Archives for 2013

   I spent my Tuesday subbing in a local first grade classroom, and now, having cooked dinner and changed into yoga pants and a tank top, I have *just enough* energy left to share nine short stories. Thank goodness the animal chores and housework were super light today. It’s funny how I can work all day at the farm and not feel this particular level of exhaustion, even on six mile running days. There is nothing quite like twenty-four seven year olds to sap the marrow from your bones. I mean, they’re WONDERFUL and everything… But wow. 

   Life is magical for so many reasons. My heart is throbbing from happiness lately, so much that I have a hard time shutting up about it. But I do have one story to share with you in particular. Pull up a chair and grab some coffee or sweet tea. This should only take a couple of minutes, and I wish I could give you a hug afterward.

    Last Saturday, as we do on so many Saturday mornings, Handsome and I embarked on a garage-and-estate-sale treasure hunt. We drove many miles across this beautiful Oklahoma countryside, picking through other families’ boxes of castoff toys and books, threadbare clothes, dinged furniture, and myriad collectibles. We spent most of our quarters and wrinkly dollar bills and filled our pickup with so much fun stuff, chatting and laughing all the way. I love these days. We both do.

   As the Noon hour approached, we were winding down. A list of chores awaited us at the farm, and the climbing sun was elbowing through the morning’s autumnal crispness. Handsome suggested stopping at one more house, a sale he had tried after work on Friday. It would prove to offer us the smallest purchase but the deepest impressions.

   We parked on a grassy shoulder and walked across this narrow road, downhill toward the property’s deeply shaded yard. The shade was so deep that my vision needed to adjust and my skin flushed cool despite the warming day. On both sides of the curved driveway stood calm, colorful gardens, each one decorated with folksy painted art. Lots of cracked pane windows, half rotted wooden chairs, and hog panels framed and dressed in wild flower vines. A really ecclectic, happily accessorized piece of heaven. Everything smelled sweet, and from behind an umbrella-topped table where two ladies were taking money, jazz music reached out to us out like tendrils into the peaceful Saturday air. It was this great mix of Oklahoma and Louisiana, and I could feel Handsome grooving it right along with me.

   Having made one purchase here the day before, my husband knew of a few things he hoped to reconsider, so he proceeded to hunt. I had no problem following my thrifting nose to the colorful pottery, the used paints, the tall, beaten wooden shutters that remind me so strongly of New Orleans, and much more. Really, of course, I shared all of this woman’s taste in junk and craved to buy almost everything. But I had been shopping all morning and wanted to show some cash restraint. That’s part of the fun, after all, being discerning. Saying no can be as much fun as saying yes. Or at least it makes saying yes more fun when it happens.

   I did see one accent pillow that was flat-out irresistible. The bright yellow floral fabric made my 1970s-child heart skip a beat. It was tightly stuffed, quilted, in perfect condition, and fresh smelling. Not a hint of mildew of smoke or anything. For one single solitary dollar, this pillow was officially going home with me. No matter that nothing in either my house or the Apartment has these colors already. I mean, sort of my fave green velvet chair. Sort of.

 
   As I was trading four smudged quarters for this one glorious little pillow, a thin, energetic woman perhaps in her late sixties welcomed my questions about her gardens. A terrycloth sun visor was keeping her cropped white hair at bay. She touched my arms with silky soft hands, spoke closely to me, and smiled with her entire face while she described her gardens. Which plants she had cultivated, which ones were volunteers, etc. What I wanted most was to know more about the gardens, anyway. I was thrilled.

   At some point Handsome slid up beside me and listened too. This slight, bright little woman was by then talking a lot more about the myriad construction projects in her gardens than about the flora and fauna. We had found several things we both wanted to try and duplicate at the farm, so we were happy to listen. She was describing with great affection how much work her husband had been putting into their little paradise.

   “One time he built a bird cage there on that arbor, and once I bought this wooden swing from Ace Hardware and he decided it needed a better awning, so he built that. Then I wanted it out of that shade, so he moved it for me. He put up all those split-rail fences, too.”

   Goofing around in the flower beds this afternoon, I noticed something that just floored me. It brought me to my knees, emotionally, to match my gardening posture. Surely I’ve noticed it before, but never quite like this. Have you?

  This plant is branching and reaching for air and sunshine, webbing itself elegantly and casually in a singular effort for LIFE. In just a few square inches of earth, with access to only about half a day of sunshine and the occasional splash of well water or rain, these blooms have been power-housing their way through the summer.

   They provide beauty, calm, and ease. I don’t think there is a more self-sufficient flower in the universe; nor do I think there is a more prolific one.

   This has surely caught my attention before, but today it brought me to tears. Good tears… Grateful, hopeful tears. How wonderful to have proof that in nature so much can come from one tiny thing going really, simply, masterfully well!

   Yes, the skeptic in me pipes up and says  that surely back in March I scattered dozens of other zinnia seeds that did not germinate and grow. The skeptic would have me believe that the numbers are not in my favor. But you know what? Those seeds, had they grown, would have been crowded out anyway. Or eaten by my chickens. This one happy plant is all this little corner of dirt really needed, and it is more than enough. It is spreading all over the sidewalk.

   I know we all get deeply discouraged by trying so hard in life. We fight passionately for our beliefs, and we defend our rights or the rights of others. We struggle with finances and stewardship. We test our most precious relationships and endure that same testing and analysis from others. I know we all grow weary, worse than weary, and sometimes think it’s just not worth the effort. The failures seem so numerous and the successes so few by comparison. It wears us down, and it hurts.

