100 happy days

There's been this challenge floating around social media called the 100 happy days challenge, a miniature phenomenon. I've never been good at following through on such things. I love the idea of training to run a marathon and lent, things that require commitment and determination. People who do those things are admirable to me... and alien. My days are too changeful. The only things I do everyday are the necessary ones that would make me a disgusting human being if I didn't - brushing my teeth, untangling hair that's natural state is to be tangled, maybe washing my dishes, and remembering to pay my bills on time. Everything else? ... meh. I write sporadically, I practice my violin when I feel like it, I eat whatever I want at random times and have irregular sleep patterns. Basically, my life lacks the kind of structure it would seem necessary to have in order to pull off something like a 100 day long challenge in how successfully I can annoy people that are barely acquaintances.

I noticed this challenge a few months ago. Folks post something everyday that made them happy during that day. It seemed redundant to me. I already saw Facebook and other social media outlets as highlight reels of peoples' lives, for the most part. Why lay it on any thicker?

There's already loads of research that's been done into the negative side effects of social media and how it contributes to depression, anxiety, addictive behavior patterns, and shortened attention span. If used unconsciously, it becomes a tool for comparison. We fall victim to comparing the unhappy aspects of our lives with the often over-shared aspects of others' happy lives. And so I've tried to be a more conscious user.

I took on the challenge 15 days ago after an unexpected breakup opened my eyes to several issues that I'd been avoiding. The relationship itself, had become more important than my happiness. I loved the relationship more than myself, which caused me to objectify my partner and ignore my needs. I lost myself and let the things that normally made me happy wither in the shadow of this perceived romance which I was using to medicate another much more significant loss. I tend to forget that the world and its beauty and its love are also mine for the taking after I've lost someone. I see beauty and think of the person I can no longer share it with. I think of my plans and feel shaken knowing that they will no longer be a part of them. I think that much is natural. But ignoring my needs was a sign of something wrong.

So I'm doing it. Not so much to be a happier person, but to get back in touch with myself. To live more graciously. To focus. To follow through on something good.

Gains

I've been in South Korea for nearly six months. I left three days after my birthday and now I find myself wondering if any new urges to move on or  move back or stay still will surprise me. Holding still does not come naturally to me.

In truth, I have always moved to escape some part of my past or my self. When I came here my dad had been gone four months. Between his death and my arrival here the depression that hovered over me from my late teens into my twenties morphed into numbness. I had constant anxiety and insomnia. I stopped eating but drank too much. I threw myself recklessly at love hurting myself and several others in the process. I felt isolated from my family and alienated from my friends. I was rootless, floating aimlessly from place to place, hoping whatever was weighing me down would let up someplace else. And finally last year, with no job, no permanent place to live, and no forseeable future, I felt I had to get out of the States to start over. These are feelings I've rarely shared with anyone. I was broken.

Whenever I move I remember that saying which haunts me like a ghost - wherever you go, there you are. For a while the newness of being in a foreign country completely distracted me from the weight I had been carrying for years before. But my habits under stress and the truth that I was still very much in the depths of grieving the loss of my father and my own shame at my lack of self-worth crept back into the peripheries of my life like an old friend.

I look at the pictures on my Facebook profile. I remember a friend asking me if I was truly as happy as I seemed since relocating. And the answer is... yes! Getting on the plane to come to South Korea was the first time in my life that I chose me and not someone else. That I did something frightening because I thought it might teach me something from the outset. I didn't do it for a man, or a friend, or because of some perceived betterness at being there as opposed to anywhere else. I chose to go to a place where I knew no one and left everything known behind me, left even the potential for romantic love, because I had to. I believe I was dying.

The moment I got on the plane my life began to change in a way I never thought imaginable. Believing long enough that I, my sanity, my heart and my soul was worth the 10,000 mile trip caused a shift in me. I'm still grieving, I'm still a love addict learning how to walk the journey of someone who loves themselves first. I still stumble along the way. I've already recklessly fallen into and lost love in the six months that I've been here. I still catch myself in old patterns. I'm still tempted by old self-destructive habits. The difference is the joy I carry with me now as I face these challenges. The difference is the friends by my side who saw my hurting self and loved me whole again. The difference is gratitude, each and every day for being able to wake up and try it differently until I get it right, for me.

