Uncategorized – Page 9 – the Dig and Flow

I Pledge Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the space between the half-staff flag and the top of the flagpole, one measure of the distance between where we are and where we still need to be, one national gesture of respect for individual lives,

and to the kids—my kids—in the elementary school by which it flies, who can elevate us beyond half staff,

and to the adults who stand with hands over hearts in this gymnasium, having taken two hours off necessary jobs to see our kids sing together,

and to the churning differences in our bodies, religions, assumptions, and what fills our plates,

and to the hills behind the school, rolling through neighborhoods and towards our farm where I will crawl on my hands and knees using my fingers to separate weeds from the delicate parsnips, following my urge to stay close to this soil.

I pledge my allegiance to the seeds slow to germinate this year, nasturtiums and kale still surprising us by poking upwards just when we thought they had rotted in the dark.

I pledge my allegiance to the space between this soil and other soils, many distances between me and people I know and love more than the back of my hand, between me and strangers I know have similar maps on the backs of their hands; and to the water and air, particles connecting us, flowing through us in one global gesture of living.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of my partner’s shirt in the wind on the roof; to my dog’s thick exuberant tail; to the two great blue flags of the heron’s wings flapping over our house towards the wetland; to the grasses raising their thin green flags across the field into a fine second hay cutting that will feed our neighbor’s beef; to the hands of our neighbors, flagging greetings as they drive past in trucks or tractors; to the yearning, many-storied people

of the United States of America—an improbable set of agreements and disagreements still somehow holding as a definable country—

and to the republic in which we stand,

one nation of many nations,

under god only knows how many names, illusions, auspices, impressions, guises, expectations, seeming

indivisible only because it is already divided into kaleidoscoping images that tumble around but stay together and create a whole picture,

with liberty and justice being more complicated than we hoped, but drawing us towards some past and future vision of a place where all of us—a phrase still demanding emphasis on all—will finally benefit from those slowly germinating seeds, and just when the promises of long-planted seeds seem rotten, tiny stems will unfurl with a bounty of beauty and food and

liberty and justice

for all.

Our Bleeding Hearts

Old devil hate, I knew you long ago
Then I found out the poison in your breath
Now when we hear your lies, my lovers gather ’round
And help me rise to fight you one more time

No storm nor fire can ever beat us down
No wind that blows but carries us further on
And you who fear, oh lovers gather ’round
And we can rise and sing it one more time

~Pete Seeger

A hard wind thrashes my bleeding hearts. They are a gift from my mom, as are most of my perennials and many of my personality traits. Eloquent, pink flowers dangle at the end of their down-curling stems, reminding me of bowed heads and tears.

The wind was already blowing when my parents arrived last week with a carload of my mom’s green thumb—various hostas, black-eyed Susans, Echinacea, lavender, pink coral, daisies, Solomon’s seal, spiderwort. My mom and I each pulled on one of my sweatshirts against the sudden coolness of June. We planted them together in two large beds, alongside plants from a friend, re-rooting the legacy of womens’ attention to beauty and life.

Then we traveled to my sister’s home for a party. On June 12, our family celebrates two women—my sister and my mom—and their initiators into motherhood—my niece and me. This year, we are all together on this birthday. I awaken inexplicably weepy, emotion trickling over my internal spillway, feeling the world, without even seeing the news. I walk into the kitchen, straight into a hug from my mom, who has not yet seen the news either.

One of my mom’s best gifts is throwing her arms wide open. When I was a kid, my mom’s good friend, Joe, died of AIDS. I sat beside her and dipped a needle into dark cloth, helping to stitch Joe’s panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. We wept at his funeral, held at our Mennonite church; any objections to this location for a gay man’s funeral were smoothed over by our wise and loving pastor. As Joe had requested, a recording of Carly Simon swelled against the rafters that day, singing, “Let the river run / Let all the dreamers / Wake the nation.”

Gay and lesbian friends and relatives have always shared our lives and our home, with or without partners. So I am lucky. My parents strive to live generously, with intentional acts of acceptance—working to know how to love, why to struggle, and when to grieve. This way of living is both instinctual and learned. We do this together, on purpose.

