Category: An Ongoing Journal…

Various and sundry writings. This is the page where the most recent posts appear as well.

Learning of Woodcocks

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Birding, Low Vision Life, Mommy Mind2 Comments

Last night, as Elihu and I lay side by side in bed, lights off and awaiting sleep, he said to me “You know why I’m so glad to have you as my mom?”, to which I said nothing, letting a moment pass. “Because every day with you I learn something new”. And shortly thereafter, we were both asleep.

Tonite I’ve just drawn a bath, while he’s gone outside to watch the birds’ final visits to the feeder in the dimming light, a light which finally allows him to watch them without his usual dark red sunglasses, eyes wide open. He called to me, saying he heard a Woodcock in the neighboring field. “Please, Mommy, we have to go see him!” he begged. A bath will always be there. This was an opportunity. We grabbed our flashlights and headed out.

In the distance, the black silhouette of the hills stood out against the last light of day. The sun had been down for a while, yet there was still just enough light to see by. A buzzing sound, more like a lone cricket than a bird, sounded from the middle of the field. It was a short, raspy, buzzing sound that reminded me of a bug lamp zapping out a mosquito. It was intermittent, but his location was unmoving. After several failed attempts to locate the bird we hit upon a good tactic. I would scan the field with my light, eventually seeing the bird’s eyes reflecting back, two shiny retinal mirrors. Surprisingly the bird stood still as we carefully approached. I would get the bird in my spot of light and Elihu, lamp strapped to his forehead, would begin his approach. We made three good tries, the third time, although I was still a good hundred feet away, I was able to see the bird’s form. Elihu crept closer still, and finally, only feet away, he witnessed the bird fly up and away, my spot following the bird in the air as best I could. Impressive. A bird I might well go my whole life through without ever seeing (hell, without Elihu’s knowledge of his call I’d never even know I shared my world with such a creature) had just shifted something inside of me. I could just make out his strangely long bill in the light. His shape was so different, so unlike all the easily-spotted birds that we’ve almost come to take for granted. It was a grand moment. Elihu was elated. He cheered and laughed. We both agreed it was a perfect end to our impromptu mission and we began to walk back to the field’s edge, back to our cozy little house behind the tree-lined stone wall.

“I saw exactly what he looked like and now I can draw him” Elihu said as we neared the house. Clearly, the bath would have to wait a moment longer. Drawing, bath and call to Daddy follow. I am so tired now, I cannot keep my eyes open long enough to read to him from the Burgess Bird Book for Children. Instead, I lay on my side, facing him. His eyes cannot close. He stares at the ceiling. I know he is reliving the moment over and over. I can share it with him no more, and fall asleep.

Today, we’ve both learned something new. Thank you, my dearest Elihu. I’m so glad to have you as my son.

Hummingbirds Return

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Although the date was different last year, the day was the same; mother’s day, the day when our hummingbirds returned. They arrived again this year only a few hours ago. I had washed out the feeders, mixed a fresh batch of sugar water and hung them outside our kitchen window only minutes before the first male came buzzing in. This is a thrill in our house. “The hummingbirds are back!” I shouted. Elihu began to dance and nearly cried in his joy. He also practically knocked me over to get up on the stool to see for himself. He found it difficult to eat dinner tonight, as preoccupied as he was with the tiny bird. Thankfully, in this final hour before dark the little fellow is making repeat trips to the feeder, and as Elihu chats with his father on the phone he is nose to the glass, watching.

If anything was ever said to be truly mind blowing, it would be the nearly two thousand-mile journey these tiny birds make each year to return to their summer homes. To see them again is to find one’s own hope and courage renewed. Amen.

Mother, Mirror

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind2 Comments

If I have come to live here for no other reason, I might consider the insight I’m given by living with my mother close by. While I have tried to discipline myself to see things from the half-full rather than half-empty perspective, my mother reminds me why this is still such a struggle for me. She is, inherently, a seer of the half-empty glass. And fundamentally, I think I may be so too.

