my godchildren with me, who gave me such a luxurious and whimsical gift a few birthdays ago) to hear what the waters have to say, the first sound I register other than my crunching footsteps in the past half hour, and it’s absolutely delicious. Thanks to its curves and elbows, the shape of the creek and the moonlight play beautifully with one another, the waters shifting from inky to shimmery in a single step, a steady stream of liquid silver on its way to somewhere else that I’m sure is just as gorgeous as what I’m looking at now. Sometimes, friends, I can’t believe I get to live here, collecting days and images that knit themselves into my very bones.

In the last leg of this shadowed hike, I trudge up the steep slope to the house and ease myself onto the ribbed seat of the curb-gleaned glider nestled into the stand of young mulberry saplings off the front porch. To my left, the chickens slumber in the coop dreaming of a cracked corn breakfast and I wonder where Bumper, our fearless feline explorer, has wandered off to. The moon nods from its pale whitish throne in the west and I am filled with a complete and utter peace, having started my day with a walk bookended by the light of an orb that also tugged on the tides of shores my feet will never meet. “Connection”, I whisper to no one I can see, and long for this illusion of time paused to continue in perpetuity. A tiny thought rises up unbidden: what if I’d gone back to bed instead?

No regrets, dear readers. No regrets.

Shhh...the Tulips are Sleeping

An icy arctic wind sank its teeth into the land and shook it soundly for two days, blowing a powdery snow across the fields, the dust of summer’s memories. For the first time in my humble on-earth tenure, the word “hazy” appeared in the day’s wintry forecast, borrowed from a late July morning now blurry ‘round the edges. With deep respect for all that’s going on outside our windowpanes, the morning walk has been wisely postponed; I’ll have to make do with a few laps around the living room and extra trips upstairs to fetch things I’ve forgotten.

Makeshift window quilts have darkened most rooms, doing their best to hold in the heat from our brave little furnace below deck. Beneath two extra blankets on the bed, Patrick and I are swaddled into deeper sleep and completely in favor of hibernating right along with everyone else who curls up and hunkers down until late March. Well, we’ll get to try it for a week anyway, since we’re both off work until after the first of the year. Now, what to do with the kittens whose cabin fever is inching toward manic…

It’s not hard to call up those days in late June when I sweated my way through the installation of our garden’s pallet enclosure, one t-post at a time. Awake and on task by 5:00a.m. with that first smidgen of light, determined to earn my breakfast, I pulled on jeans and work boots and an old t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and stopped just short of melting point an hour later (few things are more indulgent than a mid-morning nap after Extreme Heat exertions, with an oscillating floor fan pushing the last bits of the day’s cooler air around one’s toes and forehead). Standing at the mudroom door this morning, layered up and looking out across the snow-blown trellis and raised beds, I think of the garlic we planted in October, silent in awe of a tiny bulb’s quiet purpose. Another testament to the power of rest.

We were also able to get all of the tulip bulbs planted long before the ground froze, a race against the clock that competed with our work and market schedules, with a solid plan come spring to defend them against our curious and hungry raccoons who see any bed of freshly turned earth as an invitation to dine on whatever they find below. Tucked in five inches with a sprinkle of bone meal and a fluffy (now frozen) top dressing of crumbled leaves, these sleeping heirloom beauties are waiting patiently for their moment in the sun, still a dozen or so weeks away. When winter feels unending, I lean on the mystery of every living being that goes under for the duration. The surprises of spring make me a preschooler again, rooted in wonder and a million “How?”s. I’ll even walk lightly around their beds so I won’t disturb their dreams.

This holiday weekend storm was hailed in its scope and breadth across the nation as “once in a generation” and has all but buried western New York. I think about those who must be out in it, by choice or circumstance, and send them a continuous stream of prayerful warmth, for whatever good that may do. But some have died in snowbanks or in their heatless homes and the harsh reality of natural forces beyond our control sits firmly among our most urgent pleas for mercy. I won’t stop the flow of fierce (and warm) hope in their direction, of course, but I’ll temper it with a reluctant acceptance that everything has its limits. The black-capped chickadees and cardinals at the feeders are bustling about with focused intention, less play and more work to get at the frozen suet rich with seeds and bits of cracked corn. And they do it all with what seems to be a thin covering of feathers, rapid heartbeats and nothing for their tiny feet. For this storm, we missed the chance to fortify a mourning dove’s shelter options and have already researched how to support a bird in winter; when the temperatures climb above freezing, we’ll take one of our vacation days and head outside to do what we can for these tiny relatives of ours (I’ll let go of the temptation to knit them little slippers, as I suspect that would only weigh them down).