Being open about these challenges, telling on myself, is a liberating process. And so I hope through my sharing that the weight becomes less burdensome, and my heart opens more still.

The loss

My dad passed away last weekend. There was less clarity before than there is now, which is not what I expected. Anticipating Dad's passing was like an amplification of the anticipation of a painful procedure with no anesthesia for several years, and now, it's over. For ten years, it was cancer and treatments and surgeries and side-effects. My dad's health declined steadily in stages, each surgery literally and emotionally taking a little bit more out of him each time. Radiation treatments and infusion therapies that poisoned his cells and took the pigment out of his skin, inflamed his arthritic knees until he could barely walk and made it next to impossible for him to eat a real meal. Tumors fractured bone, infections regularly sent him to the ER, and life-threatening pulmonary embolisms popped up that could end it all in one fell swoop.

That's the ugly.

Playing in my favorite arms

Now that all of that has passed I have more room to remember a man with a dark and imposing figure and the gentlest of spirits. Someone who once called me every Monday morning before school to make sure my homework was packed and my shoes were tied. Someone who gave me pearls when I turned 16, mailed blue irises to my office at 23 and hand delivered a Jane Seymour pendant on my 25th, even though he didn't celebrate birthdays. I remember being tossed in the air by his strong and able six-foot-four-inch frame. Games of tickle monster, very big shoes, Star Trek marathons, and Evergood hot link sausage sandwiches during basketball season. I remember every admonishing smack, every blow-up, and every make-up. I remember Take-Your-Daughter-To-Work days at the office and bumper car rides on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. A man who twice drove me from San Francisco to Alabama to spend the summer with my grandmother. A man who taught me to read by opening the Bible and to spell by playing Scrabble.

I remember Johnny Williams Jefferson as a man who made me his own only child by raising me from infancy to womanhood as a true surrogate dad, when my own father was absent. Through his divorce from my mother and our own seemingly insurmountable spiritual differences, Johnny, has always been there.

Learning to drive at three years old!

Not only was he there for me, but as an elder in the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, he was there for everyone in his congregation. He advocated for the rights of Jehovah's Witnesses in hospital to not receive blood as a tenet of their beliefs. He saw countless others through bible study and baptized more. He did what he loved the most by serving his God and telling as many people as he could about his faith. He always hoped that one day I would find myself on that path and I regret I couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear before he died. But while he taught me about Jehovah he also lived in his truth, teaching me to do the same. In a mainstream culture that sees his faith as fringy and strange if not cultish, my dad stood in his truth, teaching me to embrace my odd pagan earth-worshipping Tibetan buddhist spiritual hybridism in a family chock full of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Dad and I at a convention of Jehovah's Witnesses when I was a teenager. He was in a biblical re-enactment that year. I'm trying so hard not to blush.

Holding the hand of someone I love who is staving off spiritual crisis when their beliefs are different from my own, has shown me the true meaning of compassion. In that way, I have come out on the other end of this journey a better person.

I've wondered why I'm not more tearful... and then I think about all the years I spent crying in my room so that my dad wouldn't see and the inescapable pain wracking his body that sent tears streaming down his face. I think about the night he died, still trying to get out of bed before collapsing right in front of me... And then I think I've cried enough.

I have wept. And while there is the blindsiding grief every time I think about him and all the days more I wanted him to live, I wished that they could be healthy days. He's finally free from the most awful of diseases and I can finally let the memories of his healthier more vital days fill the void he has left behind. My dad can be as he once was in memories present. He can be the man that once chased mirages with me through Death Valley on a trip to Eclectic, AL when I was four years old.

July 4, 1949 - October 12, 2013

Dad owning the Golden Gate Bridge

Preparing for Loss

... for me, is full of strangeness. At some moments, I feel extremely restless, while completely serene in others. At the same time, I feel acutely that I am an alien in unfamiliar territory. It's like one of my dreams, where everything seems the same but is painted a different color; every thing feels backwards and inside out; everything smells different, tastes different, looks different but I'm somehow still able to identify the world for what it is. Yes, this is still the world. Yes, I am still Shari. I'm falling between what has passed and what hasn't happened yet, dancing between the life of yesterday and the surrender of tomorrow. I'm a stranger in the bitterly uncomfortable transitory present.

