Ten Bricks

Thick heavy rains scrubbed the last of the Canadian wildfire haze from the sky, filling the bowl of the meadow to overflowing and our smoke-weary lungs with fresher air. But I didn’t see the flash flood warning notification on my weather app until after I stood as close as I safely could to the edge of the rushing creek waters that had swallowed our bridge whole. My brother Mike was with us, working diligently on the bathroom remodel, and had just put his tools away for the day. We were lingering over dinner and some much-needed comic relief from “Corner Gas” episodes (a Canadian sitcom from the ‘90s, an un-coincidental viewing choice not at all related to the source of the wildfires) when I went upstairs to close the bedroom windows and caught a glimpse of the brown churning water racing past the trees on the ridge. I ran down the steps, calling out, “You’ve gotta come see this!”, Mike and Patrick close on my heels.

The scene—and the rippling edge of the water climbing the grassy slope to the ridge—stopped us in our tracks. We stood, mouths agape, watching the night’s first fireflies flirting with the blades of grass still poking up from the water and as one, turned our heads to look down the curve of the driveway toward where the bridge was, or might be. The creek had become a river, pushing everything out of its way, tumbling once-solid tree trunks and branches and any unfortunate unanchored forward into a surge of nonstop determination, destination unknown. The bridge was underneath it all, perhaps, either stoically standing firm or randomly missing some of its 6x6 pressure treated planks like a five year old’s first day of school grin. We could only wait until morning to know the worst.

I usually walk at first light, wanting to be blissfully lost in the woods as the birds announce the sun’s rising and the dawn threads its golden fingers through the leafy tresses of the tallest black walnuts and cottonwoods. I’d get there eventually but on this particular Monday after the deluge, I was trotting down the driveway at a pretty good clip, wondering if I’d be calling off work because we didn’t know where our bridge was. Rounding the curve that allowed for a full view of our passage to and from the land, I exhaled at the sight of the bridge still holding fast to the creek’s banks and rocky bed, planks firmly in place where the builders had left them after the most recent upgrade, covered in debris and slick with mud left behind as the waters receded. Bare patches dotted the driveway where once, a thick layer of #4 stones had embedded themselves, giving the illusion of permanence. A good-sized pile of them now sat just beyond the driveway’s sideways slope; it would require a shovel and muscles to return them to their original spot. I pictured myself on some hot day in August throwing my shoulders to the task with a cool bath in our new tub as the reward for my labors. More than a few times, Patrick and I have sent our thanks upward and across the seas to find Mike, now back home and remodeling other people’s houses in Hawaii.

Walking through the meadow, the grass and reeds along the creek banks looked combed as if by some colossal cosmetologist dedicated to directional perfection. Twigs and smaller branches collected halfway up the trunks of sturdier trees, making the resulting wattle-and-daub effect look charming instead of like victims of the watery violence that stranded them there. Three years ago, closer to the base of the ridge near the house, Patrick and I had stacked chunks of cut wood with all good intention of moving it up to the sweat lodge that same week. But I’m sure you understand how life happens and you choose other options besides work, and we left it neatly Jenga’d with a sincere promise to close the deal, soon. The water in its rage must have figured as much and took all but a single column of these wood chunks downriver, leaving a cairn-like stack as testimony to its mercy. I think we’ll keep it as is a while longer. We all need reminders of power and grace.

Equally curious as I surveyed the aftermath was a row of ten red clay bricks I’d plucked from the creek bed one day last summer, thinking I’d use them to edge a small plot of Russian sage near the house. They were heavy—I could only carry two at a time—so I lumbered each pair up the steep creek banks and laid them to rest on the bridge and would get them up to the house later. Post-storm, there they were, random rocks and pieces of punky tree bark shoved up against them, but unmoved by the force that I thought might have eaten our bridge in one bite.

I don’t know how the world really works. How nature and its evolving energy decides what to take and what to leave undisturbed. I know only that when I get to bear witness to the outcome after the fury, it unsettles me in a good way, shaking hands with what is holy and wholly mysterious. If I’m smart, I lower my gaze to my boot-clad feet and find my humble place in the midst of it all, leaving the answers to a Mind that has worked it out far better than I ever could.

For now, it’s enough that I made it to work that Monday morning and had the good fortune to return home just as safely to a bathroom with a working tub, sink and toilet nestled into a new aesthetic that lets in more light.

The better to see things by, I reckon.

Wish Dad Could Be Here to See This

There’s an old enameled cast iron tub on our porch and a new still-in-the-box one-piece toilet nearby.

