Monday of Thanksgiving week

The important thing to note is that this is the last of the warm-ish dry days. The last chance for us to work outside. Sow the meadow wildflowers? It's now or wait until spring.

Thanksgiving preparations will have to wait.

Before I can plant, Ed has to mow down the maple leaves out front. And so we set to work.






The cats watch. (Can you tell these triplets apart? We cannot!)






The cheepers come out.






(Breakfast break)






I have buckets of seeds and, too, I have a whole pail of pods from our own gardens.





All this has to be dispersed. It doesn't take long. Millions of seeds: an hour later, I'm done.

I'm not sure any of this will lead to any abundance of meadow flowers. We don't prep the soil nearly enough. That job would overwhelm us. Still, there is a spark of hope that some flowers will make an appearance next spring or summer. Sowing is an act of hope.


In the afternoon, of course, I play with Sparrow and Snowdrop.

(Doesn't he look like a guy coming home from work?)






We go to pick up Snowdrop. In her class, he is at once shy and insecure and daring and bold.






At the farmette, we cycle through the usual. A few secs of outdoor play...






Many, many minutes of reading (with a corn on the cob snack)...





And then whatever else strikes their fancy.


By evening, I realize I haven't done a blessed thing today to prepare for Thanksgiving. You better wish me demonic speed for the days ahead!

Sunday

Driving to the Brooklyn Wildlife Area, we listen to an NPR program where various people -- writers, ordinary folk, young, old -- share their favorite Thanksgiving memory. In case you're a little panicked about the meal you'll be cooking this Thursday, take some comfort in the fact that flops, fiascos, testy conversations -- this is the stuff that makes us laugh out loud years later.

On the radio, one person notes that on Thanksgiving, you invite the people you have to invite, whereas on the day after, with plenty of leftovers, you invite the people with whom you really want to share a meal. That surely isn't the case for me. Is it for you?

What's striking, of course, is that despite the somewhat fictionalized story behind this holiday, many elements are very real. The theme is so genuine and we embrace it, loving this day of secular traditions that all of us, no matter what our background and religion, can share. [One person on the radio told of staying with the turkey, but stuffing it with a Palestinian themed stuffing. Adam Gopnik, the writer, recalled sharing "the day after" every year with fellow writer Philip Roth, who loved to tell somewhat racy old Jewish jokes that shocked the kids and made the grownups laugh.] And we do all this over a turkey, of all things!

There was a time when I would pack up pots and pans and travel to wherever grownup daughters were on Thanksgiving: one year it was D.C., another -- Chicago. These days, I cook the big meal at home. In the years that they are away, visiting other family members, Ed and I eat sushi. It's not a sad day. But it's absolutely the case that to me, Thanksgiving only makes sense when at least a part of the younger brood is here.

This year, the stars are aligned my way and both young families will be in Madison on Thursday. And so the preparations must begin. Now, right?!

Not so fast. We are still putting things in order here, at the farmette, following Ed's three and a half week absence.

In the morning, he is once again working on my car. Walmart saves him by supplying the needed part. By late morning he is done. (In the mean time, I do animal care and fix us our same old breakfast.)






The day is lovely for November. Not exactly warm, but not cold either.





Ed asks -- do you want to go out for a hike to Brooklyn?

This seems to be a splendid idea until we pull up to the little parking area and notice the presence of a handful of hunters. We have our blaze orange stuff: a cap for Ed, a vest for me. Still, all those hunters (it is the beginning of the official deer hunting week in Wisconsin)... I ask one: you think it's safe for us to take a short hike, keeping to the trail?
He retorts (with some bravado, possibly for the benefit of his younger son) -- I wouldn't! It's a public hunting ground. I sure wouldn't!

Ed and I talk this over. I mean, isn't he going out into the forest himself? With his kid? Why are we different? Because we can't shoot back? Aren't you supposed to shoot at deer rather than people? Do you just fire away at anything that moves?

We have been hiking this trail for years. Dozens of times. We have never seen a deer here. Without question, there are perhaps twenty times as many hunters in the forest as there are deer and even that may be a low estimate.

We set out. Cautiously, I admit.






And we talk loudly (possibly to the irritation of all the men in orange with rifles at the ready).  It's not a long forest walk and soon we reach our destination: the bench with the view we love so much.






It's worth it. For many, many reasons. Perhaps for this selfie alone...





(Later in the day, we read that in fact, three people have been shot by deerhunters so far in Wisconsin this weekend, though I suppose two of them don't count: they accidentally shot themselves. The third was mildly injured.)

In the evening, the young family is here for supper.