Sitting with my dad in chemotherapy today was a journey into this very weird plane of existence. Outside the hospital window, a beautiful urban sprawl beneath blue sky and soft heat. Inside, a man being eaten alive by his own mutated cells. Outside, a billboard reads, "1 in 3 children born today will live to be 100." Inside, a 63 year old life veteran, teeters between mania and orneriness because of the breakthrough pain that makes living almost unbearable, because he's been cheated by something he can't name.

I feel so irritable, so imperfect, and so damn uncomfortable, all the time, my own grace and ugliness underneath a self-imposed microscope. Seemingly everything in existence - themes and objects and emotions -  is in constant juxtaposition in front of me. Everything is either living or dying. People are either in the throes of euphoria or in the depths of depression while I'm in grey limbo. That's the lense of my world these days. Everything though, seems to stand in opposition to my dad. I see what he sees on one side of a boldly delineated line, which is the potential, opportunity, hope, and wonder of unlived years.  Today, dad is on the other side of that line.

The me I know well is disappearing. I wonder how this painful transition will birth me into my tomorrow. I have no idea. There is no instruction manual on how to lose someone you love. Anything and everything is a possibility.  And somehow I have to let the river run its course knowing I will come out on the other end, not quite different, but not quite the same.

HOME

Life changes us...
And I find it all a bit uncanny. The small yellow house where I was born is less than a block from the flat I just moved into. On some subconscious level, I know this was no accident. Returning to the place where I chose to enter the world has given me a new sense of agency. Forever yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I am as bitter and vexed as I am resilient and blessed. My journey through depression, facing a deeply rooted fear of abandonment, continuing to grow as a writer, musician, and spiritual activist, yielding to self-love and acceptance, harnessing the ability to lose control and LIVE by choice and not by default... Every moment has enriched me. I chose to have this life with these moments.  The yellow house reminds me to take a look around, examine forgotten scars, and nurture new beginnings. I kind of go through this time scratching my head with a smile. I know it is all really quite good to be right here right now. I also know that whatever it is about today that I love or hate could very well be gone tomorrow. One day, it will be, or I from it.

"I like who I am Becoming."    - Maya Angelou

A proclamation for a few

"Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged"     - Rumi

Maybe you’ve gathered that I’m pagan. Maybe we met recently and I introduced myself to you as Dove. Maybe we’ve shared sacred space together. Maybe you knew me on Maui. Maybe you’re family, just trying to understand me a bit better. If any of what I've just said comes as a surprise, then this post was made just for you. This writing was born out of personal necessity and I’d like to get it out of the way so that I can get on to writing about things that really matter to me without you wondering where the heck that came from or getting offended. Maybe that won’t happen at all and I’m just projecting, again. But you can see, just the idea of writing what I want has made me a little neurotic.

I choose the name Dove, primarily among close friends and my spiritual community, because doves serve as a reminder to me of the inherent sanctity and perfection within us all; they are pure, innocent, and sacred. One flew over Christ at his baptism. In Greek mythology, doves draw the chariot of Aphrodite, the Goddess of love. The Hindu god, Yama used doves as messengers, and the Japanese god of war, Hackiman, used doves to announce the end of war. They are understood cross-culturally as symbols of peace and compassion. For me, they bridge the gap between my Christian upbringing and my pagan reality. One of my goals for the year is to write more and that includes this blog. I've spent a lot more time making it look nice, than I've spent writing on it because I've refrained from writing about themes that really inspire me. That changes here. I choose to be Dove instead of Shari here in this webspace, because I created this space to express myself from a place of spiritual integration, and being Dove is a part of that. If that makes you uncomfortable, then lets just be Facebook friends. 