“Nancy’s your mother?” people say with great interest. “What a great woman! I love Nancy!” they usually say. With too much back story to impart, and knowing it’s not really the point anyway, I usually smile and respond that yes, that’s what they all say. From an outsider’s perspective my mother is one upbeat person whose personality attracts. The same could be said about me too, I suppose. But as with anyone, there’s so much more to the person that is apparent at a first encounter.

The only person to ever bear intimate witness to the two sides of the Conant women was my near ex. He was quick to point out how similar I was to her. I would protest – for the woman I see is always muttering asides to herself under the martyred burden she constantly feels. My mother, when faced with new information, almost always responds with a victim-like disgust. It seems no matter what is offered, she feels it represents an unwelcome challenge and a burden that she herself will ultimately have to carry. And in light of the back story, I get it. Her own father left and began a new family cross town before he’d wrapped things up properly with her mother. This was in a pre divorce-as-common-occurance world. Her father hardly surfaced again in her life. This and more chapters help explain to me, at least, why she reacts as she does. In summary, she feels the world has screwed her, she has to fight for what she does have, and if she doesn’t do something that needs to be done, no one will. Whether she’s made her world fit her truth, or it existed like that in spite of her choices, I can see that many of her suspicions of the world have come true. After all, if she doesn’t work, there will be no bills paid. If she doesn’t make supper, Dad won’t eat. If she doesn’t do the laundry no one will. (Is this not the case for most mothers? I think we all have reasons to see our jobs as invisible and thankless at times.) But if she would just stay her knee-jerk tendency to groan about the prospects before she responded, she might find that things aren’t as doomed as she’s programmed to believe.

I don’t like to spend too much time in my parent’s house because of the thick and negative energy there. When my mother turns away from us, my father and I share knowing glances and shrug our shoulders in our shared powerlessness as she mutters to herself in the aftermath of what she’s perceived to be some gross wrong that has just been imposed on her. She lives on a vocabulary of passive-aggressive asides. When I try – sometimes ever so gently, sometimes in the anger of a shameful blowup – to call her attention to this, she takes it in without protest, but she never seems to hear me, or to get it. My near-ex said that my own negative tendencies (or the “Nancy” in me, he’d say) added to his desire to leave me. And to some extent I can understand this, however I’d offered that our situation was different; self-discovery and change was something I embraced, something I actively sought. I’d say we had tools and abilities available to us that our parents didn’t. He wasn’t moved. (His current girlfriend is to the outsider’s perspective a perennially cheery thing who, to me, seems to share some aspects of Betty Boop. Blonde, curly hair, a buxom figure and a super-high speaking voice that might do well in character parts, she is rather the polar opposite of me. Perhaps he needed to get as far away from the shadows of my essence as possible.) My parents are lost in the world of their own creation. At this late date there seems no desire to change. It’s not my business to enlighten them either.

So, in an effort to be a half-full person, I don’t try to impose my insights on my mother as a matter of course. Rather I study her. I notice her responses to things, and I reflect on how I might respond to the same. It helps me to see my own habits, and to understand what I’d do well to avoid. Seeing my mother, and how she lives in her own world has helped me to avoid going further down the poor-me path. In that we both share a story of father-leaving-family I can begin to understand how deep her pain goes. It’s a difficult assignment to turn this around, but I’m equipped and ready for the job. To choose up rather than down, possibility rather than hopelessness. I have a few tricks that I employ to help myself to see the reflection without wincing. My near ex once challenged me to replace ‘no, but’ with ‘yes, and’. It was a good suggestion; it’s a technique I come back to when I think I need some regulation in my outlook. I also realize that it’s easier to criticize than to complement (why is this and what does this say about we humans?) and so I curb my first reaction to express what’s displeasing, and instead, I offer my gratitude for what is pleasing.

And so I offer my gratitude for my mother and all she’s shown me about the world. I thank her for teaching me all the wonderful secret things that only a mother can. I thank her for the reflection of my own imperfections. I thank her for going before, and I hope that I can serve to resolve some of the issues that she’s labored under for so long. With the mirror of my mother I see who I am, and I begin to learn the things that I may yet become.