Rituals, traditions, family habits and routines. They're so important!





So very important!

Saturday

A day of looking ahead. To Thanksgiving, for example. I know people are in marathon mode. You hear it everywhere. Yesterday, when I sat down for a Friday glass of wine at a neighborhood wine shop with my daughter, it was the predictable back and forth at the table next to ours: "I'm baking two pies." "Should I bring the rolls? I'll bring the rolls." "Not too many! Nobody ever eat the rolls!" "Who is doing the potatoes?" And so on.

At the grocery store on Thursday, I had asked the clerk if they were ready for the Thanksgiving craziness next week.
Oh sure. We have to be. But you know, at Thanksgiving, people are so much more calm and happy here than they are at Christmas time. All hell breaks loose here on the days before Christmas. It's a real different kettle of fish.

So, Thanksgiving calm, eh?

I'm not baking pies. I'm buying them from a bakery. I'm not making rolls (though a "yes" to corn muffins). But there are a lot of dishes on our family menu and with the young parents having to mind little tykes, I see myself as the kitchen staff for the big turkey day. And so on this rather pretty Saturday, after feeding the cats...

("why are you so late this morning??")





... and after breakfast, no longer solo...






... I begin to make lists and write out a schedule of cooking events.


All morning long Ed heroically continues to shovel the mud out of the driveway. Later, he will set himself to fixing the broken valve on the tire of my car. Me, I clean the greased-up oven glass with a very green but basically worthless combination of baking soda and water. As he runs necessary errands (new valve, bigger broom for the messes in the sheep shed), I step in to do the second round of cat care, which then triggers a typical array of mini-dramas: one cat locks himself in on the porch, another drags a dead animal into the sheep shed. These things drove me nuts when Ed was away. Now I just shake my head at the cat nuisances and look forward to relaying them to Ed when he returns from his shopping trip.

In the afternoon, he and I take a break from chores to go out and play disc golf. It's cold and a bit windy, but the sun continues to sparkle and shine down on this increasingly wintry brown landscape and the sandhills (can you see them?) are crooning away their love song for these northern lands they'll soon leave behind.





Such a pretty day. Pretty and calm. And that's a good thing.

Friday

Just a few weeks ago, I panicked: Thanksgiving is on November 21st and I haven't even thought about how to prepare a turkey this year! (Splice, brine, slow roast, what???)

Of course, I was wrong. The American Thanksgiving falls not on the last weekend of November but, since 1941, always, always on the fourth Thursday of the month.

How can you live for so many decades in this country and not know that? Am I a sheep that follows blindly what is thrust upon her, without thought and contemplation? Maybe, but more likely, the calculation of the date of this holidays fell into one of millions of blind spots I have, that we all have about how we view the world. Some of them we correct and fill in as new evidence presents itself. Oh! Google tells me it's actually on the 28th! But others -- we either never find out about them, or we stubbornly refuse to yield.

*   *   *

It is truly a beautiful day here, in south-central Wisconsin. Crisp, but sunny. You can't ask for more in late fall.








I'm "cooking" breakfast for two again.






And after, Ed and I talk. There is a lot to review, after all. I have questions. The obvious ones: were there storms? What did you do out there on that small boat when you weren't "on watch?" And the less obvious ones: was anyone seasick? (The answer to that is yes, all but one out of the five sailors. I'll leave you to guess who was the one person with a stomach of steel.)

*   *   *

It's a day for outdoor work. Lately, I haven't been motivated to finish up with the fall clean up, but today Ed took out the shovel and wheelbarrow (to fix the driveway) and I took out the rake and clippers and there we were, workings as we have always worked, to improve the farmette lands.

As I clip, snip and shape the front bed, our neighbor from across the road waves a hand and comes down.
I want to thank you for those cats, he tells me. It's remarkable! Almost no mice in the house this fall!

Oh those darn darn cats! Ed tells me -- they're fat! How much have you been feeding them??
Not fat! Just winter plump!

Dance watches us work outside, coming up to me occasionally for a rub, eyeing Ed with suspicious recognition: is he the same old same old?
I smile at her tentativeness. What do you think, Dance?You know, sailing can be transformative....

*   *   *

In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop. She is at once excited and shy to see Ed again.






But once inside the farmhouse, after many chapters of books and a solid snack...





... she bursts forth with questions for him about sailing.

You bathed in the ocean? But how did you get the salt off?