I don’t want to write about what I believe in or why. I have absolutely no interest in explaining myself. (If you really want to know more, just read the quote above. That pretty much sums it up.) I just want to write without there being this line, this boundary that I won’t let others cross, the line that shows you who I really am and what I really believe in. Having any sort of limitation, hinders your ability to really express fully from the heart. It’s stupid to live in the United States and not express yourself and truly be who you were born to be, even in spite of your friends and your family and the people you love. And after years of struggling against my natural inclination to hide, I realize that it is frighteningly easy to play that game in a place where everyone has the liberty to think and believe and do whatever the heck they want. I don’t need to be accepted by you. I need to be liberated from my fear of not being accepted by you. And that’s all this is, a simple letting go, so that I can get closer to being me. It's still a work in progress.

Insight into Activism on MLK, Jr. Day

On the day we remember a leader in civil rights and liberty for all, I wonder why the Occupy Movement has dwindled.  When Occupy began I got caught up in the current and the rhetoric and the adrenaline; so many people, all sorts of people, having conversations that mirrored my concerns. I’m disappointed that the media has decided it’s over. “Why?” I asked Marc, my mom’s boyfriend. “Why couldn’t Occupy have the same staying power as the Civil Rights Movement?”

           He said, “Well, because we had a leader for the Civil Rights Movement. We had a clearly defined message with a clearly defined goal."

And in light of that I see how activism has changed since the early-mid 20^th century. When you think about the names of the major movements of the 20^th century, you hear it – We wanted Women’s Suffrage, we wanted Civil Rights. What do we want now? Balanced wealth? Corporate accountability? Evenly distributed taxes? It's a hard question to answer because what we want no longer falls under one umbrella. These movements of the 20th century had visionaries and a face that could be distinguished from the rest of the crowd. There was consensus. We had Susan B. Anthony and the National Women’s Party. We had MLK and the NAACP. Blacks during the Civil Rights movement knew that they were marching into police brutality, unemployment, and terrorism as a result of their visible unrest. It was the brutality under which they suffered that brought the Civil Rights Movement to the world arena.  When they were sprayed with fire hoses and beat with police batons, when they were being stabbed and beaten, when their daughters were blown up in places of worship, they responded with peaceful protest, not physical violence. What would happen today if officials did that to a crowd of Occupiers? We would not sit peacefully and wait for the world to see, we would vandalize and we would fight, because we have a much deeper sense of entitlement now.

That’s why our approach to protest has changed.  We defend our rights instead of acquiring new ones.  The voices of our protest come from every race, religion, sexual orientation, employment status and ability. Our face is every face. And instead of having a clear goal, whether it’s a law to be passed in Congress, or an Amendment made to the Constitution, we have instead opted to turn political theatre into a stage where we can express the diversity of our opinions and show the world that the injustices that we are facing today transcend the boundaries that we thought once separated us.

Yes, Occupy has faded, but new avenues of conversation have opened up in academia, in politics, and in economics.  The truth that there is an imbalance of wealth has found it’s way into the media; people are now trying to define the “1%.” And in the midst of Occupy, Bank Transfer Day was born, which lead to Bank of America changing one of its major policies around debit and checking fees. Things seem to be changing from the bottom up instead of trickling down. It’s got people buzzing in the age of information, and that’s the legacy of activism today.

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

   

 - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Remembering What They Gave Me

They, are my fathers. When I was sixteen, one gave me a set of pearls to mark my coming of age. Now at twenty-four, the other has given me a diamond pendant cross on a fine chain, to mark our reunion after a life's absence. One begs me to remember and another asks me to forgive. Each pearl on a strand could be a memory: a Tuesday night Scrabble match, an evening driving lesson at that empty parking lot in the Sunset district, a bedtime story from Listening to the Great Teacher, an afternoon out on the old pier in Pacifica, a Sunday at the Hall, a Saturday in service, a dinner at Aunt Willy's. The pearls go on, eternally, like the memories I will always have of my father, Johnny Jefferson.

