Somehow our three graces didn’t get added to the web collection for the Equinox Gallery show, but you can now buy prints and cards of our girls here.
Tag: rural life
Al Fresco
These were our favorite girls – our three graces. They followed us everywhere – even into the house – until a fox discovered a hole in our coop.
You can buy museum quality prints and cards here
Pea Picker
i’d like to tell you I have a veggie garden because I’m really into organic everything, but the truth is there’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching my kids fight over fresh greens. In my defense, I have stopped telling them the peas were candy.
You can buy prints and cards of this painting here
Guilty Pleasures
I know the Big Guy is not the only married man who becomes paralyzed with terror anytime he hears his wife utter the words, “I have an idea.” To be fair, usually the ideas involve holes in the ceilings and wall-sized holes in the walls (for the wall-sized window of course).
The only time my home improvement ideas don’t trigger stroke symptoms is in the dead of winter when my scrappy hardcover book of graph paper is my first sounding board.
There’s no logical reason for it, but sometime around the end of January, visions of backhoes and rototillers dance in my head as I fill page after page with new layouts for my veggie garden. In the end, only the colors change places, but the doodling has become a satisfying substitute for the words, ‘I have a dozen ideas’. At least where the garden is concerned.
You can find prints and cards of this painting here.
First Pick
Last year I broke my foot, and it never completely healed. For most of the last year I felt like I’ve been driving a Pinto with the left turn signal on waiting for the tiniest little ding to knock my appendage out of commission which made gardening last year a fantasy.
this year I’m getting equipped to make the fantasy reality, but I’m a little bit nervous about what mother nature’s planned. We can usually get peas and greens in by March and have first pickings before The trees are fully leafed out.
This year, however, Mother Nature may beat us to the punch, having given winter it’s pink slip already. I think she’s tempting us to get the peas in early.
You can buy prints and cards of this painting here.
Safe Spaces
Last week after work the Big Guy came home from work and soberly announced that the son of a neighbor had taken his own life. It took me a moment to start breathing again, and, out loud, I wondered what the rest of the town was wondering that day. “What was he thinking?”
Privately, I had a pretty good idea of what he’d been thinking. Only earlier that day had I been wrestling with those urges as I hugged my mother goodbye and had the irrational thought that I would never be happy again once she was gone. A vision of achieving perfect permanent peace flashed through my mind as I smiled at her and my father as they left. It was so strong and so clear that if I had not been having these urges and images since I was 10, I might not have chased it away.
My guess was that this kid, who, for as long as I had known of him, had exhibited self-destructive behavior, had been living with those urges for a long time.
My morning vision and the afternoon news brought me back to a high school assembly on suicide. After a movie and lecture, the hosts separated us into groups. I remember them asking us if any of us had ever contemplated taking our own lives. I was the only one in my group raised my hand.
One of the adults took me aside and asked me how often I thought about it. I answered, “I don’t know, every day. Doesn’t everybody?” The counselor shook his head no and gave me a pamphlet for nearby church.
Back then I don’t think I had even heard the word bipolar disorder. Manic Depression was just the title of the Jimi Hendrix song. I did know that just getting out of the house – even out of bed – was often an enormous task when depression hit. When mania was pushing me to outer limits, I was the life of the party. People thought (and still do) I was a drama queen. I was told to snap out of “it” but wondered why I couldn’t. I did know I couldn’t tell anyone about the places and pictures in my head. I could barely explain them to myself, and trying to describe them to other kids – or any of our teachers – would have added just one more oddity to my already odd personality.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that I might not just have the blues.
I was lucky. When my own bipolar disorder was diagnosed, my family was overwhelmingly supportive, and our home, at least, was a safe place to talk about mental illness. The rest of the world is not so safe, and not everyone is so lucky.
I don’t know if this boy had a safe place to talk about the suicidal tendencies he had been exhibiting for as long as I had known of him. I do know that we still live in a world that makes opening up about mental illness – or even its symptomatic emotions – is like baring your throat to the wolves. There is still stigma where there needs to be safe spaces.