And two completely reusable cut-out sections of drywall resting against a seven-foot primitive cabinet that holds our sacred items (bundles of sage and sweetgrass, tobacco, containers of other medicines for sweats, the odd deer antler and strips of fabric for prayer flags in all the colors—black, white, yellow, red, blue and green).

It’s been a bit hectic ‘round here lately or I’d have posted a reflection sooner. Something lofty rather than practical, but I’m up to my eyebrows in practical at the moment, keeping on top of the logistics of managing two markets alongside a bathroom remodel that sometimes resembles an archaeological dig into the bowels of our 1914 farmhouse. My brother, Mike, in from Hawaii until the job is done, has been gracious in the extreme about changes to the plan; it’s a pleasure to give him room and board and solid meals and eventually a paycheck for his good-natured labors. Did I mention it’s our one and only bathroom? Luckily, we live in a place so tucked away that alternatives to our morning ablutions and middle-of-the-night “necessities” go undetected by our neighbors acres away in their beds. I’ll probably always be grateful for the convenience of flowing water at the touch of a lever, but…there’s something about kneeling in dewy grass at first light, washing your hair to a chorus of morning birdsong while a lazy mist tufts its way across the field beneath the rising sun’s pale yellow sponge cake eye.

This remodel has been on the drawing board for years, a project that’s long overdue, and it’s certainly not the first time residents of this space reimagined the layout and functionality of what some would say is The Most Important Room in the House. Our predecessors (all of them, not just the most recent) were thrifty and creative in their own construction and remodeling attempts, impacted somewhere in the 50’s by the arrival of indoor plumbing. When we appeared on the scene 24 years ago, the room was divided by a non-load-bearing wall that kept the massive coal burning unit on one side and the traditional bathroom fixtures on the other, with a hastily installed chain-and-wire dual bulb swag lamp swinging precariously over the medicine cabinet made from a repurposed contractor’s tool chest (mirrors added to the front “doors” for safer and more precise shaving, teeth-brushing and eyebrow tweezing). I’d gingerly reach the feather duster up over my head to clean the exposed wiring each week because, well, one wants a bathroom to be thoroughly clean, right? A 70’s style sink and vanity completed the look and a serviceable bathroom alcove was born. Over time, we pulled the coal burner and moved an old harvest gold Montgomery upright freezer into the corner, watching as the house settled it into its current slanty position. Bathroom-turned-funhouse—who doesn’t love that? That freezer has more than earned its place in the family, keeping our pasture-raised meat chickens and garden bounty preserved from summer through winter for more than eighteen years. I make no apologies to guests who stop for a split second at the room’s threshold before proceeding to what they came for on the right side of that wall.

Once Mike and our nephew Anthony pulled the remaining 2x4s that framed that wall, we knew we were well past the point of no return on the remodel, and ordered the vinyl interlocking waterproof flooring (a peaceful whitish grey). I’m sure there are still parts and pieces yet identified that we’ll haul home from the hardware store, but as former antiques business folks, we’ll make a few trips to the old goat barn and shop there first. I think this old house can handle a repurposed vibe. In fact, I think there’s an auction-scored green slag glass hanging lamp somewhere in my studio underneath an old mosaic tile-topped coffee table my sister Jane found at a flea market (birthday gift from a few years ago—she sure does know me). I’m sure we can make it work.

Mike and I, and the rest of our siblings for that matter, were taught frugality at the kitchen and workbench tables of our parents. With five children and two adults living on the strength of my dad’s single income and my mom’s household management abilities, we quickly took to an acquisition practice that fully embraced repurposing (which Pinterest did not invent, I can assure you). Dad would only purchase the best he could afford and make the rest do with a strong commitment to safety. His workshop in the basement was an organized treasure trove for the handyman that he was; ask him for a part to fix something and he could find it. He saw the future in a leftover chunk of wood and knew that a handful of drywall screws would do in a pinch. Mike was his lifelong apprentice at an early age and even I learned how to replace the valve cover gasket on Dad’s Ford Pinto one summer at the lake, proudly eating corn on the cob that night with traces of oil and lube grease still staining my fingernails.

Watching my brother plunge headfirst into the crawl space under our old floorboards to inspect for dry rot in the joists, measure more than twice before making that one-time cut and meticulously put the tools away and sweep at the end of each workday, I see him channeling Dad and I smile. I think he would have been right there under the house with Mike, bent double in the crawl space with a head lamp shining a dim light on where the floor jacks would go to brace the wall behind where the new tub surround will go. And loving the challenge of it all. Dad was about doing whatever would make his future self feel proud and accomplished, snacking on a handful of dry-roasted peanuts in between steps (Mike showed up on day one of the project with a large bag of Snack Factory Pretzel Crisps from Costco. The apple fell and came to rest reassuringly at the base of this family’s tree).

I don’t know the details of where Mike learned the rest of what he knows about construction, demolition, leveling floors or redirecting a set of copper pipes to their new location up against the wall between the two windows that will frame a gorgeous view of the field to the east when I take my first hot bath in the new tub, but I will ask him and listen for Dad’s voice echoing in the practicality of it all. Each generation improves on the one that brought it here.

It helps that we were given a solid foundation from which to go forward. Thanks, Mike.

And thanks, Dad.

Now What Do We Do?

Our first experience of a Zoom call was our niece’s wedding in May 2020, when the sting of lockdown was still raw on our hearts and just beyond the edge of our driveway’s gravely apron, a shadowy future hung its thick veil menacingly over every plan we’d made. Patrick and I sat on the couch in our pajamas eating sunny side up eggs and toast (“Can they see us? Are you sure the video is turned off?”) and watched as Maile and her father, both masked and wearing gloves, walked across the dewy grass of the family home’s back yard, past a table that held two light sabers, two Boba Fett helmets and a Star Wars-themed chocolate cake, to greet the smiling groom, Tyler, and seal the deal with friends and family watching from safe distances. On that chilly spring day, their love and regard for each other was the shared solid ground on which we all stood. We held on fast to it, and each other. Paused indefinitely were their plans for a European honeymoon and the kind of wedding reception that would bring them broad smiles in later years when they looked back on a life well-lived.

Until a couple weekends ago.

At a bar on the edge of downtown Columbus, I sat wedged in between my aunt Janie and Tyler’s grandmother, rolling succulent shreds of smoky pulled pork into a warm corn tortilla slathered with guacamole, looking expectantly at a little serving dish just inches from my plate, filled with truffles, their cocoa-dusted tops bearing the trademark finger-pinch shape. Now three years into their wedded bliss, Maile and Tyler were finally able to gather dear friends and family into one place to celebrate those grassy steps they took toward each other on that chilly day in May, insisting that love was bigger than the circumstances that had hung over us all. They were right.

On Halloween that same year, my other niece, Andi and her man, Greg, gathered us on the front lawn of that same family home and we witnessed their love made legal in the state of Ohio, where I had the honor of signing the marriage certificate with my freshly-minted ordained minister signature on the line below their names. We hoped the masks we wore were elegant and respectful for the occasion, and are eagerly awaiting the announcement for their reception, a storybook-themed affair still on the drawing board. A year later, my nephew, Rob and his beloved, Collin had the full-out in-person wedding and reception on a sunny October day, with her family in from Texas to join the festivities. Patrick and I struggled with our decision not to attend, still jittery about COVID’s surges and mutations. I have winces of regret, even knowing we did the best we could with the information and conflicted feelings we had at the time. Rob and Collin’s generosity of spirit knows no limits. They understood and understand still.

I only recently eased out of my mask-wearing practice, keeping a stash ready to hand in a wrinkled paper lunch sack in the back pocket of my purse. I never really minded them in the first place, having some immunocompromised folk around me, and in the winter, a good face covering kept my cheeks warmer. I remembered that all my hidden smiles naturally migrated to the eyes and so made sure to emphasize that in my interactions with market customers. One gathering, one public setting at a time, I grew more comfortable putting my full face out there again, grateful for the vaccines I took willingly and the virus’ inability to take hold in me, so far. That’s the least-jinxing way I can think of to phrase that. I know nothing is guaranteed, even through a hopeful veil of magical thinking. Now that the public health emergency has officially ended (May 11, 2023, if you need to put that in your diary somewhere), we’re settled into a rhythm that is part “normal”, part familiar and not looking over our shoulders as much. It’s certainly not as if COVID never happened (there are too many empty places at tables we once gathered ‘round) but we’re allowing a few more exhales—and inhales—than we did when mask mandates were first relaxed.

Back in March 2020, I wondered what we’d look like as a collective, a human community, when it was All Over. I couldn’t see that day from my perch on the ledge of our nation’s uncertainty and division in the pandemic’s early weeks-become-months. Images of Italians singing to each other across balconies still hang in the ether of my memories and I’d hung my hopes for our tribe on them, fiercely. Applause for healthcare workers’ shift changes and yard signs for their front lawns, sewing machines cranking out colorful cloth face masks and reusable isolation gowns…all bore the mark of my heart’s tight grip around their edges, holding on for all I (and humanity) was worth. And while debates may continue to rage on about where humankind has landed on the other side of May 11, 2023, I plant my tired feet solidly in the place of healing that is possible for us, and cup my hands gratefully around the faces of those who insist on love, their hopeful gaze locked onto a future we’re moving toward together, limping or leaping. It is important to honor the fact that we’re still here and there’s much to do.