Three cups of water, Snowdrop: one to lather, two to rinse.

cleaning

Last night I did something that I rarely do: I reread a whole chapter of my blog, one day after the next. True, it was a short chapter (from October 30 until November 20), but I wanted to see if I could make sense of this period where Ed sailed and I faced farmette life on my own. I learned a lot in these days -- about the benefits and shortcomings of living here, about the story I need to frame about farmette life in order to make it a sustainable, indeed lovable existence. So I wanted to review it.

I was reminded of how, at the beginning of the chapter, I wanted to purge stuff within the farmhouse. That seems like ancient news, no? Clean up, throw out, wash away. It didn't happen.

In truth, the farmhouse stayed very clean inside. (I'm a neat person. So are my daughters. We cant stand messes.) But the outside -- the farmette landscape -- proved to bring the greatest surprises and challenges. I learned that the animals here have trapped me. Chickens, cats, especially in the coldest days, required me to be here, or at least they made me feel that I could not just walk away (should, for example, the farmette management prove to be too much).

The outdoor lands seemed ominous and threatening under extreme weather conditions. Left to manage the tasks of tending to them in the way that I tend to outdoor stuff in late fall, I felt myself to be overwhelmed.

All this reinforced the belief that the reason I had grown to love this place is that it was part of a story in my mind (and certainly in the blog), where Ed and I expressed our affection for each other through work on the farmette. In other words Ed, and my love for him, is a prerequisite to life here.

 *   *   *

The rain at night washed the landscape, cleaning it of the residue of a tough late Fall.






It's a rushed morning. Schools are closed today (parent teacher conferences) and so the kids are coming here early. I quickly feed the cats, keep the cheepers locked up and hurry to Finca Cafe. This is where I have arranged to pick up Sparrow and Snowdrop.






Both kids are seasoned eat-outers and yet, due to birth order and seasonal imperatives, it struck me that I have rarely (never?) taken Sparrow to a coffee shop. Snowdrop and I would routinely walk the neighborhood of her school and wind up at the cafe by the lesser lake. Sam and I have not had the same adventuring escapades.

Both kids are delightful of course and a good bit of time passes with us just hanging here.






At home again, there are the routines: she imagines, he dances....











And then they both eat lunch...






And he naps and she has a wonderful hour of magna-tile play.





*   *   *

Late in the day, I grocery shop. Ed will be returning late tonight and I just don't know how tomorrow morning will work. And so I want to leave it open.

At home,  I cook up chicken soup. Because, if anyone is hungry today, tomorrow, or the next day, there will be home-made chicken soup.

*   *   *

When I am driving from Finca with the kids this morning, Snowdrop pipes up from the back seat.
Gaga, do you have happiness?
I am not surprised. The little girl often probes these topics, especially during our car rides.
Of course, I answer. I'm so happy to be driving home with my wonderful Snowdrop and Sparrow.
She thinks for a while, then continues -- there's lots of happiness in your life, if you find it. Then she repeats it, as if for emphasis.


 

foggy Wednesday

I wake up to thick mists swirling up the path, around trees, structures, cats, thoughts...






The snow is gone. It's as if the weather horror, yes horror had never happened. Deep freeze? Frozen pipes? Dead cats?  Fever, chills, such lethargy, such deep deep lethargy -- no, not here, right? Not at the beautiful November farmette. Not at this place of wet dirt, squishy fallen leaves, grass, still green -- I made it all up, right?






No, I did not. But honestly, in waking to this typical November day -- slightly wet, slightly dark (but the weather gods promised sunshine for Friday, at the latest!), it seems like I am in a different world.

Breakfast, photographed lovingly because always, always, in this meal there is color. And warmth. And hope for a good day ahead.






The good days becomes even better when the kids make their way here after school.






(Sparrow, on his own, finds the music box, gets it playing and dances...






It's sort of astonishing: this little boy who, a month ago, could not really take solo steps, loves to dance!






You go, little guy!






There was this silly rhyme that we used to write in our friends' autograph books (remember those?) when we were kids -- "good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better, and your better best."

We coach our little ones to always do better, do better, do better. Do we coach ourselves too? Or is it that at some point we conclude that we've done our work and this is as good as it gets?

I want to be honest here: I fall into this trap too. I may demand a lot of myself -- to care for the people I love -- but do I really ask myself to change? Improve? Or isn't it true that we all, say after age 59, sit back and say -- hey, I'm doing pretty well! I am older, wiser, I have myself and the world figured out?

There's a danger in growing older: you stagnate in your perceptions of others and of yourself, too. You don't look to improve anymore. "I am who I am!" You think you've learned all major life's lessons.  I said this in my post when I spoke of sailing out to sea: can it transform an older person, or are we pretty much formed by now?