Until then, we’ll wait it out, tethered to our dependence on electricity and propane and distract ourselves with the kittens’ antics as they sit motionless at the window, their gazes fixed on a tufted titmouse perched on the shepherd’s hook (ahhh…so close and yet, so far…). The world on the other side of the glass has things under control, whether I understand it fully or not. My job is to not add to their challenges with my folly, but to let them be and be grateful I even get to watch how they go about their days. When the season hangs out its “do not disturb” sign, best to obey and trust.

Mustn’t wake the sleeping tulips, my friends. Every one of my hopes for spring is wrapped around them, five inches below the surface.

Shhh…

Lessons I Need to Learn More Than Once

It’s a quiet Sunday morning, five batches of granola lined up in a pre-dawn baking marathon (lemon blueberry tahini, if you just asked) as we prep for another busy double market three-day weekend. Tink is kittening around, having found a dried blueberry that escaped one of the bags and landed within paw’s reach. To a feline foundling, anything is a toy. I need to borrow that wisdom the next time I think I’m bored and an opportunity presents itself.

In the morning calm, I’m thinking back to a moment I had during lunch last Tuesday at the small round table in my office and it’s stayed with me, gaining momentum these past several days. A week prior I’d made an overlarge pot of sausage kale soup (we just can’t cook for two) and it was sublime. Chicken sausage wrapped around tart apple bits and smoked gouda, kale grown locally and the last of this year’s crop on the final day of the outdoor farmers market, pride of a produce vendor just behind our stall in the Grater’s Ice Cream Parlor parking lot. In a rich tomato broth dotted with corn cut straight from the cob and flash-frozen, chunks of organic carrots and pinky-sized green beans, it was a meal for the gods. We paired it with roasted banana squash one night, turkey-and-cheese melts the next and ended up freezing the rest, a white flag waved over the landscape of potential meal monotony. I stopped counting at four containers stacked on the top shelf of the old Montgomery freezer we bought at farm auction some twenty years ago. Not knowing what the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday would yield by way of leftovers, Patrick and I dedicated ourselves to clearing a patch in both the fridge and that freezer. We feel it’s just as important to prepare for abundance as it is for disaster and lean times.

So there I am at work, a repurposed black carryout container before me, steam rising from its thawed and reheated contents and I’m digging in, Downton Abbey cued up on the Amazon app for a little “lunch and a show” entertainment. I’m making my way through and realize I’ve pushed the chunks of sausage aside, saving them for last while I spoon up the humble and colorful vegetables in some attempt toward delayed soup gratification. I performed the exact same ritual as a child with my mom’s vegetable and meatball soup (the meatballs were tiny, barely an inch around, and sparse in the bowl as she masterfully stretched a pound of ground beef to feed seven people, five of them youngsters, a flock of baby birds with our mouths open nearly constantly) and it’s quite simple—those little meatballs were delicious and I wanted to end the meal on a high note by eating as many as the ladle had given me, putting an exclamation point on the whole proceedings. Mom would smile when she observed this, having just been thanked and praised for her cooking skills as only an eight-year-old can do.

Fast forward to a workday lunch, mom on the Other Side, perhaps still smiling and me pausing for a moment to contemplate how I carried that eating ritual around with me all this time. Did the sausage taste even better for the waiting? Were the vegetables some culinary second-class ingredient that I needed to muscle through? Was I overthinking the entire experience and would do better to turn my attention back to the family Crawley? “No” to the first two and an all-caps bold font “yes” to the last.

But it did get me wondering about the unexamined rules in my life, where I learned them and how many I’ve tried to unlearn over the years as their usefulness wore thin and irrelevant. I turned off Downton Abbey and reached for my notebook and pen, letting a small but persistent carpe diem moment wash over me. Each one tied to a back story, a period of growth and self-reckoning, fodder for future reflections…

What am I waiting for? Use the good linens and table service now.

Let others go first.

You’re more than the sum of your scars.

Anything resisted persists. Don’t resist resistance.

You wouldn’t worry so much what others thought of you if you realized…they didn’t.

Remember to breathe.

Do something that your future self will thank you for.

Later never comes.

People can change their minds. They often do. And you’re people too.

I’m curious, dear reader and I hope not impertinent when I ask you what lessons you’ve needed to learn more than once? If you’re even a shred like me, you’ll notice that some new encounter, conversation, life-changing moment will carry forward something familiar in its hands, asking you to stop a moment and reconsider what you think you know and repack your luggage differently for the next leg of the trip. What have you left behind and what remains in your toolkit, worn and well-used but also quite sturdy for the tasks ahead?

All this from a bowl of soup.