Windfall

I am so blessed.

Twenty six quarts of apple sauce we preserved, pots spitting so high the sauce stuck to the ceiling. My hands blistered red from the fall of it while I shrieked and laughed, stirring two pots at once. Katherine, my doctor friend, sat with a look of terror at the multitasking, children running in and out to show their artwork and collections of baby teeth, jars boiling, apples cooking in the oven and on two burners, questions from Seda. Her husband, Ben, my music teacher, sat cutting more apples, reminded of Passover preparations years past, a marathon of slicing and chopping. We stood feeding the food mill at nearly 2 a.m., the apples not quite cooked and squeaking at the churn like Laborador puppies as I doubled over, laughing my belly inside out at the sound. And then the clean up in overwhelm... what to wash, what to bag for the night, how to stop in midsaucing when so much momentum drove those apples into softening...

The last of my friends left by 2:30, and I fell into sleep as if it were a warm, dark hole that Trinidad dragged me from snappy growling at 5:30 a.m. when a thunderstorm crashed overhead. He watched it alone and miraculously went back to bed without my help. I, lost in sleep again, recovered before eight, and found the strength in a few phone calls with our scattered tribe of mothers to plod the final lap of the canning process and set the last jars, gleaming, on the rack.

The harvest
a gleaning
a canning
a keeping
a warm fire glowing and
friends, oh
friends, how the bounty is ours.

In the Crossfire

Two feet beyond my backyard fence, a solitary man lives in an old trailer. On Friday morning, he shouted obscenities at the top of his lungs (which, I assure you, are large) at the car he was working on, a person passing on the street, and finally, at the Great Danes across the street from the front of my house who began to bark at the racket he was making. When this man heard the dogs barking, he directed his four letter words toward them. The owner of these dogs, already anxious about quieting them at 8:00 a.m., became distraught and directed her threats towards her dogs. Interspersed, I heard her ask her partner, "Who is that? Who is that yelling?"

The woman across the street escalated with her barking dogs and the shouting continued from behind me. Now, the woman and her partner also argued about the dogs, their own relationship, and the whereabouts and why of the voice accusing them. I quietly lay down my pruning shears in the sanctuary garden where I had been cutting overgrowth and slipped through the gate to my front yard.

I tried to catch my woman neighbor's eye, but now the conflict had bubbled over to the single father neighbor beside her who brought to the conflict another unrelated topic: why did mothers think they were incapable of causing harm to children just because they bore them? More four letter words flying. The neighbor behind my yard sped off in his car with engine roaring.


Another neighbor emerged from her house. "I'm pretending I want to talk to you about gardening, but I really want to tell you that I just called the police about that man behind you. He has a real anger problem... often."

"Yes," I told her. And again, I tried to interrupt the conversation across the street to tell the woman about the source of the yelling. Still I could not catch her eye.

"You talk to her?" my neighbor asked.

"Yes," I said. "She has a soft side, too."

"I feel sad for those dogs," my neighbor said, frowning. Then she turned to me. "You're a good neighbor," she said. "You have brought people into our neighborhood dynamic that never entered it before you opened your doors and your garden to them. I appreciate that."

She looked sad, too. I imagine she was longing to feel more connected to the inner workings of our 'hood. It's hard to know the full spectrum each person offers unless you live here full time instead of working full time away from home. I imagine she valued that connection as it related to her safety and peace on a Friday morning. I, too, have called the police once when I thought I heard gunshots nearby. I did not like sharing power with the police to protect my safety by force.

I finally caught my neighbor across the street's attention. "The man who yelled at your dogs yells a lot. He directs his anger toward anything that triggers him remotely and this morning, your dogs caught it. If it hadn't been your dogs, it would have been something else."

The woman deflated, visibly. "Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for telling me," she said. "I had no idea. I just got so upset. I didn't know what to do. Thank you." All of the neighbors went inside.

