Ali reads my blog most days, and he called me up the other day and said. “the soccer boys would like to come to Cambridge, and come say hello to Mr. Gulley.” They read that he was sick – he has inoperable brain cancer – and they want to come see him.
They remember how good Ed was to these kids when they came to tour his farm last summer and see him milk his cows. They wanted to say hello.
I was touched by the gesture, and Ed said he would love to see these kids again. So they are coming Saturday from Albany. I was touched by their thoughtfulness, these children have enormous empathy for the elderly and people who suffer, they know what it feels like.
They have a particular respect for older people, they all remember their “grandmas and grandpas,” most of whom are gone or out of reach. They miss them.
I have this fantasy about offering these children perfect days when they come here, they are so kind and thoughtful and generous with one another, with me, with Ali. So I am scrambling to put a perfect day together for them on Saturday. They need some perfect days.
The kids are coming in our new Odyssey van (not actually new but in great shape).
First, I ordered them some color headbands to wear while they practice for soccer games. I think they are pretty wild and I think they’ll love them.
Then, I’m buying them lunch at the Round House Cafe.
Then, we’ll stop at the Mansion and say hello there for a few minutes.
Then, we’re going to Battenkill Books where each kid will get to pick out a book – text, stickers, photos for them or a brother and sister..
Then, they’ll go see Ed Gulley at Bejosh Farm. Ed is excited to be seeing them.
Then, they’ll either come back to Bedlam Farm and see Red herd the sheep and walk and hike out in our woods with Maria or they’ll go to Pompanuck and hike in the woods there. (I’ve cancelled my Saturday morning writing workshop.) Maria is the hike leader, Fate is the scout.
These are all things they love. The new team, with my enthusiastic blessing, is changing its name from the Bedlam Farm Warriors to the Albany Warriors. The first name always made me nervous.
The weather looks great, high 72, sun mixed with clouds. I’m excited.
They are giving us a gift by visiting, we hope to give them gifts in return. I hope its as close to a perfect day as it can get.
(Warning, there is some humor in this piece. It is okay to laugh, even in Amerca.)
This afternoon, i turned to Maria and asked sort of jokingly if she might be a Trophy Wife. Without blinking, she turned the hose right on me and chased me into the car. I guess not.
When you grow older, there are certain things you expect to leave behind, like the prospect of fighting for your honor or that of your wife. I mean, I am 70 years old, and have not been in a fistfight for at least 60 years and do not remember every coming close to winning one. My father only taught me one thing – to turn the Red Sox baseball channel on. He did not teach me to fight, he knew that would be hopeless.
Since my wife is considerably tougher and more agile than I am – I have seen her angry – I think I have left my brawling days over women behind. In fact, I skipped them entirely in my life.
But maybe not.
This morning, as I stopped in the Round House Cafe to meet a friend, a man came up to me. I vaguely recognized him, but could not recall his name. He startled me by telling me, “you know I just want to say that your wife looks terrific, I really admire her style, the way she looks, the way she dresses. Would you tell her for me?”
I am not in the habit of taking compliments for my wife, who I love, and everything he said was true.
You should tell her, I mumbled ungratefully. Maria is herself, wherever she goes, and she has the pure soul of the artist, she always dresses with style and individualism. But why was this man coming up and saying this to me?
Yesterday, while we were visiting Ed Gulley, he looked at me and said, “hey, I love the sparkle in your wife’s eyes! Do you see it?” He seemed smitten. Of course, I see it, I said, perhaps a bit defensively. Did he think me too old or dead to notice it?
This afternoon, I went into the Food Co-op and a volunteer there came up to me and said “hey, I just love the way your wife looks and dresses. She just has her own style and I admire that. And she is so nice!” He went on and on.
Again, I agreed, but was not sure to say beyond that. Were all the men in my town wanting to tell me how much they liked and admired my wife? Should I be upset about this, or perhaps more vigilant.
And then, later, at the Post Office, a man I did know came up to me and said he had seen Maria the other day and loved her style and her great smile. “You’re older, aren’t you?, he said with a distinctly insincere smile. “Looks like you have a Trophy Wife!”
It was one of those stupid yuk-yuk-take an elbow jokes that men used to offer about women all the time, usually about their breasts, but now try to hide. Once in awhile, I am mistaken for a normal man.
For the record, a Trophy Wife is not a complimentary or admiring term. It is an informal slang for a wife, usually young and attractive, who is regarded as a status symbol for the husband, who is often regarded as a status symbol for the husband, who is often older, unattractive, and usually wealthy (strike two only.)
The term usually reflects negatively on the character or personality of both husband and wife. I don’t want to name names, but for the husband, it is usually a connotation of pure narcissism and the need to impress other men. The primary reason for a man to have a Trophy Wife is because he could not find attractive women to like him any other way.
I am 17 years older than Maria, a lifetime of wisdom and experience, I sometimes joke while she gags.
The man had the sneering look of a younger man who thinks he is really being funny, when in fact, he is just being stupid. I quickly went over my options in my mind. I could slap him across the face with my gloves, but I didn’t have any gloves, it was 80 degrees.
I could knee him in the stomach right around his groin, and hope he would drop to the ground long enough for me to get outside and flee in the car. I could go and get Red and order him to attack and then run outside while Red snuggled with him and distracted him.
Since I have been writing all week about my desire to walk gently and softly into the world, getting into a fist fight with a younger and stronger man seemed inappropriate, and foolhardy. I did, after all, convert to Quakerism when I was younger. I wondered if I could get off a text message to Maria, she would have come rushing over and beaten the crap out of him, but how would that look?