I want to let my mom’s gifts flow through me, so I practice astonishment at flowers and the sky after a storm. I open up big laughs and cry easily. Children and dogs receive my most patient compassion, and adults receive my open arms. Echoing my mom, I give people food and flowers as they have come to me. I become an ally.

I spend my birthday this year moving in and out of hugs—my parents, my sister and her husband, Andrew, Sam and Stella, and even the guests for my niece’s first birthday party, strangers who quickly feel like friends. We have all seen the news from Orlando by now, and it scrabbles at our insides with sharp claws. I carry a full well of emotion, overflowing here and there. In this warm afternoon, though, we cheer for my niece as she raises her cake-smeared index finger triumphantly into the air—One!

There are so many fierce and joyous ways to galvanize our communities against hate. There are so many ways to love each other. There are never enough words to describe devastation and the aftershocks of tragedy.

Back at home, the gusting wind—even at its worst—does not destroy our bleeding hearts. Instead, they dance. Among the rocks in my garden, these tender, vivid flowers will return every spring to remind me, reassure me. The music will play again in my mind: “Oh lovers gather ‘round, and we can rise to sing it one more time.”

A Creative Mind At Work

This time, I’ll mow better. I’ll try to maximize the long, straight runs and minimize turns. Even though we made a triangular set of beds in our yard and interspersed fruit trees and a chicken enclosure, I can start at the top of the yard and mow diagonally to the bottom. Whoever wanted curving, asymmetrical yard designs (me) had never used a riding mower. The geometry of this mowing seems incompatible with efficiency, but by the time I’m done, all of this grass will be shorter.

Riding mowing must have some tricks; I just don’t know them. I think I’ll actually start at the other top of the yard and mow horizontally, then vertically for a bit, just to trim around the rectangular chicken fence, and, while I’m heading this direction, I’ll shave down those burdock on the path to the compost. As long as I can make this U-turn, I won’t have to reverse, which disengages the blades and interrupts my Zen I’M SO CLOSE IF I JUST TURN HARDER. Nope. So, I’m still getting the feel of this turning radius—no harm done, just reversing.

Back to the long diagonal, I’m humming along now. In fact, I’ll just bump up the speed here to get done faster. There does seem to be a bigger change in speed between gears five and six than there was between four and five. Now every jiggly part of my body is flapping around erratically and making me giggle. Also, the ruts and bumps are tossing my bottom around in the seat—hilarious.

I’ve just realized I forgot my ear covers, but I guess they wouldn’t fit with my big floppy sunhat anyway, so basically I’ve chosen hearing impairment over skin damage. Ear plugs, though, would work, if I could find WHOA THAT WAS A NEAR MISS. I’ll slow down here.

At the end of this long diagonal strip, I’ll mow the perimeter slowly so I’ll have a buffer and not run anything over, like the only time I drove a riding mower as a kid and sent it straight up my Grandma Landis’s lamppost, much to her amusement. I wonder when our kids will start mowing. Oh, I missed a parallelogram-shaped patch over there. I’ll get it later.

On the other side of our new fence, the cows are grazing shoulder-high in grass—so lovely to watch cows and hear their teeth tearing the grass, if I could hear anything over this mower. They even eat poison parsnip, those amazing cows. If only they could eat our thorny hedge, which I call the Bushes of Hate, since weeding around them earlier gave me a thorn splinter that kept hurting in the same way that festering hatred pains the person who carries it embedded inside them, which makes me think that Donald Trump must be suffering horribly from all of his hate, unless he is so soulless that even the hate is simply a giant, asinine act for WHERE AM I GOING?

Mowing over here behind the barns was not the plan today. I’ll head back towards those long, efficient rectangles. And how did I leave all of those unmowed triangles over there?

Good Neighbors Make Good Fences

It begins with walking. We walk back and forth between each others’ houses to share food or sledding invitations or canning efforts. We walk to the top of the hill to pick rocks in our fields. Living in a rural area, the only destinations within walking distance are our neighbors’.

