Letter to My Dad

Dear Daddy,
I have not seen you in person for exactly 34 years but I still think of you every single day, and that is not hyperbole.  It is hard not to think of you as I am still traveling on the same roads, sometimes driving the same tractors, and certainly doing the same work as we were all doing together in 1984. It is the same work but of course it is different. It is the same place but very different.

Today I noticed that the trees are almost exactly the same as they were on the day we buried you. The leaves are just starting to uncurl the tiniest bit.  There are mustard blossoms, as there were on that cool April day.  In those days, we used to plant onions from sets and that was just about the only crop we had in the ground on April 18, so I remember walking past the onions that were about two inches tall as we made the long and sad walk from the slab to the grave just down the hill from the Moutoux Shed Patch. The fields were empty except for some not-yet-tall rye.

Our season starts much earlier than it did back then.  By now we have been putting plants in the field for almost a month.  We transplant onions that grow from seeds that Mom plants in the greenhouse in the middle of February. We learned that from Stephen Chamberlain, who first learned to farm on this farm with you. We plant lots of lettuce -- which replaces the income we used to make from strawberries back in your day.  We do not grow a single strawberry plant. We do not believe that anyone actually makes money on strawberries. We have learned to grow spinach consistently now that we know that soil temperature matters a lot -- in the olden days, you never knew when spinach would come up. It was a mystery.

Just today we started the second renovation of the melon cooler.  When you first built that room, the floor was dirt and we stepped down into it. You designed it to store melons and part of the way it stayed cool was that it was a little bit in the ground. When it rained, the "cooler" would fill up with water like a swimming pool -- that was not an intentional feature.  Twenty years ago we overhauled that space, filled it with gravel, took out the shelves that were made to fit pony baskets and turned it into more of a work room than a cooler.  Today Stephen (your grandson, the one who seems to have a disproportionate share of your particular genes) started the demolition.  He really wants to be allowed to lay the concrete, but we point out that for projects of this magnitude, even you would pay someone to make it come out right.  He is waiting to find out the price of paying a professional so he can make his argument from the perspective of cost savings.

You would absolutely recognize the whole stand area.  The stand itself is virtually unchanged.  The cooler is the same cooler that you and I stood in front of one memorable day, yelling at each other about the freshness of the corn.  People who were there can still remember watching the two of us, nose to nose, saying "YOU TASTE IT!"  "NO, YOU TASTE IT!"  Of course I can't recall if either one of us actually tasted the corn. I only remember the argument.

What I remember most and miss the most about you was your laugh, the joy that burst out of you. And also your quiet, wry smile.  Now that I am ten years older than you ever were, I understand how young you were. You were navigating a complicated world, working harder than you wanted to and thinking about how to change that and juggling all the people and responsibilities and neglecting so many details and feeling frustrated and tired.  This whole place was just so complex -- because of you, mostly. 

Because of you, I thrive on the complexity. I always thought life would be so much better with just one farm, in one place.  And we have certainly simplified everything by selling one of the farms and growing all the Fairfax County crops in one spot.  It has been a long time since we drove a tractor down the road to get to fields four miles away. But the Loudoun farm is a diverse production farm now, and we drive back and forth all the time. Sad to say, the view has been completely ruined for the whole 30 miles between the two farms.  No more beef cattle, no more long vistas, no more fog. Just one strip mall after another. Well, the last five miles before the sharp right turn are okay. Just some boring houses but still a few farms mixed in.

Jon and I remember the stories you used to tell about driving on the roads around here, coming home to the house on Beulah Road.  We try to imagine shutting off the engine as we come over the tiny crest of a hill at Towlston Road, and rolling the whole mile down Route 7, swooping around the curve at Beulah Road and coasting down the driveway. It is impossible now. There are cars and traffic lights and a four lane road -- and Beulah Road is no longer hilly so there is no last swoop of momentum to get you to the driveway. You must have  been driving ridiculously fast and it must have been in the middle of the night.

Your children are all happy and healthy, every one of us.  Nine years ago, Jon got diagnosed with cancer and had the stem cell transplant that Leon S. was trying to get you to learn about when you were running out of options.  Jon was lucky enough to get sick when there were many more treatment options than you had.  I have to say, when we learned that Jon had cancer, my first reaction was that we had already been through this and I felt defeated.  But they don't have to use such a huge hammer to deal with cancer any more, and we are benefiting greatly from all that has been learned in the last few decades.

Of all of us, only Anna lives in a perpetually clean house. And Charles has the second most organized house.  But Lani and I both seem to be replicating the house of our childhood, and I think that has a great deal to do with the businesses that we are running.  Anna and Charles chose slightly tidier lives and Lani and I took the more rustic and dusty path.

We are all closely connected with your sister -- she has had to be our one Newcomb elder ever since your mother died in 1989.  She has taken care of all of us, one way or another, and many of us have lived in Boston because of her. She connects us to you and to our cousins and to everyone on the Newcomb side.  We adore her.

We are all disappointed that you never knew any of your grandchildren. There are nine amazing people in that next generation, and now there is one more fantastic little person in the generation after that. I think that all of the grandchildren have been fully indoctrinated with stories of you.  You were never close to perfect (although you did say to me once, "when you're this close to perfect, it's hard to improve."  And then the wry smile.) but your energy and vision and charisma have reverberated through our lives. 

There is so much more to say. I used to write you a letter every year on April 18 but I got out of the habit.  I can resume my long summary next year and tell you about Blueberry Hill and Mom and being Jewish and all the other things I didn't fit in tonight.  It is hard to believe how much it is possible to miss someone who has been gone for so long, but I still miss you. And I will continue to think about you every day.

Love, Hana