So Happy

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“I’m so happy and I don’t have to know why” shouts my son from his bedroom as he changes into his clothes for the day. “I’m full of it!” he continues. Now he’s singing the Woody Wood Pecker song as he rushes to the window to watch the birds outside. Love that kid.

Famous Seamus

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind, Pics1 Comment

Few can actually say they are in possession of a dead parrot. This is our beloved and late parakeet, Seamus.

His death was sudden and rather dramatic (and also cost $118 for a final attempt at reviving him with some sort of injected medical cocktail) and I found myself sadder than I would have thought at his passing. As I stood in the vet’s reception area, holding Seamus, who was neatly resting on a teal blue towel in a perfectly sized box, my thoughts turned to Elihu. Just as the woman behind the desk was handing me the brochure on how to talk to your children about the death of a beloved family pet, he spoke up. “Can we have him taxidermed?” he asked, without registering much emotion on his face. I recalled a little sign I’d once seen for a taxidermist’s shop up by the Greenfield hills and replied “Yes, I know a place.” I paused to consider the logistics. “We can go there now if you like”. He jumped up and clapped his hands in joy. With a disappointing audience of the somewhat humorless lady behind the counter, I threw the pamphlet over my shoulder in a ‘I give up’ sort of gesture, and we headed out the door with our ex-parrot in a box.

Note: Neither the mention of an ‘ex-parrot’ nor ‘how to put your budgie down’ is lost on my dearest Elihu. How much fun it is to have a child with that sort of twinkle in his eye, and that kind of material in his repertoire.

Famous Seamus the Taxidermed Parakeet

Retro Post: The Last Party

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Not directly related to anything currently in my blog, this is a journal entry I just rediscovered which was written in December of 2005. Although I was well aware that the immediate future was almost completely unknown to me, I could never, ever have begun to imagine how differently my life would pan out in the years to come. Painful though it’s been, I can honestly say now that I’m grateful everything happened the way it did…

It’s two thirty in the morning, and our Christmas party is quietly dying down. I can hear conversations – Fareed is still holding court with a few straggling guitar students, but I sense things are finally wrapping up. This, our 19th party, was our mildest. It was nice to see some very dear friends for what might well be our final party here. Here in this house, in our town, our world. I can hear the laughter of young, long-haired girls I don’t know, and I see the lights of a car turn around in our driveway. I am tired, and I hope nobody takes us up on our ‘5 to 5’ thing. Last year Ray Quinn showed up at four. Hope not this year. Really, it peaked Elihu’s first party. That was the year I wore the ‘sound of music’ gown. Acres of dark green silk and a crinolyn skirt underneath to push it out all around. The year I was still big from having a baby. The year the upstairs bathroom was torn up and not functioning. That was the year everyone came. Oh well. This year we finally got the bathroom and the kitchen done and no one shows. I shouldn’t say that, those who showed were family, and that was good. It was a good night. I am tired, and I am ready to say goodbye to this place. I remember years when dozens of us sang carols around the piano – sometimes twice in a party – but tonite that was not to be. A measly half dozen of us sang. Although a thin crowd, it was nonetheless a nice moment. But so short. Ah well. Time to move on it seems. I’m too tired to keep this event going these days. Man, am I getting old?? What the hell??

I made gallons and gallons of cider and wine. The first pots never even got finished tonite. In the old days I could NEVER make enough. Ich. I’m a little sad. I am waiting for everyone to leave, and for my dear husband to come upstairs. I’m waiting for us to put our arms around each other and sigh. We’ll recount the night, although I have no voice left and can hardly speak. He’ll run circles around me energy wise, and chide me for being so pooped. Well, the triumph of the night was young Master Elihu. He looked a vision in his black velvet Jon jon and shiny patent leather shoes. He was so well behaved, yet I feel I neglected him most of the night. He is such a good little man, that son of ours. I was kind of disappointed that all the kids found the loose tinsel and globbed gobs of it all down one side of the tree. But a small price for the joy it created. I think I’m as ready as I can ever be to leave this home of mine. I believe things are winding down here. I am excited to live on first street in Dekalb. I am ready. I know we’ll need time there for it to feel like home, and right now I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel that way again, but I’m ready to try. I’m ready for something else. Something else. I just don’t know what.

The first two years of Elihu’s life we two did indeed enjoy this place. Fareed was gone most of the time, so it was the two of us who did the exploring. We rode the neighborhood on my bike, we walked everywhere, we browsed the Salvation Army store and bought trinkets. I can recall so many little delights; an old fiber optic lamp that Elihu insisted on taking apart, a little toy piano that played in tune. We discovered many odd and unexpected objects which added interest to our long days together. We went to the beach too. We did this all. Sadly for me, Elihu never liked the beach, so the very thing that we might have actually enjoyed the most – had he been a kid without achromatopsia – was in fact the thing he most resisted. Once, as we walked hand in hand along the water he said to me “this is like walking in a nightmare”. That gave me a new insight into his world. I’d made it my life’s priority to always live as close to water as possible, now here was my kid just hating it. God damn it. At least I’d made sure we got to the beach a couple of times. I had so hoped my children would grow up walking distance from water. Now the water will be a river in our back yard. Oh Elihu, when you read this will you have grown up in Dekalb, never to have known what it is to live steps from the beach?? It’s so close, it could have been our life, but now it seems it’s not to be. Why?? I must remember that I am tired of living in a fishbowl of a house, of knowing that in my yard and garden I am always being seen by someone. If it weren’t for that silly monolith of a condo building across the alley it might be better, but I can see by the next warm season there’ll be even less privacy in our yard.

It will probably take us a good year to really feel ok in our new home, but I do think the change will come. I am sad, and I just want to get this over with. If we’re to have our second child, I need to be in my new home when she comes (Sarah’s still on the roof waiting…) If we’re going to do this, I need to get into my new home now. I know this is selfish and idealistic, but I feel I must make my new home soon.

North First Street. Or is it 1st? Does one spell out a numbered street? Hmm. I do so love our address: 520 Judson. It’s a very handsome address. So was 1122 Lunt. Hell, Orrington Lunt and Philo Judson were pals and created the first plats of the area. See? I know that kind of shit about my hood. Who the hell made the first plat of Dekalb? Who fucking cares? I don’t… yet. I’ll try.

I hear the hard soles of Fareed’s shoes walking the house as he turns off lights and amps. Good man. Yes, he’s a good man. It’s almost three now. I’ve expressed what’s been brewing inside, and what’s been underneath the whole night for me. Here he comes. Please come upstairs, my love. I want to go to bed. I am so tired, and my head hurts. And you know what? I really don’t want to have another Christmas party. Nineteen of em is enough. May our 20th find us cozy in our home by the woods, just us and a few dear friends gathered in love. God willing.

My Turn Soon

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind1 Comment

My birthday comes nine days after my son’s. While I was technically in my thirties when I had him, for all intents and purposes I was forty. So it’s easy math. I’m forty years older than he. (Good thing, because I’m easily thrown off by simple computations. This keeps things tidy.)

I share my day, May 7th, with Tchaikovsky and Brahms. While my ex was never sentimental about his own birthday (he shares his with Mozart), I am always rather fond of mine, and have always chosen my movements through the day with gentle consideration. When I was in my teens I would visit a lily of the valley patch by the banks of a neighboring canal, and just sit there, in quiet. I have always set time aside on each birthday to be alone in nature of some form. I wrote a song for myself when I turned 17, and it’s become something of a tradition that I play it for myself on that day. It’s a little melancholic thing that expresses a nostalgia for things lost and almost lost, a mood that I often found myself in for many years of my early adulthood. Its sound brings me back to the memories of that home, how the afternoon sun would throw the trees’ shadows on the stucco wall of the piano room, the sound of the cars rumbling over the canal bridge as I sat alone in the woods…

I can hardly recount the things I’ve done on my birthdays past. I can recall only a few out of so many. One I do remember was my 6th birthday. And I remember it because my mother made pink lemonade ice cream cake. I wonder if Elihu might possibly remember a childhood birthday decades hence for some such detail. I remember my thirtieth – a nice gathering of both my day job friends and my musician friends. I wore a serpent bracelet around my upper arm. I remember thinking at the time that I was chubby and unattractive. Sheesh. Couldn’t wind that snake around my arm these days.

Elihu suggested the family go to the Wishing Well for my birthday dinner. I was pleased with this; it’s a place that hearkens back to a pre-expressway America, with a silver-haired waitstaff, a floor of sound-muffling carpet and a sense of unrushed elegance in the room. I’m glad he made this lovely suggestion, for I have no real desire to go anywhere, to eat anything, to do anything special. My life is absent of much heartfelt and zealous desire these days, rather my energy it turned towards my list of things to learn and make here on my homestead. While these goals do represent a desire of sorts, they don’t have the same inherent element of excitement and energy as say, performing might have. I’ve been trying to think of something that I might enjoy experiencing on my birthday, but so far nothing much moves me. I’d like to take a walk in the woods and have some time alone. I’d really love to have a hundred dollars and a couple of hours to browse through some pretty clothes in a store. Neither is an option, so I will try to accept the day as it presents itself. Accepting what you’ve got is really all you can do.

I always consider a birthday to be as much the mother’s as the child’s. And for that reason I’m glad to be living here next to my own mother. It’s nice to be here for ‘her’ day too. I just wish we weren’t such a financial burden on her; she’s the only one in the family with a real job. She’s pulling us all along, and in fact, it will be she who picks up the hefty Wishing Well tab if we go. I so hope having her daughter and grandson next door makes up for it in some way. Most years on my birthday I have mom recount the story of my birth. It was a barbaric time in 1963 as far as labor and delivery went. They actually strapped her wrists to the gurney as she labored. No comfort was given, no movement allowed, no nothing. I can hardly believe it. I’m guessing that folks might even have been smoking in her presence… My mother was rather progressive for a woman in the midst of a culture that embraced invasive birthing techniques and encouraged drug-assisted births. She was adamant about having a natural birth, and in this atmosphere, with no advocate on her side, she stayed her course. (BTW – what the hell is natural about being strapped down as you deliver your child or having your entire pubic area shaved before you give birth?) I like to have her recount it, because it’s my way of affirming that this day also belongs to her. Elihu himself, on his own birthday one week ago, said “happy birthday to US, mommy”. He knows. Ok. I’m on deck…

Morning After

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Yesterday we had Elihu’s eighth birthday party here in our tiny home. While I took to heart the advice of my almost-ex in response to his critique that I needed to be better about planning activities for kids parties, and sat up crafting some pretty darling home-made games the night before, they couldn’t have been more irrelevant. Whew! Talk about a party!

The scene and supplies: A modest four room ranch house, a couple dozen yellow balloons strewn about, dollar store 3 liter bottles of fake lemonade, a cake covered in frosting grass and dotted with eight peeps and candles, an incubator with several hatching eggs as well a brooder with several fuzzy chicks in the living room, a trampoline outside in front, a coop out back, and a drum set and wurlitzer electric piano downstairs. Instant party. Good thing some parents hung around – with inside, outside and downstairs all swingin at the same time, it wasn’t possible to stay on top of all the action. I can confidently say a very good time was had by all. I do hope this was the kind of moment in these young lives that will stand out in the lore of their youth many decades from now. I think it stands that chance. Every child got to hold and smooch a fuzzy newborn chick without being told his turn was up. Everyone got to see an egg being poked at from inside about as close up as possible. No bad seats, no long waits to get your turn. Everyone who wanted to bounce bounced. Those who wanted to try the drums did. And the chickens ran free around the yard for all to chase. Indeed, this was a fine party.

This morning the weather is beautiful, my son is sleeping in and another chick has just hatched. I am guessing that today will be one of those very fine, unscheduled, at-home days. I imagine Elihu will play with his new toys while I tend to the coop repairs. We Tauruses will delight in being home. With the memory of our happy yesterday still rambling about in our heads, we will work and play side by side as contented as any two people can be.

Birthday Angel

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It is early on the morning of my son’s eighth birthday. Lying on my right side I look at the clock. 6:38. Eight. Eight. I begin the new contemplation for today. What does eight feel like? Can I see all eight of those years at a glance and fully ‘get’ what it means? I feel I can, and for the first time in my son’s life, he seems to have the full history of a young person. A little of this, a little of that, and the discretion that comes with experience to be able to sort it all out.

When he turned five he turned to me, and in all earnestness said, “you do know that I’m more 45 than 5, don’t you?” Feeling his need to be understood, and indeed understanding just what he meant, I reassured him that I got it. I got it. Five was a year of turmoil. Looking back I believe that he felt trapped inside the body of a small kid. Deep inside he seemed to be so very frustrated by his own lack of ability, experience and knowledge. This may seem a bit profound a statement to make about a five year old, but I can tell you, as his nearly constant companion and fretting mother, I know this to be true. That year Elihu was prone to destructive explosions of rage that seemed to erupt right out of the blue. I have a scar on my left forearm of where he bit me. I’d meant to prevent him from breaking anything, as he was moving rather like a weed wacker – spinning his arms outward to take down whatever lay in his path – and so I wrapped my arms around him. As I held him fast, and as his rage found its last possibility of expression, in desperation to rid the torment from his system, he leaned over my protective arm and sunk his teeth in. That was the year we moved here, the year everything changed.

I had always thought I’d done a pretty good job of keeping things hopeful and cheery during this transition. I’d thought it much harder on me than on him. I’d lost my best friend of the past twenty years, I was giving up my friends and life, while my son had barely started to make friends, much less get into the rhythm of a ‘life’. This all may have been true, but at five, Elihu felt something was not right. I now believe the import of that year was not lost on this tiny person. While I may have told him initially that we were ‘going to visit grandma and grandpa for a while’ (and subsequently apologized many times for having duped him), I think he knew shortly after we arrived, that this was no visit. His life had just been changed, and he’d had no say in it. What was worse, he was tricked into it. (Even now, at eight, the fallout from this past chapter rises up and threatens him in the form of panic attacks, which we both approach head on, unwilling to allow the unsettled feelings to grow, as we work together – along with a softly listening counselor at the local family services office – to learn what feeds them, and to pick apart the issues and discuss them all in love and understanding.)

In his sixth year his rage lessened, and he began his life of birds in earnest. That was the year we came home from Tractor Supply with our first family of chickens. The photos I saved in his first grade memory book show the summer of a carefree young boy on a farm. (I squirm to use the term ‘memory book’, but it was created at the request of his first grade teacher. I admit I have felt great disdain in the past for those who would spend hours of precious time ‘scrap booking’, but I did learn that making a simple book that reflects the highlights of a particular year is a nice way of keeping the chronology correct, if nothing else. And there is actually plenty of ‘else’ as well.) There is a photo of Elihu, arms outstretched, running after our white Pekin drake, Joseph. It is filled with the joy of summer and a young boy’s pure, nature-driven heart. Yet by just looking at the photograph one wouldn’t know that this is a rare moment in which Elihu has ceased to hold his dark glasses tight to his head in order to block out the sun so he can see well enough to track the bird. One wouldn’t know the back story of our new life alone, without husband, dad. The tenuous day-to-day balance of need and supply isn’t apparent in the images. But the photos do remind us that many delightful moments did happen, and in spite of the back story, there were some truly happy times that year. A year of discovery, the door to our future was then flung wide open and we crossed the threshold, mouths wide open.

Elihu’s seventh year was one, I’d say, of transition. While five was small and not so well-equipped to do things, at six Elihu was becoming aware of what was needed in order to do things. Seven then, was putting it into action and finally doing many things for himself that he couldn’t when he was younger. And now, at eight, I realize that the door to that pure, innocent chapter of Peter Rabbit and Pooh is now beginning to close. This is the year when the magic of Santa may no longer hold. When the cracks in his tiny-child beliefs will become bigger and harder to ignore. I’ve always marveled that a kid who took such a scientific interest in his world, measuring wingspans and learning migration routes, could so easily believe that one man delivers gifts to every child on earth in one night. (That Santa delegates, and has a lot of elves helps to ease the doubt a bit.)

So here I am. Quite possibly the last birthday in which my son will believe that the presents sitting on the kitchen table in the morning were delivered magically, as he slept, by the birthday angel during the night. Eight feels like a long time now. No longer does it feel as if my son were born just a few short years ago. So much life has passed for us since then. Here is my son, small child no longer. Young boy today. In a few minutes I will wake him, I will tell him that when I went into the kitchen to make breakfast I found something. I will tell him in a quiet, wondering way – so careful not to overdo it – and then I will share once more, perhaps one final time, that breathless moment of delight when he sees the unbelievable sight before him. Happy birthday, my beloved Elihu.

Easter Morn

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Hallelujah! The Lord has risen, and so has the temperature! Fully expecting to see a figure beginning with 3 or 4 on my kitchen door thermometer, imagine my surprise and joy just now in seeing 60! Really? Wow – gotta let those chickens out, surprised I haven’t hear them crowing yet. (Two days ago I awoke to see snow covering everything, and rather thickly, for a spring snow. I’d thought briefly to post a picture on Facebook, but snow in April hardly warrants surprise for northerners.) It’s a lovely, sunny, warm and still Easter morning here in upstate New York. I look around and imagine all those farmer types who might be just a little miffed that they’ve got to dress up and go to church on such a good day for getting some outside work done. Then I think, well, at least it’s great weather for getting the kids dressed up and loaded in the minivan… That’s better. Should really start this day with a more uplifting sentiment.

Coffee cup in hand, I stand on my front steps and begin to think over all the things I’ve learned so far in my two years here, and then I begin to consider all the lessons yet ahead. I begin a quick inventory of the things that have begun to come into my field of awareness. First off, I’m really glad to have serendipitously come across the author Michael Perry through his latest book “Coop”, which I found directly in my path as I did a final once-over of the local Borders on its last day. Got it for a buck (sorry, Mike). Therein is a nice chunk of not only remembrances that parallel mine in many ways (growing up farming, a late sixties, early seventies childhood, going it alone with a capricious ‘try it and see what’s the worst that could happen’ attitude and more) but a lesson in the end which I would do well to learn from. He comes to the conclusion (bless that man, oh how I wish my ex had felt the same) that it is his wife who really holds down the whole operation as he spends a good deal of time on the road. He credits her for feeding the animals and tending the garden while raising the young children. Then he begins to realize that farming is in itself a job, and that he really cannot both farm and write professionally – at least to the degree he’d thought possible at the outset. My mother expressed her concern recently that this garden/chicken thing is a huge endeavor, and that I should be putting the bulk of my time into The Studio instead. Well, somehow, I’ve managed to juggle things before, and with nice results, so I’ve been thinking I can pull it off. But in the two days since she said this, the reality is beginning to sink in. A 20’x40′ garden. Forty chickens, a new coop and run (which I must build). An eight year old boy. A community arts center with summer camp programs (which I run). A concert hall dedication ceremony and Baroque concert with promo to be done, tickets to be sold. Sheesh. I haven’t even added in my new membership at the Y, my ambitious new ‘women on weights’ class or just general life. Caution rises up in me and a new, more responsible voice begins to emerge, telling me that it’s not about ego, that I have not failed if I can’t pull it all off, that I must remember that everything takes half again as much energy to manifest as one bargains for at the top.

Ok. Today at Easter dinner I will sound out mom and Martha – now the old women at the table – and I will see how crazy my plate looks to them. Just since I awoke about an hour ago I’ve already begun to research tillers and what that labor is about. Hmm. Front tine: cheap, but good for small gardens. Require more effort. Rear tine: expensive, good for big jobs, less grunting. My mom has a small Mantis I can use. That will have to do. I guess before my farmer neighbor came over the other day to offer a kindly consultation on my land, I’d had romantic, Foxfire-ish visions of swinging a hoe in the humid, hot July, laboring down the rows stopping to pluck a potato bug here and there, wiping my brow as I assessed my progress and happy to finally have a good reason to wear my floppy garden hat. Oh dear. I need to slow down and think this over.

I’m just so thrilled to be alive now, to have the tools for self-education right here in this little box. I have become a sponge these past two years. One can investigate virtually anything with google and you tube. That saves one a lot of time and mishap. While there is absolutely no substitute for jumping in and experiencing your own three stooges moments, it behooves one to do a little reconnaissance first. With these tools I add one more; getting out and visiting with those who have gone before. In my search for free lumber on Craigslist, and my forays into the countryside to pick up the stuff, I’ve enjoyed many very educational discussions with folks who’ve been at it for years. Building, fixing, raising, growing. So I’m asking a lot of questions. Man, the information just comes in. And so does the dawning realization that I just might not be able to pull it all off – at least not this year.

In the two decades I spent living with a classical guitarist, the most frustrating thing about it was quite literally, a fingernail. (This is the line that will get all partners of guitarists to smile, the guitarists themselves won’t, and I’ll get into that here.) Fareed was constantly swiping his right hand thumbnail with a teeny fragment of fabric-soft, ultra-fine sandpaper which he ALWAYS carried with him (or almost always – the occasional search for his missing sandpaper was as frantic as the search for the crying baby’s missing pacifier). The right hand thumbnail, to a classical guitarist, is the essence of who he or she is as a player. The very physical condition and shape of the nail combined with the technique (oh dear, to add flesh or not to add flesh? Segovia or Williams?) is what makes the ‘sound’. And by sound I do not simply mean it simply plucks the string; rather it creates the quality of the sound that defines the player. The endless filing of the nail was accompanied by daily and even hourly proclamations that his sound was getting closer. To what? I waited for years to arrive at that destination. My husband was always trying to improve his sound. Improve his thumbnail. Improve the angle at which it reached the string. He was in ceaseless pursuit of that elusive combination of a thousand micro-changes that were apparently ALL of great significance to the end result. He would announce hundreds of times with sincere elation that he’d made a discovery today! And I would try, so hard, and many, many, many times with genuine thrill, joy and love for him at his success, to share in that moment. But I’m sure you can imagine, that at the thousandth such proclamation it was hard to conjure real thrill. It was tiring. This day-to-day emotional roller coaster of the search for the perfect thumbnail shape. I began to get a grouchy about it sometimes. I found it very hard to believe that after years of fussing with it he hadn’t come upon the perfect shape. Or at least perfected some method of getting somewhere in the workable neighborhood.

But indeed, God is in the details. Many times in my new single life in the country I’ve smiled to myself at his unending process with a new light of understanding. I too, am realizing the umpteen million degrees to which one can take any endeavor. And all the different results that manifest from those nearly invisible changes. From growing seeds to monitoring the humidity in my incubator, I’ve seen the effects of subtle changes on the results. I guess I’m now a believer. I wonder how I might give him this gift; how can I tell him, with love, that I am sorry for my exasperation at his tiny triumphs? How can I convey, with humor intended (for it is kinda funny to me now) that I have a better understanding of how much more there is to anything than one can possibly understand at a casual, outsider’s glance? In my heart, I apologize to him many times for this, and I almost always laugh, because I am beginning to be humbled by how many choices go into life.

So on Easter morning, I am taking stock. I am renewed with hope, I am educated by my past. I am going to slow down today. Perhaps I’ll see if the trout lily is up in the woods. Heck, I don’t even know if it grows this far east. There’s so much I don’t know. It’s such an adventure, this life. A pain in the ass to be sure, but humor and gratitude oil the big machine. I’m off to git her started. Nice and slow, Elizabeth, you’ve got a lot ahead.