Dear Dad,
I am not going to read past letters to see what I might have said on April 18 before -- I am sure I have said it all before, but now we have arrived at 35 years since April 18, 1984, a very long time ago. So many of us remember those days clearly. I am sitting in my house with my back to the window that overlooks the wooded area where you are buried. We chose our house site partly because of its proximity to your grave, but we hardly ever think of it. We do think of you all the time, and speak of you often.
Today was a perfect April day in the middle of a perfect April. This April 18 is much bloomier and more beautiful than the one 35 years ago. There are so many more trees that bloom now because we are surrounded by suburbs on all sides and they come with cherry trees and crabapples and forsythia. Our own Blueberry Hill is full of beauty -- my weeping cherry still has pink blossoms mixed in with its new leaves.
I spent the day in Loudoun and at the weekly potluck I sat next to Susan Planck. She just turned 78 last week. She remembered that this was the day that you died. There were only four of us at the table today who remembered that day -- Jon, Susan, Chip, me. There were about 15 people who were born later or who arrived much later. Two were your grandsons Michael and Stephen. Your great granddaughter Shaia was asleep on the couch in the office, with piles of sweatshirts and other clothes on the floor next to the couch in case she woke up and rolled off.
Today the workers picked all sorts of greens we did not grow 35 years ago (I didn't help so I don't even know what they picked but there was chicory, chives, chard, lettuce, choy, spinach, nettles foraged from the woods), getting ready for markets. This weekend we have to go to five markets, which seems excessive for the middle of April but that's how it goes. We planted onions, using plants that were purchased from an Amish grower in Pennsylvania (instead of onion sets from Southern States in the olden days). We even planted tomatoes outside today, which seems very early, but it is warm and the soil is ready and there seems to be no threat of frost in the next few weeks.
Michael learned to lay plastic, had a lesson from Jon, and now we work together to stay ahead of the people who are planting. Plastic laying is so non-stressful compared to the old days. I remember so much aggravation and yelling, so much fixing and fidgeting, so much rocky ground. Now I prepare all the soil myself, from start to finish, using tillage equipment that did not exist when you were around. When all goes well, which is usually, the soil is fluffy and ready. The plastic layer is probably a few generations better engineered than the one we had way back when. Michael makes adjustments, the plastic goes down tight and straight, I drive pretty straight but not perfectly, there is no yelling and nothing to fix. My plastic never blows up in the wind. I think back to those days at Deramus, struggling to get the edges down in that terrible soil. What a mess. For years after that I never wanted to grow anything in plastic. Only in the last ten years have I learned to lay plastic, and a big part of that is the invention of biodegradable plastic, so we can skip the nastiness of pulling it all up again.
You did not have the opportunities that I have had to learn to do things ahead of time, to do them with a lot of planning. I have so much help. People keep the equipment in working order. People even help me hook up the equipment to the tractor. Everything works so much better with a lot of help, and plenty of time. When you were farming, we were so often behind schedule, barely getting the ground ready before the next step, or at least that is how I remember it.
The whole farm has evolved from where you started it, and there is much that is the same. The original shed in Loudoun, at the intersection in the middle of the farm, still stands. Just in the last few weeks Stephen cleaned it out (it has been cleaned out many times in 35 years) and converted it to a shop. He has learned to build stuff by growing up here and being the most interested, and very talented. He has built many sheds, constructed greenhouses with others, and stayed true to the architectural language that you started here. About five years ago he rescued a sinking Truck Shed with his friend Cory, by jacking up the posts (two feet of sinking at some points) and putting new bases below and sticking them together. The Truck Shed lives, and looks almost the same as it did when you first built it.
Mostly things are just a lot tidier than they were in 1984. We haven't got rid of everything you accumulated, but only a small amount residue is still here.Charles and Hugh revel in that residue. We just saw Philip for the first time in over a decade, and he poked around in a pile outside the barn, looking for something he had built when he was in the eighth grade (about 40 years ago). He found it.
What I really want to say, of course, is that you continue to be all around us, every day and in so many ways. When I talk to Stephen or Lani, I think of you. When I drive a tractor, I think of what you taught me. When I drive on Beulah Road, I think of you. And when I have a good idea of my own, I think of you. We have done a lot in your absence. We have built and evolved and grown and had families and done stuff that you would never have done. You would have had other ideas. But the way your mind worked is still relevant to the way our minds work, even though most people don't know that. We are frugal in unique ways. We like to make our own versions of everything. We like to solve problems ourselves. You were right when you told me to stay with Jon. That was a good call.
I got cancer myself this winter but it seems for now that it was not the same level of dire that you and Jon experienced. Unlike you, I have had the pleasure of resuming my life in all normal ways and reveling in the joys of being healthy. I do remember how much you hated being sick and being a patient, and I did feel great trepidation about needing to become a patient, but I got very lucky and mostly skipped that part.
I have some things from Grandma's house that Sarah N. gave me, and I am sitting below Grandpa's clock with that semi-terrible portrait of you as a boy on the wall next to it. I never really liked that painting but I like having it now. I don't even know if it looks like you but it does the job of reminding us that you were here.
You were here and you left a big impression, even for people who never knew you. I will be 60 this year, which seems like a crazy number. This means that I have had the opportunity to live ten years more than you ever did. Lani and Charles and Anna and Mom and I are all doing well, and we love you forever. We are doing stuff that you would be so interested in, and so are your grandchildren. Remembering you tonight and always.
Love, Hana
No comments:
Post a Comment