I could also try the emergency approach and pull open my shirt and show him my open heart surgery scar and say I felt faint. I could even clutch my chest and gasp for air. That would shut him up. Would he really want to beat up an old man with heart disease?
So instead I went with my gut. I am, after all, older and wiser these days.
I looked him right in the eye for a good 10 or 15 seconds – this rattles bullies and jerks, I learned in middle school – and said quietly, “sorry, my friend, but that’s not funny. To be called a trophy wife is an insult both to my wife and to me. Please don’t do it again.”
As it was, he looked startled and apologized, quickly and sincerely. He meant it as a joke, he said, sorry, and turning red, he rushed off down the hall to mail his letters.
So it was one of those time and space encounters, funny but not funny, about nothing, but about something.
I am not wealthy, but I am an older man, and I am sure he is not the first person to sneer at that, I know he isn’t.
I remember when Maria and I disclosed our relationship after we were both divorced, someone anonymously e-mailed me and joked “well, I bet the old equipment isn’t working the way it used to. Hope you can satisfy your wife?”
And that was ten years ago.
In the new America, with its anonymous digital caverns full of trolls and cowards, such messages are now commonplace, and we can thank Mark Zuckerburg for that. His software does not stop cruelty, either. All it collects is money.
I wrote my messenger back, saying, “you are not kidding. I am changing my vitamins.” He went away.
While hiding from Maria in the car, I re-thought this day. And started smiling. You, madam, are no trophy wife.
And here’s what I take on this memorable day, when I almost had a fist fight defending my wife’s honor. Stuff that in your pockets boys, the old man got the girl.
I am so very proud of us. And of me.
My wife is a remarkable woman, proud, strong, smart and stylish. Other people like her and love her also. But I got her first, old rascal that I am, and love her more every single day.
Pansies are the centurions of Spring, the brave flowers who come ahead to brave the cold and announce that this beautiful season is just over the horizon. I took my art lens out this morning and caught the sun as it trumpeted its arrival and blessed the flowers in a basket hanging on the porch.
I had this brainstorm this morning, I asked our friend Sarah Kelly, a graphic artist, if she could design some tasteful bumper stickers for the Army Of Good. Just the name “Army Of Good” on a field of blue or red. She’s working on it. I want to thank you for all of the support you have given me and many other people and also provide a material token of this group and the incredible work it is doing.
I have to figure out the cost and mailing and other details but i wanted to give you all a heads up. My thinking is to mail one to any member of the AOG who asks. I don’t really know precisely how many of you are out there or how much this will cost, so please don’t send me any messages or requests just now.
I’d like for the bumper sticker to be free to anyone who asks for one or wants one. When the time comes, people can order one through my post office box, or via e-mail. I don’t wish to get swamped by this project, but it seems like a good thing to do.
I’ll let you know how it goes. Please don’t e-mail or send any requests now, they will be lost. I’d love to think of these stickers driving around America. Perhaps the idea of doing good will become viral one day. I would love to have one on my car.
So I’m checking. This might be too expensive right now, or not feasible, either way, I’ll let you know.
Whenever I see Ali’s good face, I think of the good we are doing, he is a major part of this work.
Saturday, he is bringing some of the refugee soccer kids to Cambridge to say hello to Ed Gulley, whose farm they visited last summer. It’s a generous and thoughtful gesture, and I’m planning to give them a good and full day – lunch, a hike in the woods , a visit to Battenkill Books, and a soccer surprise – color sweatbands for soccer practice.
Saad.
I wrote about Saad yesterday, he moved into his new apartment today, thanks to your help with the security deposit. I’m going to see him on Tuesday to bring him a month’s load of groceries. I hope to support him in small but meaningful ways throughout the next few months as he builds his new life in America.
Saad lost everything in Iraq, is sick and without his family, a wife and eight children, who are unlikely ever to be able to come to America under the current administration. Saad, who worked for the U.S. Embassy during the Iraq war, was targeted by religious extremists and had to flee to a U.N. refugee camp, and then to America.
Yesterday, the Army Of Good gave Saad $400 for a security deposit on an apartment in a senior citizen building in Albany. It is the first apartment of his own in the year that he has been in America.
He has been struggling ever since. Ali and I are determined to help him, your contributions to that work are much appreciated. You can send them to the Gus Fund, c/o Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. or via Paypal, [email protected].
Thanks for your contributions which began to come in last night. I will keep a close eye on Saad, we will work with him over time until he is settled and comfortable and has what he needs. I’ll share this work every step of the way.
Ed Gulley’s gofundme project went over $14,000 this morning, $4,000 over its goal. The creators of the fund have raised the goal to $25,000, and that’s great, but I hope to see the fund make it to $50,000 because that’s what I think the Gulleys will need as they plot this unexpected and frightening chapter of their long lives together.
Ed has inoperable brain cancer and he has declined further medical treatment. He is planning a cross-country RV trek to Montana and is eager to see the Dakotas. His family is taking over the operations of the farm while he travels and deals with his illness.
Ed and his very loving family will need some real support in the next few months, and I am going to push for the $50,000 mark, I know how the farmers rallied around Joshua Rockwood when his farm was threatened by dangerously misguided animal rights activists and I believe they will and are doing the same thing for Red.
Ed and Carol have worked all of their lives on the diary farm. They richly deserve this trip, and also a way to get their lives in order and deal with this painful new reality. You can follow their journey on the Bejosh Farm Journal.
You can find the gofundme project here. And thanks. I see so many of your names on the project donor list, it lifts my heart. You give again and again, you are the reason we will get through these times together.
