I have to be honest; Wednesday was a beautiful, meaningful, and profoundly sad day, a lovely Spring day.

It began with great sadness when I woke to hear the new count of dead children; it ended with my building a permanent memorial in my garden to all American children killed in school shootings, on the farm.

There are now hundreds of lost children murdered in the most violent and brutal way, thousands more traumatized by seeing their friends butchered in front of them because the grownups who run the country are too screwed up – or worse – to protect them.

But we all know that, don’t we? How do we fight the light in darkness?

My memorial is one idea. It’s a rescued Nasturtium plant and a new, small wooden garden bed from my friend John at Country Products.

 

I flopped around all night Tuesday with a restless heart and a great sense of bewilderment and shame for living in a country that can’t or won’t protect its children.  I think of what my grandparents went through to make sure I remained alive.

Who have we become?

With this memorial, I know at least that I will not forget these children; their spirits will live here on the farm and, hopefully, visit these beautiful flowers. I have no words for what happened in Texas, irrationality, horror. But I can still do something.

 

A rescued hanging plant display will be the heart of the memorial. This Nasturtium plant was sick and dying.

We’ll bring it back.

I’m going to get a plaque made to put on the garden bed. In Memory Of the American Children killed in their classrooms. We Could Not Protect Them But We Must Never Forget Them. 

I know Maria will help me, it would be wonderful if she could design it, perhaps paint it on the wood.

I drove around today to look for beautiful things, farms, and kind people, to take some nice photos, and to visit with the beautiful clouds that were popping up in the sky, my friends in the atmosphere.

It was my own way of trying to heal. And to acknowledge the far greater pain of others.

Peaceful places for me today. My pictures yesterday helped.

 

 

I shut down the blog for a day because I didn’t want to feel normal or forget, but I needed to think and feel and gather my frayed wits. And I had no words. Like most people with a heart, I was weary beyond description from seeing children killed over and over again.

As a parent and grandfather, I cannot imagine.

As a citizen, I am frustrated and heartbroken. As a human being, I feel utterly helpless.

So I had some goals for Wednesday. One was to keep doing good, as my friend Sue Silvertein told me to do; it is, she said, our only weapon.

Another way to remember and honor these children.

Sometimes anger is the only choice, sometimes the right choice, but for me, it can’t be the only choice. I found the things I was looking for.

I sat in bed talking with Maria, and we lifted one another up.

 

I found beautiful clouds right away, as if they were waiting for me.

One good way for me to feel better was to look for kind and loving people to photograph and talk to. To remember the goodness and kindness in the world and not let the dark side creep through my consciousness. Kindness is infectious, the best kind of virus to catch.

I am hopeful. This is too wrong to continue. It can’t stand.

The day got off to a good start and just got better in some ways. The ghosts of all these children never left me, but I felt grounded and more positive by the time I got home.

It was a beautiful day in many ways; it reclaimed my tattered spirit and a broken heart.

I went to the pasture to spend a few minutes with the donkeys, soft and gentle souls both. They were happy to visit with me.

I asked the Mansion what they needed to continue work on their beautiful garden. They said they needed four kinds of vegetable plants and eight tomato cages.

OK, I said, I called my friend John at Country Power in Greenwich and talked with Casey, and they said they had all of those things. Come on over.

 

(Vegetables and tomato cages for the Mansion. Tania, as always, helping.)

I gathered four books to bring to Lisa Cox at the Mansion, a book about Queen Elizabeth, a novel about horses, and two mysteries I loved.

I was very eager to get out and do some good; it was the only thing I could think of that would make me feel better.

I didn’t want to succumb to anger and rage; I won’t do that.

I talked with Sue Silverstein about the new school she and the refugees were going to in the fall, and I’m going to meet the principal in a couple of weeks. She is very excited. She was also devastated by the news from Texas.

We both ran out of words.

It is an awful thing that this is becoming so common and ritualized.

Sue was back to work today, comforting the children, trying to make them feel safe in a country that seems to have abandoned them.

I’ve also been invited to the school on June 10th and 11th to hear about the prom plans and then go to the prom itself. I’m meeting next week with our new principal.

Zinnia is leading the red carpet parade, and Maria is coming with me.  Thanks to the Army Of Good, beautiful people to think of when things look dark, it sounds great.