The fog lifts, the last leaves tremble and fall. November, in her old age, shows us that she can still throw us a few surprises.

farmette life, for a while

Oops! I forgot. I forgot to take a breakfast photo. I forgot to care that I did not take a photo. I forgot.

Sometimes we intentionally forget stuff. We need to proceed with life and certain routines stand in the way and so we "forget" them. I "forgot" that there are seeds, wildflower seeds that need to be sown. If we are to create meadows, seeds should be on the ground, not in buckets in the mudroom. I "forgot" that November asks for a last ditch garden clean up. I walk from farmhouse to barn to sheep shed and I conveniently do not look at the flower beds.





Unlike during rushed weeks, I do now have my mornings to rest. I take this assignment seriously. I need to chase the bug out of my system and I know of no other way to do it. In resting, I think. And here's the funny part: I look at the days behind me and the weeks ahead and I think -- I know this script! This is a rerun! Pilfered, dusted off and placed before me as if it were new. Funny how sometimes, life just seems like a bunch of worn out pages strapped together as if new, only they're not new at all.

I had to buy more cat food. Ed and I had purchased a carload of cat food and it seems like we just did this, standing in line at Walmart, eliciting snickers and questions from other customers because the quantity was so large. We've lost some kittens since then and the cat diet is supplemented with plenty of mice and other gross vermin and still, I am out of cat food.

One more random comment: friends come out of the woodwork when they sense you may want a break from cats and cat food and drippy branches that should be cut back but aren't cut back because the sheers are too heavy and I cant lift them high enough. And so I continue to fill my morning with conversation and email and that feels so very good.



In the afternoon, I chase chickens, the goddam chickens that are hard to get into the coop at 1:30 pm, and then, breathless and almost late, I go to pick up Sparrow and Snowdrop.

(he takes his lunch box duties very seriously!)











(very seriously!)






(art, big time!)










And then they go home.


Night. I get a call from Puerto Rico. I am no longer without information. And I know when my gallant sailor is coming home.

farmette life, for a while

Too much coffee, too much herbal tea, too little food. Many conversations, with everyone except the person who feels himself to be needing another world, one without conversation.





That is my morning.

I have stumbled into a state of inertia, because I haven't the information to make any good decisions. So I kill time until some inner wisdom pushes me in one direction or the next.

For those of you who worry (as I surely did), do know that Ed is in Puerto Rico and doing fine. Yes, I'm happy too. I want that guy to stay well!


There is a lot of beauty in the world around me, here, at the farmette...






... though I feel myself to be at the edge of it right now. My lingering lung infection and dark brooding skies are juxtaposed against lingering memories of sweet blossom on trees and in the gardens, of walks across hills filled with butterflies ("you've got to come see them! let's go right now!"). Was that really only a few weeks ago? The butterflies escaped to Mexico, Ed escaped to Puerto Rico, while I'm watching too many cats and too many chickens and the plants shriveled and tumbled under the weight of an early winter.


At least the grandkids are like a burst of goodness, of sweet hugs and innocent dreams...

(Sparrow has a hard time with parting with his lunchbox once he leaves school!)






Snowdrop starts off with a percolating story, but she gives up on it quickly. This has been a pattern for her lately: tell story, give it up, plunk down on the couch and ask for a few chapters of a book.






Sparrow, on the other hand, starts with play and then, toward the end of the evening, asks for book after book after book.






There is almost never a time when either kid is not into art. Recently, Sparrow just wants to draw with a pencil. Snowdrop would prefer markers, but today I insist on her sketching with a pen. (If there are markers, Sparrow goes wild with enthusiasm and inevitably, there will be marker stains everywhere.)






Later in the evening, once the kids leave, I make my way to the sheep shed to feed the cats. I have a cavalier attitude about them right now: they're all grown, they're all strong, they're all messy. Three weeks ago, I cleaned up after them. Unless it's totally gross, I don't do that anymore. I don't wash their bowls. I don't stay and chat them up. I dump food and water into the bowls and leave with a "so long, cats.... you pushed me over the edge this month. I love you, but we're one step from you being on your own."

I walk back to the farmhouse breathing in the beautiful November air and think -- this month wasn't supposed to be like this.

farmette life, for a while

Ed is delayed. He was to come home tonight, but that return trip has been cancelled. We're waiting to hear of a new date.

Am I disappointed? Let's search for a better word: crushed. Like a soda can, fizz and bubbles all gone, last drop shaken out, smashed together into a fragment of what it once was. He is, unfortunately, not in communication range and so I have no clue as to his goals, nor his return. A friend of his reminded me that he has been known to linger on those islands and indeed, some time ago, when everyone was at wits end as to where he was and what he was doing,  he had parked his boat off the coast of Cuba and was making his away across that island. He stayed there for a long time and then, just as suddenly, he reappeared. 

