I know I haven't finished the story of the Denver weekend, and I will make sure to polish that off, but I have been so absorbed by all that happens in May on a farm when the sun is shining. This week Jon and I were in Loudoun more days than we were at home, and this is new. The balance has tipped. We are nomads.
As long as we can get cleaned up at the end of the day, it is all manageable. I had a lovely shower at the Loudoun farm last night -- outdoors where the newest young workers will be taking their showers starting next week. It felt so good, after a full day of grubby work. Then we gave up on trying to stay awake past about 9:30 pm, even though we both had plenty of things to do. Jon meant to do work for Al, I had computers with me so I could write, I had a book to read. Never mind. We headed off to Timothy's cabin which currently looks like a storage shed with bird netting filling one end of the room, tools and tubs all around, various appliances that will eventually be installed. No electricity, no running water (yet) and no kitchen (yet). The bed is absurdly high, built-in on the southeast corner of the shed, right against a window with only a screen, no glass. The other night when I tried to climb into this bed (which is about five feet up), I climbed on the stool and did my best to pull myself up onto the mattress but the stool broke and I fell on the floor in the pitch dark. That night Jon was still up in the worker kitchen working on his computer, so I lay there on the floor assessing the damage, one bone at a time. Just some scrapes. Climbed back up into bed and looked out the window at the full moon.
This morning I finally, finally understood why the bed is so ridiculously high. It is because you can see out all of the windows and the view is stunning. If the bed were lower, it would be a total waste of everything. You would be sleeping in a storage shed amongst the bins of clippers and paper plates. There are wide windows all along the west side of the cabin -- you can see sky and mountains and trees and a huge open field and horses on the western edge of the world. Sometimes there is fog, sometimes the dew is so heavy you can see it dripping off the grass blades. At night soon there will be thousands of blinking yellow lightning bugs, sprinkled over the whole dark canvas.
Those moments are a brief holiday before we head back to the work of growing vegetables (in my case) and building stuff (in Jon's case). As I have said before, I am working with people who are truly young enough to be my own children. They are far more flexible and spry than I am and they think nothing of climbing on and off a pickup truck bed. I stay on the ground. I do climb on tractors, but it takes both arms. I have to admit that I am wondering if this body will ever actually get used to working this hard again. In recent seasons, I have been allowed to do more thinking and less bending. This year I do both, and the backs of my legs complain loudly after just two hours of morning mulching.
When we were in Denver last weekend, we all just forgot about our normal lives. We spent a full day hanging around the house, eating, napping, talking, cooking. We did have our 7:30 AM meeting and we went through the whole booklet of "Five Wishes," answering most of the questions and discussing our answers with each other. We got off on some tangents but in general our responses were pretty much the same -- we will trust our designated Health Care Agents to make sure we are not allowed to last too long in a state that we didn't ever plan to be in. It is impossible to be specific but we talked about various scenarios, and Anna says that as long as these conversations have been witnessed, we have done our job as best we can. And none of us wants to be embalmed and we don't want to go through a funeral home. Since there is already precedent in our family, we just want to be buried (after our useful organs are taken). Our level of squeamishness varies -- Anna wants to be buried in a box, Gordon doesn't mind the idea of being wrapped in a sheet, no box. We agreed that I will pursue the task of selecting a space for a family/community cemetery out on the Loudoun farm -- a task I have started several times and never finished.
But we have a lot to do before those are the questions that need to be answered. I know that pretty soon the age of 55 will seem youthful to me. Or to put it another way, everything that hurts now will be hurting a lot more in future years. Best not to think about that, but also best not to fall off of stools too often. (Yesterday I was glad there was no one to see me teetering on top of yet another stool trying to dislodge a hose that was tied to a piece of rope that was hanging from a rafter in the barn. I knew this could be bad, but somehow I managed to get the hose down and it was just right for attaching to the transplanter tank so we could water the mint. See? Yoga is keeping me from losing my balance when I do stupid things.)
When I listen to the radio and hear about all the horrible things that are happening all around, I know that we are extremely lucky in every possible way. We cannot take any of this for granted. And all of the work we do, we choose to do. At least we don't grow strawberries. While the backs of my legs may be complaining, they have no idea how lucky they are. And with any luck, they will be able to keep on complaining for a very long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment