Tag: environment

Humanity

Leaving the farm.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Is it on? Is this thing on?

I sat down to write about how it felt to climb down off the tractor and to know I won’t be climbing back up. There is so much in this for me. I tried paper and pen but couldn’t bear it. The beauty the beauty. Unbearable.

It was heavy. My whole chest was physically constricted. And I know it has to be done, is being done, but I still have not come to grips. I cannot believe it.

I’ve gotten a job, a grown up job that has benefits and the same hours every day and a salary, and possibly sick days and things like that that i haven’t even considered.

And I’m starting tomorrow. And it precludes/excludes the ‘squeezing in of hours’ that my life before allowed.

And I’m in mourning. For the woman who started there, as a way to fill in the times when the kids were with their dad. It was really like that. They were young, i was always there. Always.

Seeds

I started there probably seven years ago, my eldest would have been 13, and the youngest just six. It felt like a lot of money because it was farmwork and when i did it in high school, i was just paid $7 an hour, under the table. So it was way way more than that, and I would start having references again. It was a step, a little one, an it got me talking to people in the world again.

And I helped people pick out the good veggies and the farmers washed and harvested and put everything out at the beginning and away at the end of every night.

Now i harvest (only a little bit but i do.) and wash, and set up, and break down, and make the board and think about next week’s setup and keep it all stocked and i know so many of the customers intimately. And I seed the baby plants and run the plant sale and I take care of thousands of eggs and chickens per week and I drive the goddamned tractor. I’ve watched the farmer’s kid grow into a really cool girl, and i love my farmers isn’t just a bumper sticker over here.

Sigh. Sky.

And I worry that I’ll lose my connection to the work and the joy and pain of being outside year round. And what if my dad stops being proud of me? Or Grammie, or Joel, or Kate Crowley? Or the goddamned farmer? What if they move on like i was never there? I WAS THERE. (From heaven, three of them, because i have issues and need therapy. Always.)

And then, there is the beauty. I don’t think you know how beautiful it is out there. The dirt in a tractor tire, the lean of a fence post, the water sluicing the dirt off the carrots, the shocking color of the Swiss chard. I don’t think you know the wild variety of egg. Shells and breakage and boxes and delivering the food to people, feeding, knowing that what is happening, the exchange of energy is pure goodness. Pure.

Dirt is the way. The beginning and the end. And I WAS THERE.

What? I was.

Humanity

Farm

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I don’t think it’s just me, but I’ve hit the wall (and climbed it) of apocalyptic thoughts, feelings and mind lapses. I’m mostly happy about it, the theatrical world knows my connection to the fears we all have right now. Which, in itself, is a whole post.

I’m thrilled by all the movies/series which suit me right now. Last of Us. Any Walking Dead. A million more i can’t think of right now.

But man, one of the weirdest things I keep thinking about is farming.

I’m aging out of the work a little bit; the heat is too hot, the baskets too heavy, the monetary payment is too light. (It’s time to get into serious retirement discussions, selling the house cannot be my entire plan. It cannot.)

But I’ve been wafting back and forth in my apocalysm daydreams, while seeding hundreds of baby things, wondering how future generations will know how to get broccoli. I mean, food is the most important thing, right? Food and water. And, will the home gardeners save us all? Really? Better get out those zucchini recipes.

When we finally decide to stop flying produce from country to country, or spraying it with shit to slow down the ripening, or to speed it up, as the case warrants, what then?

Will ‘we’ tolerate not having bananas? Will i be able to grow bananas in New England?

I know, i know, focus on the here and now. Be mindful, be present. And all that is true, and yes, my small world is all that i can control.

When my sons want to eat meat at every meal and I feel such exhaustion that i throw frozen meat patties on a grill again and again, its that whole butterfly wing again, and I’m upset also that its such a recurring thing in my brain and yet millions of millionaires exist and I don’t think they are wrapped up in tinfoil about this.

I suppose they’ll get the last bananas.

Sigh.

Tell me I’m wrong. About the bananas, I mean.

-love love.

Humanity

NOVEMBER NONO- ELEVEN : brain dump

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Apologies ahead of time.

I’m not even doing this one in my journal first, its straight to the presses. good luck, readers.

  1. Its Veterans Day here. My dad, my former father-in-law, all of my uncles, two of the men I have dated and cared for, old friends, cousins, these are the men and women who have been willing to do what I cannot. I don’t forget them, or their choices.
  2. My daughter’s birthday is tomorrow. 8 years old. My baby. The times they are a-changing. I’ll be fine.
  3. Its supernaturally warm here, for November and I really desperately want to believe its a totally natural ‘Indian Summer’ but its freaking me out. There is too much to freak out about, still, and I want to punch Donald Trump in his fat head. Get out already. Don’t do some skeevy ‘destroy the country’ move. Don’t. See number one. Be like that.
  4. I’m ducking the real work I have to be doing, and this is like day 4 of that. I have no good excuse but man, I am dodging. I’m afraid I’ll do the work and it still won’t be good enough. that’s the key.
  5. My kids want a real tree this year, which is giving me agita. I switched to a fake tree when the idea of going to a tree farm on my own and figuring out how to put up a huge honker and not have it be a live flame in my living room was too too much. fake is fantastic. but i concede (unlike the fucker.) that there is no smell, and the whiff of cold and Christmas tree is an honest to goodness wonder. Tomten softness and quiet, if you know what I mean, you know. I don’t want to cut anything down, I mean, really. (see #3- hello, we need trees – globally freaky weather) I will sort it out somehow. I do like to keep the damn kids happy.
  6. When you know you are a people pleaser and you can see yourself reacting to someone’s displeasure with guilt and self-flagellation and you can’t stop it. but if you just give yourself another 5 minutes, you can stop and think again. and then you know that time in therapy is effective after all. 5 minutes, as opposed to 5 days. win.
  7. One of the significant sucks about being so profoundly hearing impaired is that I can hear a sound but not be able to identify what it is, and not know where it is coming from. So, living in an old farmhouse with two animals and three children and probably a slew of mice means that I am occasionally in full twitch, trying to figure out sounds to see if I need to respond. Was that a breaking sound? Something fell. Where? Was it a person? Was it a plant?
  8. I took a beautiful bath yesterday. I cannot tell you how long it has been. Literally cannot. My brain shattered all over the yard in the buildup and wait of this election cycle. It is not entirely gathered up yet. Self-care was a grenade in the shed, and the walls are gone.
  9. I’m a little bit proud that I’ve made it this far in the month. Eleven days of writing. Chuffed.
  10. I’m trying to figure out a way to console my Republican friends that involves making politics personal, and its not about Orangeman, its about their serious and stable fear that Democrats are some sort of devil. I just want them to see me as a model somehow, of a different perspective, but not scary. Fear is what is running all of this. It started in September 2001, and we’ve not shaken it yet.
Divorce, Humanity

Pitchfork…

Lovelovemotherexpletive
  • into this space please insert all the things i cannot and willnot leave behind for posterity about the many things i feel about the man who I divorced. let that be as powerful as saying I married him. why should i keep valuing one over the other?
  • i’ve got pizza sitting next to me that crisped up in the oven and i’m debating very seriously whether burning the roof of my mouth is worth it.
  • i’m planting things but have zero faith that i will ever get them into the ground because they are so spindly. and i am thrilled that the word ‘spindly’ is still around.
  • plus, how many carrots will my kids eat, realistically?
  • i wish i really drank, like on the regular, so that it was part of my life. isn’t that an absurd wish? now, when stressed or emotionally stretched out, i don’t have an easy fix… or if i do have a glass of wine, i have a headache before i even feel a buzz. so. that seems a miss. but i miss it, that brain shutdown, what we call the fall of ‘inhibitions’ but are really just normally healthy boundaries? i want to shed them more often and still manage to watch out for my kids, as a functioning fucked up adult. Does that make sense?
  •  I am worried that i’m not going to regain my proofreading clients when this is done, and that i’ll be back to a square i don’t want to be on.
  •  I am aware that if I were isolated like this and still married like I was, that I would be one of the people you should be worried about, the isolation and the misery combining to unsafe.
  •  The mental health of all of us in my house right now is becoming my ringadembells item, and i’m just as unhinged as they are, but am the grownup.  I am reminding them that all the feelings are okay and that they all will pass, with time, and that nobody has a ‘right’ way to be. its all i can do, that and feed them.
  • my kids have too much screen time. i’ll care later. i obviously care now, but see item previous item, and include ‘screentime guilt’ on the list of feelings that moms are allowed to have and to let pass.
  •  my eyes constantly fill with tears for and of these kids and these times… sometimes it is overwhelm, and disbelief, and sometimes it is laughter and those are the best times.
  • Pitchfork Unwifedmotherexpletive

 

Humanity

My 7-year-old plays Fortnite now.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

and holy shit guys.

what’re you up to now that the world has shut down?

in truth, so far, about once a week I have a complete sobbing meltdown. the fear, the anxiety, the worry for the kids, for LM, for my mom and for everysingleperson.

LM is here, as he has severely compromised lungs and my place is best for not being full of germshare.

my kids dad doesn’t believe in the benefits of social isolation, so gave them to friends for a sleepover a little over a week ago.  he does not have much respect for my being an informed adult and seems to think i am a hysteric who gets her news from gossip.

so i am doing all that i can when i can and cursing his soul.  i hope he feels it. and yes, i am a little kidding, and some of me is not kidding at all.

and then there is hope. because, as hard as it is for me to believe, beneath all the layers of fear, anxiety, cynicism, despair, niggling worries, fear of schooling my children and deep betrayal lies a golden molten core of beauty and brilliant LIGHT that, evidently, cannot be dimmed.

and so she SHINES.

sometimes. when the night is dark and dreary, she flashes.  and i’m seeking her out, and holding hands, and

SEEKING HER OUT.

and i think it is saving me, and so there is that.

Carrots Unwifedmotherexpletive

and i’m hoping to re-enter this world here more often. but lets not hold our breaths.