I'd heard those stories many times, but of course, that was about then. That was before me. That was before our common home and our shared life.

I miss him every minute he is away, even as I'm not really allowed to miss him that much. It's not part of our deal. Our agreement is that each does what her or his soul dictates, without the layers of encumbrance and constraint that most younger people necessarily have to impose on each other.

Unfortunately, as Ed well knows, our emotional ranges vary tremendously. He is steady as a rock, with very occasional tilts toward annoyance and, too, the rare tilt toward bliss. My range, on the other hand, is huge. My default is "happy," but one big swipe at me and I tumble. On the other hand, one lovely family moment at the table, or couch moment with Ed and I soar. Like Snowdrop, I frequently say, quite truthfully, that I am very happy.

All this to say that the news yesterday of the delay in his return pushed me down there to the wormy bottom of my emotional range. Daughters insisted I stay with them rather than in a farmhouse that suddenly seems even emptier without the promise of a a soon to be arriving Ed and so I packed my bag and went to the home of my geographically closer girl and her family. Snowdrop was counseled to go gently with Gaga and she did, cheering me up with a spectacular dance to the music of Frozen II.






This morning, I ate breakfast with these two sweet people...











Snowdrop did forget herself and said, excitedly -- it's Sunday! Ahah's coming home!  Everyone hushed her in the way that you do with a child who has stumbled into uncomfortable conversational territory.

And then I came back home. To this suddenly hollow empty space that I love so much insofar as it has an Ed in it and that hasn't much meaning for me now, even as it still holds the comfortable reminders of my (our?) everyday life.

I feed the animals. I clean. I do laundry. I water plants. I cook dinner for the young family.






(for the love of asparagus)






(for the love of dance)





They ask me to return home with them and I am tempted, but I cannot live out of a bag. It makes everything suddenly feel so temporary and wobbly at a time when I desperately want to feel strong and in control.

I'll leave you with song lyrics. I like the Stacey Kent version:

When the sun is high in the afternoon sky
You can always find something to do
But from dusk til dawn as the clock ticks on
Something happens to you

In the wee small hours of the morning
While the whole wide world is fast asleep
You lie awake and think about the boy
And never even think of counting sheep

When your lonely heart has learned its lesson
You'd be his if only he would call
In the wee small hours of the morning
That's the time you miss him most of all.

Perhaps you'd like to listen? Here it is.

farmette life 18

The music uncurls with 
The soft vowels of inlets,
The christening of vessels, 
The titles of portages,
The colours of sea grapes,
The tartness of sea-almonds,
The alphabet of church bells,
The peace of white horses,
The pastures of ports,
The litany of islands,
The rosary of archipelagoes,
Anguilla, Antigua,
Virgin of Guadeloupe,
And stone-white Grenada
Of sunlight and pigeons,
The amen of calm waters,
The amen of calm waters,
The amen of calm waters.
(Derek Walcott)

By midnight, the sailors pulled into a cove of a protected island off the coast of Puerto Rico. (I know this from satellite charts -- they are still out of communication range.) I would guess that this is exactly what Ed would want to do, though he would push for something more remote. "Uninhabited" would be ideal. Turquoise waters, a sandy strip, perhaps a smell of a pine tree. Sleep there, under the stars. Swim out to sea, come back again.

My own Caribbean dream would be different. I would go inland. Taste their foods, smell their flowers, watch the people work, the children play. It would not be Puerto Rico, because the island is too big, too hard to navigate. But nor would it be remote. Derek Walcott's lyrical verse has me grow wistful. But I know, too, that his poem was written many decades ago. Tourism, including, hypothetically, my own, does not always benefit the islands. (One very good story about Walcott can be found in this New Yorker article from 2004.)

Every person deserves to come close to her or his dreams and I wish Ed had chosen to stay a little while longer out on the Caribbean. To sail out to some of those remote islands. To swim out, swim in, settle in on the warm sands and fall asleep.

*   *   *

Here, on the farmette, things are very calm.


 



Breakfast.





We've bounced back to November temperature normals.

The animals are behaving, hanging close to their sleeping quarters.






My energies are slowly coming back, so that weekly grocery shopping, postponed from yesterday, feels doable. Well, sort of odd again because I'm shopping for a week with Ed in it, an Ed who may be trying on new hats. For all I know, he has turned vegan. Or embraced meat. People get very happy with their travel habits and vow, at least initially to keep them alive upon a return.