Our very small town of 300+ people has talked of it regularly since it happened. I hope we all continue talking about it. Mostly I hope we start talking about giving other kids like him a safe place to talk about their visions before they become reality.
Impractically Perfect
Winter isn’t officially here yet, but the wood stove is going every night just about. I love our wood stove. It’s an Amish made wood cook stove that heats not only our whole house but all of our hot water during the winter. I love it for its practicality, but I also love the romance of it.
Something about managing the hotspots on the large cast-iron cooktop and knowing where in the oven cookies will bake and not burn makes me feel like a real homesteader.
Our house is homestead in a lot of ways. Everything about it’s design was practical, initially. We designed it to be off grid, so that the multiple winter power outages would no longer affect us. We built it to be earth sheltered so that we would not be subject to the whims of the utility companies. We designed it to be a home where we could live if as we age,.
The wood stove was also a practical decision, initially. It was a source of cheap heat. It would do all the things that the woodstove has historically done throughout our nation’s history. It heats our water and our space and cooks our food.
But the pleasure I derive from standing in front of our red-hot practicality as the smell of fresh apple crisp in the oven and black bean stew on the cooktop tickle my nose hairs is anything but practical. And that’s not a bad thing at all.
The Windchime
After the storm, the windchime is still in its spot. It was a gift from the Big Guy’s sister who is not my sister-in-law. She’s my sister.
We didn’t have to go through all the in-fighting that adolescent sisters inflict on their parents. She lives in Southern New England, so we see each other a few times a year. Over the years, we’ve become friends and then truly family.
She brought this chime as an xmas gift a few years ago, and I keep thinking when we build a deck (which could be very far in the future given our ability to procrastinate building decisions), I’ll design a special spot for it. Now it’s hanging form a post that’s sunk into a corner of our very over-grown stone patio. I actually like it there. It seems to survive all kinds of storms, and it’s seems like it’s there to remind me to suck it up and stand firm when things don’t go perfectly.
It’s a lot like the giver in that way, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last few weeks as the storms of late autumn bluster through our mountain. My day job has claimed all my daylight hours and even most of my waking night time for the last few weeks. Everything else has disappeared – running, writing, down time. Even if I can set the alarm for my 4 AM writing time, often I do the numbers, realize I’ve slept four hours and reset the clock.
Sometimes it seems like it should be nothing. Writing’s just a hobby, right? But it’s also who I am. Not doing it makes me incomplete. Not providing for my family, however, would create an even bigger hole.
I’ve been there before and not by choice. A few years ago the Big Guy spent a week in the ICU because our then lack of health insurance had deterred him from seeking medial attention until a minor infection became an absess that nearly ended his life. It took years to pay off that bill, but it isn’t the fear of another ruinous bill that helps me accept being incomplete right now. It’s not even the determination never to let lack of insurance determine when we get care. Right now, what’s got me up at 5AM, girding my soul for another soulless day is that wind chime.
The Woodpile
We don’t have a furnace, but we do have an amish-made wood cookstove that burns about five cords of wood every winter. Over the last few years, thirteen-year-old Jack has increasingly enjoyed the triple-warming feature of our chosen heat source.
As Jack’s body has grown, so has his part in the stacking, hauling, and burning. Some years he even takes on the lion’s share of the stacking in hopes of earning some cash. Even the small income, however, has not taught him to appreciate the woodpile.
Monday we each had a day off. I decided to lend him a hand. After lunch, we each donned work gloves and earbud and started ferrying logs to the woodshed.
It was quiet work. Each of us was listening to music, but, as Jack has grown taller, he has also become more introspective. Spontaneous utterances are rare. He meets most of my queries these days with monosyllabic answers.
As the first cord formed in the shed, however, Jack volunteered the remark on the increase in speed when there were two stacking. I concurred, adding that it was almost pleasant when you got moving. Jack retreated to silence again. I asked what music he was listening to, extracting an answer after repeating the questions several ways.