A memory rises from some twenty years ago, at the end of a four-day gathering with family and dear friends, of fasting and sweats and food and ceremonies and prayer so that the people may Live. For reasons known and still wrapped in mystery, we had all been touched by the power of something Bigger in unforgettable and indelible ways. Circled around a fire that had burned constant for four sunsets and five sunrises, we were reluctant to leave. Then, in a small slice of silence after the final mitakuye oyasin was offered up to the sky, one of the little ones, five years old and curious always, shouted out an innocent and profound question as only a child can: “What do we do now!?”. Her father, an elder and old soul for his 20-some years, smiled down into her whole face and said simply, “the very best we can.”

Yep.

Ah-ho, relatives.

What Spring Does to a Person

Every tree is the color of matcha right now, an undulating sea of lattes on the commute home that will last but another week before they move onto the next shade of green in their collective unfolding. The freshly-tilled fields are a rolling ombre tribute to cocoa, from light milk to the deepest dark; if I were a young child in the back seat on a long road trip, I’d insist my parents tell me without hesitation that this is where chocolate comes from—one soil scoop at a time. Tired as I am from the day’s work, I’m in no hurry to get home. Can’t I just dawdle along in this arboreal cafe for a few more hours?

I made a glorious mess in the kitchen last weekend, following through on my dream to harvest armfuls of wild garlic mustard and turn it into pesto. If you’ve ever done this, you know it can be an oily affair, bits of basil or whatever green you’re using sticking to your fingers and the inside of the food processor’s bowl and your spatula and the counter… It’s pointless to clean as you go and a much better use of your time to dream of that first bowl of pasta adorned with the fruits of your labor. Patrick and I have been intermittent foragers over the years. He’s the hesitant skeptic, what with his paramedic training and experience tending to those who ingested something they thought was safe, and I’m all “honey, you really can eat stinging nettles—just plunge them in boiling water first for about 45 seconds” (which is why I’m not allowed in the kitchen without a permission slip). We did acquire a copy of “Edible Wild Plants”, a field guide and companion in lean times when green leaf lettuce soars past the $2.99/lb mark, and it helpfully lists poisonous lookalikes (with color photographs) so you don’t go munching on leaves or berries that will make your lips swell to three times their normal size. I learned that the roots of spring beauties, a sweet little wildflower that takes over lawns in between the last really hard frost and a few subsequent milder ones, can be harvested and cooked like tiny potatoes, but I just can’t bring myself to dig them up. They’re too pretty at my feet and I’d miss them on the morning walks (besides, once you dig up those little tubers, that’s it for them. The book cautions not to wipe out an entire patch at a time. Leave enough for next year). On the other hand, I can’t keep up with this season’s garlic mustard crop. With a quart of that pesto in the fridge and several more pints resting in the freezer, there’s still enough growing out there in between the buckeye saplings that line the driveway and up through the chicken run fence to keep us going well into next spring. I tucked a few tablespoons into a couple loaves of no-knead artisan bread, which our guests last Sunday cut into thick slices and slathered with more pesto. Sometimes, you leave our place not only full but fragrant (remind me to put a bowl of mints by the door).

Meanwhile, the raised beds have yet to coddle a single seed, potato cut or onion bulb in their compost-fluffed soil because we can’t seem to catch a day when the weather would permit it or we’re not working. Today’s a bit on the drizzly side but the air is warm and my tired old gardening jeans hang patiently on their hook in the bathroom waiting to be more gainfully employed. We’ll be late getting the tomato seedlings in, and the cucumbers and peppers. Those need a strong root system to thrive and we’re not going to rush it. In the mudroom are bags of red, yellow and white onion sets and three varieties of potatoes begging to get on with it ‘neath a comfy layer of dirt. It’ll be messy, but what’s a little dampness in the face of a future roasted Kennebec looking up at us from its place on our plate, nudged in next to the Lacinato kale salad dotted with yellow pear heirloom tomatoes sliced on the diagonal? If you’re gonna eat local, dream big and put up with a little discomfort. It’s worth it.

I have a friend who often says “do something today that will make your future self happy”. Such wisdom is the essence of any effort to grow one’s own meals and a near-cure for the tendency to procrastinate or give up on a diet. It pulls us out of our stupored complacency just enough to change our current view from the couch and step into the bigness of a world noisy with bird reunions at the feeders and eye-stinging fresh colors dressing every branch and every acre.

If you need me, I’ll be out back getting our dinner ready.