I've mentioned this cross before. It is my first diamond jewelry. It is the loved relic of a faith I never knew how to practice and of the family I am still learning how to know. The father whose name I carry, gave this piece to me. Its diamonds shine hard like the yearning to understand that never dissipated. Timeless, they say, I imagine one day, after my ashes have been spread, it will adorn the neck of a niece or daughter whose beliefs are different than mine. Will she know what it meant to me and what it represents? Will she know that in quiet moments of solitude I pried open the box my father gave me to peer upon its untarnished gold? Will she better be able to where it?


I remember them both during this odd time in my life, when the one that helped make me who I am through thousands of small cherished moments faces another year of cancer, and when the other can't understand why I turned away from him after receiving this cross and the family I've always wanted to know. These are sometimes the jewels of a woman's life, and in a gesture of trust and good will, I've shared them with you here. And still so early in my life, I can only wonder what jewels lie ahead.

Pondering Kepler-22

I was just reading an article to my cousins about the discovery of Kepler-22, the newest discovered Earth-like planet. Some 600 light years away, a planet almost two and a half times the size of Earth is orbiting a star much like our sun. Talking about it with them brought some interesting facts to light.

1. If we had a space craft that could travel at the speed of light, the astronauts on the mission would have to give birth to at least 20 generations of offspring in order to complete the journey to Kepler-22. This is assuming that people give birth roughly every 30 years from the start of the mission. So think about generations of people born at the speed of light, never knowing still life on the ground.

2. I believe that our lives on Earth are heavily influenced by the planets in our solar system, especially the moon. The tides, when things grow and reproduce, our menstrual cycles, are all influenced by the moon. Imagine what effect not having a moon, or having three moons, would have on us if we lived on a different planet.

3. Kepler-22 is 2.4 times the size of Earth. That means that if Kepler rotates at the same speed as Earth, our days would be nearly 60 hours long.

That made me wonder other things, like how many 60 hour days it takes Kepler to rotate its sun, and how that would effect our concept of time and our lifespan. Would it suddenly go from 80 years to 40? How long would our seasons be? Would life seem shorter if we knew we had half as many winters or would time seem to go by slower if our seasons were 2.4x, or 4x or 6x longer?

Just some interesting things to ponder.

Another chance to ride...

Today I met my father's eldest sister, Auntie Alma, and her husband, Uncle Lester, who has been training horses since he was in high school. I had the chance to ride six-year old Jasper, an Apalloosa horse, in the ring after a few months hiatus from Katherine's lessons in Stockbridge, MA. It was nice to get back in the saddle again with a new horse, and not be afraid. Tomorrow I'm breaking up Thanksgiving courses with a ride on a Tennessee Walker. Fun times!

Union

I say union because reunion implies a returning, a customary practice, or tradition. But this week during Thanksgiving for the first time I will be meeting my three brothers. I will meet nieces and a nephew that I never knew I had, and two sisters that I haven't seen since I was nine years old. I am doing all of this in company with a father that I never knew wanted to be a part of my life. This is an immensely personal post coming at a time that I have awaited for nearly my entire life. Painful voids are slowly being filled, at the very least some questions are being answered. I am not writing this to expose a painful past but to simply state that at times it was, and to remind all, that no matter the experiences we've lost or the memories that we didn't get to make with missed loved ones, there is always tomorrow and a million memories more to make. Their is always today and the dreams we still hold dear.

Today I picked my father up from the Birmingham Airport. Tomorrow we are driving with my two youngest sisters to Blakely, Georgia, where I will be surrounded by family I never knew I had but waits for me still. Tomorrow I go to embrace them with the diamond cross my father gave me hanging around my neck. Though it does not represent who I am spiritually, I wear it in solidarity and respect for my family, to remember that despite differences, family is the most important thing beneath the sky, and because I truly believe that something both outside of myself and within myself - God - is what has finally brought all of us together.

I also need to say that I did grow up with a dad, and that even though he is not my biological father, I am so thankful to have him in my life still, even years after his separation from my mother. Now my life is twice-blessed. Where there was one, there are now two. What could I be more thankful for over Thanksgiving? I am so grateful for all the love I have flowing into my life, and for the generous souls that have touched me during this past year. I have changed and grown for the better because of it, for it, and in spite of those that try to tell me otherwise. Start following your dreams today and live the life you deserve to live right now, and don't forget to say THANK YOU!