I entertain no illusions about my hipness as a mother (only my fitness as one), and I was glad just to know a little about Jack’s evolving music tastes. In the next hour we would chat about his English grade, the computer he’s been working toward over the last year, and his favorite video game. In the end, the wood stacking warmed each of us, but in completely different ways. For Jack, it was still just a chore. For me, it was one more thing in my life that reminding me to feel thankful.
The Given Trees
I had the dubious honor of having Margaret* on my list for the evening after only two weeks working at the nursing home. When I think back to my trepidation that night, I’m ashamed. Margaret would give me several gifts, one of which I think each year as we put up the last apples of the season.
Completely bed ridden and saddled with a strict diet, Margaret had little control over her life outside of her morning and bedtime routines. She was notorious for yelling at anyone who failed to deliver her care to her very detailed specifications. I hadn’t met her, but I was terrified of her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded as I first entered her room that night.
“I have your dinner, Mrs. Williams,” I said, determined to be polite, even if she yelled at me.
“I don’t want any,” she said. I didn’t argue and took the tray out of the room. The institution’s policy was not to force people to eat if they didn’t want to. What Margaret could not refuse was minimum basic care that prevented bedsores.
Hoping to avoid conflict, I eschewed suggestions from the nurse manager and asked Margaret how she wanted me to proceed. Apparently unused to being asked what she wanted, her demeanor softened. The snapping ceased, and she quietly explained which gown she wanted and how she wanted her pillows arranged. Before I knew it, we were done.
I continued with my list and was nearly finished when the call-light outside Margaret’s room went on. Another nursing assistant rolled her eyes at me when she saw it.
“Now you’ve done it,” she said. “She’s going to bug you all night.”
When I went to see what she needed, Margaret asked if I was done with my list. I answered not yet. She asked for fresh water which I got before returning to my list.
Second shift at the nursing home was quiet. We did rounds before the graveyard shift started. Most nights between rounds we finished our charts at the nursing station or studied. But this was not most nights.
I had just started my charting when Margaret’s call-light went on again. Again, I went to see what she needed. She requested more water. Then she asked my name. She asked how long I’d been working and where I was from, telling me about herself as we talked. I soon learned she had not only grown-up in our newly-adopted Vermont town but in the red farmhouse that we had just bought. Our property had belonged to her family since the colonial period.
We talked about people we both knew. She told me about our house. She corrected me on a few points of history, mentioning that it had been built in 1761 and not 1790 as we had thought. She told me of an attic beam with the build date carved into it. Suddenly, it was 10:30 PM and time to begin last rounds.
I got home late that night.
Before I went to bed, however, I opened the door to the attic at the back of the bathroom and, armed with a flashlight, found Margaret’s beam. I went to the east end of the attic and, just as she’d promised, found ‘1761’ carved into a rough-hewn beam. Margaret was not as senile or cantankerous and I had been led and only too willing to believe. She was a living connection to the history of our town, our house, and to another way of doing things – a way that we very much trying to emulate.
The next night and the rest of the week Margaret asked to be on my list, and I began looking forward to my shift.
I learned she had moved to another town when she married, losing contact with old friends. I knew one of those friends and asked her if I could let him know that she was here. She said yes and we arranged a meeting. The two octogenarians had attended the town’s remaining one-room schoolhouse together, and had much to share. The meeting didn’t prompt a miracle turnaround of her physical health (I didn’t expect it to) but, following that visit she seemed a little happier.
Her health soon began failing rapidly and her memory with it. Some nights she barely recognized me at all. Even when she didn’t remember my name, though, we enjoyed lively conversations, mostly about her family’s farm.
One night I said mentioned how much I loved the trees on the property. For the first time since I’d been taking care of her she’s snapped at me.
“Those damn hippies let my father’s fields grow over,” she growled. She told me of how hard her grandfather had worked to keep them clear for their livestock. She told me how father had changed the very shape of our road by planting grapevines as roadblocks. Then she told me of an apple orchard her grandfather started nearly 70 years ago. The wooded hills were hiding dozens of apple trees.