On Sunday, when my trailer neighbor went off again, I wasn't feeling angry or afraid so I brought him some cherries. He doesn't like cherries, he told me, and after telling me to, "Get the f-- out," and meeting only the care in my eyes, I thought I saw him soften, too. The police cost him, he told me. It hurt.

Even the dark side has its heart.

Yardstick

I'm back from California! Seven days with my mom and sister (Robyn and I both on our moons, no less) without dispute. I can hardly believe it. I am struck even more by the fact that I rarely found myself even slightly triggered in my time with them. I experienced our connection as deep, loving, and harmonically centered to hear the needs of all. A few years ago, our record was 2 1/2 days, then someone would melt down, and we'd all wish that vacation had ended 3 hours earlier. What happened?


Over the past couple of years, I have been knee-deep in the slosh pile of love's refuse. I have come to terms with my husband transitioning into a woman and friend while staying connected to parent our children in partnership. I have loved and let go another man dear to my heart. I have parented in it all, struggling to see my children through the awe and tears of everything else as it unfolded before me. I have grown.


Two weeks ago, I pulled up my rubber boots a little higher and set out a little further into the mire. Whatever happened to going through it? I wondered. Am I really growing here (yes, said my heart, and there is no limit to what you might learn), or am I just touring round and round the same tree? I asked for some sign, in my moment of frailty, that would indicate that all of this exploration is of service to myself, the all. A yardstick?

So there we were. Three ladies, three dudes, and a donkey picking flowers and making peace in the same field. Speaking our truths. Softening to listen. Leaning into each other with our tears.

In truth, the donkey only picks weeds. Her name is "Grace." She is the first ass my mother has been able to successfully cover. Photos to come.

Lavender World

I am not at home. As I type this, I can't read the title of this post and the body is in a text size view of 1 inch. My mom's computer does these contortions, and I haven't even asked why. Isn't that what it's like to visit moms? We go about our daily work, but suddenly a lens is cast over us -- by ourselves, by the habits of old family -- that distort even our daily rhythms. I'm actually more amused than anything. The experience has been a very gentle one so far this trip.

My sister, Robyn, the boys, and I have come to my mother's organic lavender farm (Harvest Moon Lavender) to help with the harvest. Robyn and I have been out cutting lavender (thank God for the Felcos being such a pleasure to hold) for hours each day, kids wandering, hunting lizards, riding the tractor trailer, and swimming.

I imagine my family thinks me a bit odd, avoiding sugar and artificial additives in the kids food on the whole and letting go to the holiday spirit completely as I am overcome by it. Yesterday, Robyn and I made a trip into town with the kids and stopped at a natural bakery/grocery. While Robyn picked out a wine for dinner, the boys used their money to get a GIANT chocolate cupcake with equally enormous frosting. By the time we left the store, Trinidad was barking.

We went to the Arcata Plaza where Trin and Sam broke out their new street hockey set from the dollar store and played hockey on concrete for an hour or so. They were sweating and running furiously. Auntie Robyn came along and became audience to the flight of rubber band launched jets ("Watch out for the bicyclist... oh, the bicyclist... Sorry!"), catapulting plastic flies, and (get this) an almost remote control cockroach. We decided not to take that one to my favorite Chinese restaurant.

So far, mother, two daughters, and grandkids have survived peaceably under one roof. Three and a half days without dispute has got to be a record. I am grateful for their hosting and the fact that over the years of my adulthood, we have learned more and more ways to weave our days together more effectively and beautifully. I am thrilled to have meaningful work to do here, cutting flowers. Meditative, too.

Poetry comes with no pen to write, given over as the clouds trace their truths across the open sky and release their empty words to the western wind. Such is the harvest.

Our Community Garden

Rick Valley inspired me to grow my own flour corn and told me how to do it on mulch in such a way that I could picture getting it done within 3 weeks. He also gave me a little seed.

Anami, up the street, reminded me that I could incorporate beans and squash. Why not? She has come to check my progress and offer Master Gardener worthy advice.

Tim, across the street, said "Sure. You can use my front yard. I hate to mow it anyway."