   When I was crouched today down on the sidewalk, pulling weeds, and this thick singular stem grinned quietly at me from behind those flowers, it hit me. Just one seed.

   Suddenly all the many ways I have been feeling inadequate melted away. Just as strong and clear as the Worry Door vision I had a year and a week ago.. my heart sensed that despite all the times my efforts seem to fail or simply fade away unnoticed… when the conditions are right, great things will spring from one effort.

   In that moment I felt legitimate excitement imagining all the things that might come to fruition when that one thing, that one special effort, finally germinates and takes root in my life.

   I’m about halfway through Chesterson’s Orthodoxy right now, and this passage seems perfect for the moment:

The grass is signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incarnation, and I began to see an idea.

   I happen to think that anything we need to know can be found in nature. Any message meant for us is there.

   For my husband, who is working so hard at the Commish and is leading a team unlike any that place has ever seen, I am so proud of you. What are you are doing matters a great deal to people far beyond what we generally understand. Keep doing it. Keep fighting for what is right, and maintain that confidence that no matter where your path leads, you are respected and loved. You make me so proud and inspire me constantly to just do better. In everything. (Yes I totally said that mentally in a Jack Nicholson voice...)

   For my children, I wish I could give you the world. Everything I do have is yours, and anything I can muster beyond that I am happy to see you use and enjoy. My heart wants to give you far more than material things, though, and I am so excited to sense that those days are returning to us.

   For my friends, Marci, Jen, Melissa, Steph… Who each seem to be facing heart aches that can only be solved by Love, faith and hope, be happy! Because Love, faith and hope are the most powerful forces in the Universe. You are not powerless because you lack solutions. You are so incredibly powerful because you have surrendered to exactly What will make everything new and beautiful again. Faith, not fear.

   So, friends, if you find yourself slipping into that thought pattern where you lament past failures or indulge in frustration or even anger over constant, repeating, painful rejection… Think of the dozens of zinnia seeds that fell to the ground for nothing, except maybe a chicken’s meal. Then remember that just ONE SEED became all that was needed. Do not give up. Do not stop trying. You are enough, and what you seem to lack is available through prayer and believing. Keep doing every single thing you believe to be good and right. Continue on a path of Love and just ignore all evidence that would have you think Love isn’t the answer. THAT is the lie.

“Believe in the Possibility of Everything.”
xoxoxoxo

   Over this past month my babies have become, once again and more than ever, less babies and more young women. Now sixteen and eighteen, they are both squarely in a chapter of transition away from girlhood. Happily, I must admit, they seem ready for it all to progress.

   When I stop and dwell on it for very long, the plain facts of this part of life overwhelm me with grief. Had someone told me five years ago that we would still be enduring this now, I might not have been able to bear it. If you ask Handsome, he would say certainly not. Instead, life came at us, as it thankfully does for everyone, just one day and one moment at a time. And our joys have far outnumbered even our deepest sorrows.

“If only you could make now last forever.”  Frank said on one of those nights while they lay on their backs watching a huge half-moon roar up out of the dark shoulders of the mountain. Frank was eleven and not by nature a philosopher. They had all lain still, thinking about this for a while. Somewhere, a long way off, a coyote called. “I guess that’s all forever is,” his father replied. “Just one long trail of nows. And I guess all you can do is try and live one now at a time without getting too worked up about the last now or the next now.” 

   In fact, the miracle here, even ahead of the biggest ones for which we still pray, the most sublime grace we enjoy… Is that in the exact space of that dark thought of grief over this temporary separation, perhaps just a half a heartbeat after it, we feel so much intense joy and see so much blinding, dazzling light that not gobbling up life is the unnatural thing. Love is all around us and between us, still. The plain facts of life that would have us crumble in pain instead become the debris. That’s how powerful Love is.

   My girls are such beautiful creatures, in every way. One is an artist and one a writer, both stunningly talented and skilled beyond their years. One loves music and running; the other loves cooking and books. Both are easy friends and loyal ones. Both are so loving, so fierce and wonderful in their own myriad ways. And both love animals, which is why Handsome and I started this place almost six years ago.

Two creeks ran through the Booker brothers’ land, and they gave the ranch its name, the Double Divide. They flowed from adjacent folds of the mountain front and in their first half mile they looked like twins. The ridge that ran between them here was low, at one point almost low enough for them to meet, but then it rose sharply in an interlocking chain of rugged bluffs, shouldering the creeks apart. Forced thus to seek their separate ways, they now became quite different.

   Although they surely do not realize it, my girls are with me constantly. They are in my thoughts so steadily that despite their physical absence I feel them strongly all over the farm. I feel their shadows, of course, as all mothers do… The memory of their terrifyingly small, vulnerable bodies, all elbows and skull, inside my young belly. Their trusting mouths nursing. Their sweet velvet cheeks, flushed from the sun or clean from a vanilla scented bubble bath, pressing against my face for cuddles. Long, skinny arms squeezing me hard at bedtime, begging for “just one more chapter Momma?” And then those basketball legs that wore tights and ruffled socks to church, uniform skirts to school, and jeans on our weekend trips to Alan’s Buffalo Mountain. So yes, of course their shadows linger and warm up the peripherals here. For this Handsome and I are so thankful.

   Here is a quick list of things I wish I did better. Things I’m working at improving. Weaknesses that need strength-training. Sources of occasional embarrassment. And some pain.