Margaret died a few weeks later. I didn’t know or care if it was professional to do so, but I cried.
About that time, the Big Guy and I decided to build a new house on our property, dividing and selling part of the land to help pay for the construction of the new house. The land near the old house wouldn’t perk for a conventional septic, so we began hiking through our forest, looking for a better build site.
Cluttered with Rosie Bush, it was easy to get lost even on 10 acres. We did notice that some of the craggy plants looked like trees. When April dotted the trees with apple-scented blossoms, I realized Margaret had been entirely lucid that night.
We had no intention of trying to restore a neglected 70-year-old orchard, but we did need a building site. I asked our excavator guy if he could keep an eye out for the apple trees while clearing. He doubted there would be any and warned me that any he found would not be productive given their age. I’m not superstitious, but I was sure our discovery was a gift from Margaret, and I asked him to humor me.
When the clearing was done there were three apple trees in our yard. And the excavator guy was right. For the first year or two none of them produced anything bigger than a walnut.
After a few paltry harvests and wanting to expand my vegetable garden, I contemplated cutting the trees down. Sentimentality ruled. The apple blossoms were beautiful in spring, and the shade from the trees didn’t hit the garden until very late in the afternoon, so they were spared.
The next year, the Big Guy asked a tree-expert friend for help. When I asked if the trees were too old to produce, he answered honestly that he didn’t know. The trees were so old even he couldn’t identify the variety. He charged us $20 for a pruning. Then we waited.
The spring blossoms came and went as they had the first four years. Then the walnut-sized fruit began to form. This year, however, they grew almost as big as tennis balls. We had apples.
Everyone on our road seems to grow red apples whose rosy color clearly indicates when they’re ready to pick. Our trees consistently give yellow-green fruit. We decided to rely on cues from the local farms, watching for their billboards inviting passersby to the harvest.
When it was time to pick, our apples weren’t pretty. We discarded any that had been attacked by worms. However, knowing even scarred apples could be made into pie or applesauce, we filled several 5 gallon paint buckets. We were so excited we didn’t think to taste any. When we finally did, our harvest was very starchy and not sweet. We assumed we had picked too early.
The next year we picked later, but the harvest still failed to give us sweet apples. Another year an early frost killed the blossoms. We began to wonder if the pruning and picking was a lost cause.
Once, again, I wondered if we should cut one down. Something about chopping down a given tree, however, seemed like breaking a commandment. I decided to extend my garden another direction and Margaret’s trees remained another year.
Last winter we pruned again, knowing we would get one or two heavily-sugared $20 pies.
Before we knew it apple picking season had come and gone. Margaret’s trees had gone untouched. The first frost hit, and still only a few apples lay on the ground. We had not picked a single one. The nights mostly stayed warm until Halloween week, and then temperatures dipped into the 20s. The apples began to fall.
The Big Guy has a healthy sense of adventure and had the first bite of the year.
“Wow,” he exclaimed. He took another bite and handed it to me. “That is the sweetest apple I’ve ever tasted.”
I tried it and agreed. We began picking and then shaking trunk of the tree to loosen riper fruit. We quickly filled our 5 gallon bucket with candy-sweet treasure. I made a pie and a crisp and another pie. We got the kids to work shaking and picking and gathering.
Now as we peel and core and put up the last of the harvest, I think about Margaret’s gifts. They’re not just in the apple trees or even the history that only she could tell us. They’re in learning to look deeper.
Her exacting standards were not just about controlling her shrinking universe – they were about forcing the people in it to see her as a whole person, regardless of her age or physical condition. I’m ashamed to admit that I when first met her, I was thinking of her list of demands and not her need for human connection and to feel valued.
This winter our tree guy will come and tend our trees, and they may or may not give a good harvest again. But if they don’t, they will still have a place in our lives because, like Margaret, what they have to give is still valuable, even if we don’t recognize it right away.
*Margaret’s name has been changed.