Tag: goals

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

Writing week. Thursday.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m sitting at a car repair place again, this time, a dealership, because evidently that is the only way forward. hundreds and hundreds of ways. the man behind the counter is handsome and i’ve already glimpsed at a naked ring finger.

yes, that makes me sick, too. I will not take another step, just sitting my ass down, maybe not facing that direction.

i’m starting to feel a little bit like dating is work. and thats no good. weary and curious cannot exist in the exact same space.

but here i am, in the car repair waiting room. and i smell coffee but can’t find it, and thats maddening. it is not for me? is it not for me?

it was a big day yesterday. I had two ‘very important’ new things. (virtual via zoom, both of them.)

  1. a meeting with a spiritual director. she is an old, virtual friend of mine, though i have actually met her in person and even shared food. she’s finishing a program in spiritually directing people and i am a rambling, distractable seeker. Seeker. yes i am. we talked a lot about how to ritualize some of my daily tasks, imbue them with my feelings about the divine.
  2. a meeting with a potential new therapist. she uses a similar modality to the last therapist I liked, called IFS (Internal Family Systems) which encourages and allows all the different voices we hear in our heads, in our body. For example, the voice which tells me I’m doing just fine with the kids, in contrast to the voice which panics internally any time there is the smallest hitch in their happiness levels. Defensiveness, aggression, shame, pride, all the things are just fine, and working together to protect and defend my inner golden core. I’m good. I don’t need quite as much protection as they think I do, so its a matter of going in, diving down to see what my pieces are doing in there. it suits me very well, and I think we’ll be a match. Its amazing how explaining myself to someone can make me feel shame, and how much that is exactly why I am there.

Go get yourself a therapist. Everyone should have one. Yes, I mean you.

I also had another first date. Will let you know.

The waiting room is playing Sarah Mclachlan. Never fails to make me feel teenaged angst. Hello Dawson, its me… get off my fucking roof. Its not my favorite re-do, I’ll tell you that.

Did I tell you I’m 47? I am. Deeply.

love love,

me. ( i found the coffee!)

toddler wearing floral dress holding doll
This means something. How are you facing things today?
Photo by Саша Лазарев on Pexels.com
Humanity

NOVEMBER NONO TWO – fucksake, guys.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

2. What do you bring to the world? There will be much profanity in here.

Ah, fuck.

  1. I’m trying. This morning I’m really mad and I can’t shake it and there is no definable pin-able thing, except everything. The boy who says ‘why can’t you just get it for me?’ when I tell him to get his own drink when there is a break in his classes.  It is hard to break from being a people-pleaser but I’ve never been more certain that I’ll die if I try. And I get mad at myself for the doubt-step I take when I hear another demand. AND THERE IS ALWAYS A DOUBT STEP! why? why is that? why do i think that being a good mom means servitude? is kindness to my kids weakening their ability to survive? Sometimes i think, absolutely! and so it goes, over and over. fuckitall.
  2. Charlie chaplin has a quote about life being worthwhile if you just smile. Well. Raise your hand if anyone has ever told you to ‘smile. Lighten up.’  How’d that work out for you? I love me some Charlie and I have a great goddamned smile. God bless you if you try to force it out of me though. seriously. i’ll punch you right in the mouth. (no, i won’t.)
  3. I am carrying a fuckton of anxiety right now. The election, the violence directly under the skin of the country. The president who is condoning and calling it forth. I’m trying to not look around but its not proving as easy as I had hoped. So say we all.  
  4. Writing is hard. It is good to keep trying. I’m trying. I’m trying. To get my fingers oiled up again, to do one while I do fifty thousand other things. And while being mad, and anxious. and wanting it to be something that i can offer the world? goddamn. it makes me feel all weak-kneed.
  5. I bring a lot of color into the world, to bring me back to the prompt. I paint, I dress, I appreciate the color. I garden. I gather. I notice what is here. I bring, I notice.
  6. I’m stretching, trying to accommodate and failing. Failing. It’s the windowpane test, you bakers, and I’m stretched too thin.
  7. I’d love to say I gift my kindness to the world but I’m scared, and its hard to be kind when you are hiding. And yes, truly, that’s how I feel right now, about politics and about living here. I don’t even know how to face my children with this- this outlook is so pessimistic and just lie down on the ground and surrender sad.
  8. I’m trying to do a little thinking about my goals, longer term than making it to Friday. I think it will help me a little to seek out what might happen on the next few Saturdays, or even in a month or a year. Strain strain, seek, strain.
  9. I want to bring my golden core of goodness out. I want to have more wants. I feel like I’m surging with tides and while I think there is so much great beauty in that, I would like to feel the sand beneath my toes too.

10. While maybe this is a morose list, don’t worry. I’m only dealing with what we all are, and I’m relatively okay, and still pretty goddamned lucky for how I’ve been able to get through this all so far. And my rights aren’t on any ballot. And I’m not breonna taylor, dead in her bed. and i die a little on the inside for the truth of the truth.

Blurry. Its all blurry. Sigh.