Our neighbors, Sue and Neil, teach high school chemistry and physics. Their interests complement our medicine and ecology backgrounds so that we form a quartet of science lovers, energetically farming and raising kids alongside other jobs. As our kids discussed things the other day, I overheard their son, Thomas, tell Sam, “I’m not officially a guest. I’m your neighbor!” And that’s how we feel too.

A farm cannot exist in isolation from the people and landscape that surrounds it. Air and soil and water ignore boundaries of property ownership. Plants spread seed and grow across fences. Wildlife traverses. Kids toss baseballs and footballs and sticks for the dog. Our farm’s ecology—human and otherwise—seems most healthy when we commute and communicate across boundaries.

Walking the edges of our field—the five acres that lie between our house and their cow barn—Neil’s long strides measure a perimeter distance. Then he walks across to our door, sits with us at our little oak kitchen table, and we scheme over the constant peeping from the chick brooder.

Our neighbors raise beef on grass, and they’ll need more grass this summer for their growing herd. We, at this stage, raise grass, with no ruminants to graze it into meat. This situation is a match, we decide. All that’s missing is a fence to keep their cows in our pasture.

So we walk again, choosing a path for this fence. There is always walking, to place stakes and to stretch string and to measure, to talk with each other at each corner. Neil and his tall son, Andrew, dole out fence posts along the line. We are following relatively new boundaries, since our properties were once one larger farm, and our property has no fences. We are inventing the future.

We walk behind Eloise, which pulls a beast of a post-pounder, stopping to drive each post solidly in the ground. We are a slow procession, a parade with the music of the two engines and percussion so strong it vibrates your feet standing nearby. My dad drives the tractor; Neil’s dad lines up posts. Finding plumb takes a team, each eyeing the post from our own perspective and talking in sideways nods and hand signals to get it straight.

A few weeks later, with grass thickening the pasture, Neil and Andrew stretch the last piece of woven wire. Their hands are stiff and nicked from twisting wires. It’s demanding work—needing attentiveness and strength—to weave two separate pieces together into something stronger. It’s the right kind of work.

Marriage of Rocks and Trees

On our fifteenth wedding anniversary, we pick rocks from our freshly disked field. I keep Eloise the tractor at a slow purr while Andrew grabs any rock larger than a sandwich and chunks them into the trailer. Our rough fifteen-acre field adjoins our neighbor’s field, and, thanks to them, the whole area will be a hay field later this summer. We’ve had rocky times before, but this is different, I grin to myself.

It seems right that we are practicing attentiveness to hard things emerging from deep places. Sometimes I hop off the tractor to help. Together, we pry out and lift a toddler-sized rock. A few times, the stones are just too heavy, even for both of us, and we mark them with flags—get help here.

The whole project—this farm, this marriage—has flags all over the place, but not the red flags that shout warning or danger. These are flags in my mind, marking places where special attention has been given or where our community has helped us move the heaviest stones.

There are also flags marking new trees, so tiny that stepping on them by accident is a real possibility. Down beyond the north end of the barn, eventually forming a windbreak, flags march across the damp area between marsh and drier pasture. Flags cascade across one-third acre of previous scrappy thicket in our woods. After shearing the thicket, Andrew has flagged the layout of our future forest. These flags mark our path forward. They create a connect-the-dot image of how our lives here in twenty or thirty years might look.

On this evening two weeks after our anniversary, our kids romp at the edge of this eventual forest. Stella hugs the dog and plays teacher under a pine tree. Sam balances on logs and turns a branch into a blaster. Andrew wiggles the dibble in the dark soil, leaning the narrow spade back and forth to create a space for bare roots.

Most of these trees are smaller than their roots, so we mark each one with hot pink flagging. As we plant them, I tally the kinds and numbers. We—mostly Andrew—will have planted white pine, Norway spruce, tamarack, paper birch, yellow birch, black walnut, red oak, white oak, sycamore, wild black cherry, silky dogwood, nanny berry, and several pears and apples.

“Whoa. That just added up to 518 trees,” I tell Andrew.

“And that’s just phase one!” he says.

We are laughing at the ridiculous scale of our visions and at our good fortune to be here. We are shoving the dibble back into the earth, tucking in the branching roots, closing the soil around some optimism, some big dreams, some tender seedling.