Dan and Dana lent their pickup for carting leaf mulch, compost, and cardboard.

Jetta, their daughter, helped me test all of the irrigation tape that would water the garden.

The boys and Seda helped me load leaf mulch. Joellen, Jetta's 12-year-old sister, helped them catch crickets when they got bored.

People from all over the neighborhood chatted with me and kept me well-connected while I worked from dawn to dark most of the past week or two.

Jack supplied more seeds and squash plants. He helped shovel leaves and provided irrigation materials and know-how. The cornbread that came out of his oven, baked with local corn, convinced me last autumn to make the effort to source my grains locally.

Sat Hari explored philosophy and spirituality with me from the phone in her own garden, to keep my mind and heart focused on what is real. She asked how I built this garden so she might create one, too.

The children played up and down the street at Evelyn's, Tesha's, the Gormans and the Otas. They ate dinner abroad. I popped in occasionally to supply h'ors doevres or do dishes.

Anne came today and helped me, as I struggled with the blues and a cold, to finish the last pockets of compost and plant rows of corn and beans.

Less and less do I wonder what is mine and what is not, what I do for me and what I do for others. Less and less do I think about what or whether to do, but rather just do what is set before me to do, spending the time in action and intention alone.

The Otas don't mean to push me, but... will I still have time to plant a plot in their back yard? This Sunday, they will be home to help clear the space.

So grows our Community Garden.

Joining the Song

Several times in the last week, I have heard from many voicing a single dilemma: how do we join into a song of connection when we notice that someone is moving forward with a project or activity that we suddenly want to inform so it can meet our needs as well?

On an interpersonal level, this is the "no" from a child or other intimate in my life. "No, I don't want to do what you asked me to do. I want to do my own thing." Where does this leave me?

On a community level, this is a project that has been long in the thoughtful birthing but taken to action by an individual who felt ready to begin. And now they have begun, isn't it their own project now? Where is there room for the rest of our community who may want to co-create in that space?

I know that there are infinite other manifestations of this awkward dilemma -- the yes within the no. It is archetypally significant in what it offers us personally and as a culture in its invitation to consider all needs while peace-making. This is cutting edge stuff.

If I hear only the "no" from my child without also listening to the needs my child is meeting by responding to my request in this way, then the live circuit between us is essentially shut off. I can no longer support my child in meeting his needs, nor can I receive his support in meeting mine. My energy turns inward to nurse the pain from that disconnect, and it will be some time before I am available to open myself to other possibilities to meet those needs.

If I hear my neighbor saying,"I will do the project this way because it meets my needs to do so," and I assume that my needs and our community's needs are no longer a consideration to them, then we are both left in isolation to determine our separate ways and means to support only ourselves. (Hmmm... political "parties?")

We are not meant to work alone.

Experientially, the greatest gift I have received from my bees is to watch and touch the fruit of their labor in all aspects, to take in the tightly woven web of the hive in community as a single entity. When one is highly alarmed, many rush from opposite quarters to sting. The queen is only a slave to the workers enslaved to her, and all are free, indentured servants by choice to the hive.

And this, perhaps, is what is most difficult to integrate: our free will with the will of others or the group. Joining becomes a letting go of our individual fears rooted in scarcity as we embrace the limitless possibilities available to us, assuming that our needs will be held in community. Our willingness to hear the yes in the no requires a trust that we can sing our truths into the choir again and again, the song ulitimately making room for incremental shifts in harmony, rhythm, and tune.

We are at a critical juncture in our time here on earth. If we cannot find that instinct within us to sing with each other, even after a "no" shifts the music, then we are in danger of ending the song altogether. We, as a culture, have come to think for ourselves, do for ourselves, acquire for ourselves, alone.

If we are to survive as a whole, it is because our resources and our power grows exponentially as we come together. The investment of our energy into independence is lost unless we also develop our capacity and willingness to sing with others, taking their needs in to hold as preciously as our own, turning a deaf ear to perceived separation.

Come. It is our moment to sing together.