When I got to Country Power, Heidi took me to the greenhouse; she found four of the vegetable plants I asked for – tomato, cucumbers, squash, and beans.

I had a long talk with my friend John, a deeper and richer friendship than I expected. He is a beautiful man with a great heart and a kind spirit. He is one of the good people I needed to see today.

So I took his photo. I love his office, it is the story of a good life.

He introduced me to Ali, a farmer in Easton, who comes in May and June to help John water the hundreds of pants for sale. Ali has a teenage daughter.

John has done so much for so many children, she said, it is a gift to be able to help him when he needs it. It turns out she reads my blog.

That is the kind of boss he is. Like everyone else, I hope he will find some time to rest. He is 80, with some heart issues, but he works seven days a week and does all kinds of community service at night.

 

 

The store was crazy busy, and John was in the thick of it, as usual. He says it’s hard to hire help these days.

I love his office; it reminds me of the inside of my mind.

John Rieger has been running Country Products for over half a century, and his office is the center of the farming universe around here. His place makes soulless Tractor Supply about as warm and appealing as a visit to Edgar Allen Poe’s gravesite.

I love going there, taking his picture (he constantly squawks but takes his glasses off) and seeing one farmer after another come in to get supplies.

This is the real deal. They treat everybody like family. And it feels like family.

I told Ali I needed to take her picture because she seemed so nice and lovely, and I needed to take photos of friendly people today to remind me that they exist in great numbers.

John grumbled, but agreed to be photographed, and so did Ali.

Her smile was radiant and beautiful; she was one of the good ones. Smiles never lie; any photographer knows that.

She was so much fun to talk to and had such a warm and open heart; it was healing to photograph her.

 

 

I’m glad we got the Mansion garden in shape. They are already planting the seeds we sent them.

The residents eat all the vegetables they plant and care for them together. We also got eight tomato cages. The garden is important to them.

One thing leads to another, the visit brought me exactly what I needed and was looking for: a way to move ahead and remember.

As Heidi and I left the greenhouse, I passed by a beautiful hanging basket filled with Nasturtiums, one of my favorite flowers. How much is that, I asked Heidi?

Oh, she said, it was not for sale. She said it was sick and drooping, with too much water and not enough shade; she guessed the sales price was $35, but she would sell it to me at a much lower price if I wanted it.

I can’t be sure because I lost the receipt, but I have a feeling Heidi didn’t charge me for the Nasturtiums. They’re like that there.

I gather that John has helped countless hundreds of children in so many ways over the years; I see many of them stopping by all the time to see him and thank him. A lot of them end up working for him, especially in summer.

It’s tough getting John to go to lunch with me; he is glued to that office, but our friendship is rich and warm, and I am grateful for it.

We are each fascinated by the other, neither of us has ever known anyone quite like the other.

My stay turned out to be grounding and healing, and I felt more human when I came back and certainly hopeful and grateful.

Driving around, I felt the clouds circling me, encouraging me to be strong, sound, and hopeful. I especially loved this angel cloud that hovered over me and chased me back to the farm.

 

I did a fair but meaningful amount of good and will pick up the thread tomorrow. This was so much better than watching that awful news. I find Zinnia a great comfort. She has some intuitive alarm when I am troubled. Her calm is a balm.

I’m going with Maria to the Mansion in the afternoon.

She’ll teach her art class, and  Zinnia and I will go downstairs to see all those people who stay mostly in their rooms. I haven’t done that since the pandemic, and it’s about time to do it again.

My daughter Emma is pretty sick with a nasty cold and fever, our meeting this weekend in Hudson, N.Y. has to be called off..

Life has its own ideas about things, and I work hard to accept them.

We’ll see. Tuesday was a bittersweet day for me but important. Life has to go on.

The day was a mix of many emotions. In the end, I remembered to be grateful for my life.

Life is a gift, and I won’t waste it with anger and lament. It is almost unbearable to think of those young lives cut so short.

Hopefully, those children will be in my consciousness for the rest of my life. There are so many now. I haven’t done much, but I have done something.

But I got a good drink of hope, beauty, kindness, and need. There is too much to do to give up.

I got the message. Where there is hope, that’s where I will be.

 

This cross was made by artist L.V.Hull, who says that after darkness is light, and after despair, hope. It hangs on our back porch.