Day: November 9, 2014

I’ll have you know that the Brussels sprout is a cultivar in the Gemmifera group of cabbages (Brassica olderacea), grown for its edible buds. According to Wickipedia, the leafy green vegetables are typically 2.5-4 cm in diameter and look like miniature cabbages, which is precisely what they are. The Brussels sprout has long been popular in Brussels, Belgium and may have originated there.

It is also growing here. On our morning walk, we passed the home of our neighbors and friends, Kim and Jack Macmillan, Jack has a huge garden which he loves to cultivate and which has brought us many potatoes, among other things. He and Kim came out to say hello and Jack grabbed his huge machete, offered to chop down one of his Brussels sprout stalks, and did. Maria was delighted with this gift. Free stuff, especially good free stuff, brings an ear-to-ear grin to her face, and I was ready to catch it. I admit to forcing the smile a bit by calling out her name, making a funny face. My wife cannot resist a funny face, even if it is mine.

She carried the stalk home as if it was the Olympic torch.

Every doctor I have ever known has extolled the virtues of Brussels sprouts, it is supposed to be one of the world’s healthiest foods, so I put some virgin olive oil and sea salt on some, cut them up and roasted them in the oven for 15 minutes at 350. Pretty great.

 

At some point, it feels like life has stopped clapping,

when people open doors for you,

ask you about your health, but not about your life,

when agents are slow to return calls,

and children start to worry about you,

and editors send you to voicemail,

and the reviewers and interviewers

are chasing after new and fresh voices,

young ones mostly, and no longer chase after you,

when the phone quiets,

when the ravages of Old Fartism

appear all around you, and the air is filled

with talk of pills and pharmacies and insurance

plans, and bad knees and weak hearts,

at our age,

we aren’t getting any younger (and who is?)

and young people today,

how lazy and worthless they are,

and the world used to be better

and simpler and safe,

and a friend says he wants to retire,

and finish out his life by cleaning out his barn to spare his kids the work.

I think of relevance, and what it means to be relevant

in my world, in my time,

It means accepting life with grace and wisdom and humor,

it means finding a place to speak my voice,

it means shedding struggle stories like a winter coat

in Orlando, it means keeping news of my pills to myself,

and giving birth to myself again and again, every day.

I know where I am, I am as  young as I wish to be,

and as old,

telling my stories,

taking my photos, finding my voice, standing in my truth

I can carry my own bags to the car, thank you,

I can open doors quite handily, I do not need senior discounts for coffee

and movies, they should go to the true needy, the young.

I can share what I have learned,

teach what I know.

My love makes itself known, day after day,

against another body, another beating heart,

and then, the sparkle in my eye begins to dance,

I hear the joyful noise,

of relevance.

I am clapping for me.

I love the Shag Bark Hickory’s, they have so much character and feeling, in the meadow near our home there is a row of them, and I took a photo of them, all lined up, order with chaos behind it.

The big men in trucks put in our frost-free water line and rearranged our back yard and built a beautiful stone path to the evolving garden out of chunks of slate buried in the back yard. It was my friend Jack Macmillan’s idea, and it speaks of the steps in life, one at a time.

When we bought the house, we hired a young man, Ajay, to dig out the slate path we found buried under the grass and dirt. It was a mistake, we didn’t have the right equipment, and it was a mess, the slate had collapsed and were in a jumped pile in the ground and all over the place, the steps were too low. In the winter, water pooled and formed a frozen pond – ice for weeks, and then mud. We were going to dig the whole mess out and throw the slate away, Jack said to wait, he had a plan. When the tractor came to dig the frost-free, he had an idea for the slate steps.

So when Vince finished digging a ditch for the line, they brought in a truckload of crushed stone to raise the bed, then dug out all of the slate rocks and steps and re-organized them, painstakingly figuring out – all by eye – where they might have originally gone. All of this slate was buried in the back yard, Maria and I had no idea it was all there, we just saw a half dozen pieces.

I wasn’t even home when Jack and Vince rebuilt this path, we are just astonished and delighted with it. Apart from it’s beauty and historical value, it has great symbolism for me. I love paths and steps, they are the walkways of life to me, connective tissue of homes and lives. Jack never really told me what he had in mind, and I didn’t ask. He’s the kind of person you just trust.

I am grateful to Jack, a neighbor and a friend, and to Vince, for seeing what I could not see and bringing to life something Maria and I would love but could not really imagine or envision, or bring to life. Creativity, for sure, in it’s purest form.

A few men came in a tractor and truck, and our farm is different. Steps to life, one at a time.