May all of you have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Love,
DOVE

One of many projects I have completed of late...

The new lace top I crocheted with my favorite crocheted lorraine lace scarf! Details and pattern information can be found under my "Off the Hook" tab.

Reflecting on Occupy

All I can say is this: that for the last year and change I have crisscrossed this country and seen the impact that our failing economy and irresponsible government has had on the everyday lives of people just like me, older and younger. College students question the value of their education and their future, while seasoned employees find themselves starting all over again. Decreasing tourism in Maui, a surplus of graduates with no jobs in the university city of Boston, unemployment in the Berkshires, are just a few things that I have not only noticed but been influenced by in much the same way as many other Americans, I can't find a job and my student loans are in unemployment deferment. I came down to Alabama to be with family while I figure out my next steps and get back home to Oakland. I learned that my grandmother's social security checks barely cover the most essential of her living expenses. She's been a laundry maid and seen the brutality of the Civil Rights Movement, her late husband was a veteran of the Korean War, but for the first time in her life she is dependent on food stamps and donations from the food bank to make ends meet. She is part of the generation that pinched and saved so that they could have more in retirement but social security is not enough anymore. What does that mean for me? Now, in Birmingham, watching and reading about the Occupy groups gaining momentum across the country, in Maui, Boston, Atlanta, Birmingham, and at my home in Oakland and Berkeley, my travels over the last year have added meaning and familiarity to the unique struggles facing each community across the country. I can't wait to get back to my hometown and show support with my friends and family there. Until then, I am the 99% in Birmingham, Alabama.

 

Alabama

Go back to go forward. Sometimes you have to go back farther than you want to, and then farther again. I've come back to a place that I was from a long time ago. I wasn't born here. I don't know it's geography the way I know the ridges of the Sierras. I don't cherish its groves the way I do the fruit-filled forests of Maui. I don't welcome its humidity the way I do the soft misty fog creeping over the Puget Sound. Because I have never seen its small gulf coast, I am always lost in the lay of its land. I am not proud of this place, but I defend it fiercely. I don't get its religion, but its white chapel churches I honor despite myself. This place holds the people I have dared to forget about and the people I cannot stop loving. The bones of my ancestors - African, Cherokee, Muscogee, French - are moving fossils held in the rock and blood of its geology. I am angry at this land, for if I was not of it, I would never think of it. If I was not of it, I could pretend to love it. I am in this place now, breathing its soul in... and oh the truths I've learned, the secrets I've inherited, the pains I've sung, and the laughs I've ached out with tears. What a painful treasure this place is. A secret, smelling of sweet gum trees and steel furnaces, whose existence is mighty, whose history is majestic, whose truth pushes me onward boldly into a life I am no longer afraid of living.

Copyright 2011

A Rowful of Memories

Piles of seeds. They were spread all over Katherine's dining room table and underneath seedlings growing beneath florescent light. They were also in the kitchen in this container and under that stack of paper, in that drawer over there. Some were in the car or out in the barn. They were everywhere, and they all needed to go into the ground. Ideally within the next week or two. My first week on the farm, Katherine explained the various ways to plant this seed and that bulb, how far apart, how often, and when to harvest. I focused on a few packets of vegetable seeds that I thought were practical, easy enough to plant, and tasty. In short, radishes, arugula, which I had grown on Maui, mesclun, collards, kale, rainbow chard, and lots and lots of green beans.

Baby green & red leaf lettuce

Pockets full, hoe in hand, I headed out onto a patch of tilled soil that was larger than my backyard growing up. Katherine showed me how to hoe the earth in short rows about three feet wide all the way down the length of the garden, making a larger row to plant the seeds. After she left I hacked away, hands blistering, until I had made what resembled a row. I went back to the top of the row, picked a packet of seeds and began reading the instructions on the back... "2 inches deep, 4 inches apart in rows 1 foot apart..." and so I began. I marveled throughout the days in that garden at the different sizes and characteristics of the seeds, some no bigger than a needle point, others the size of my thumbnail. Somehow these little seeds would grow big enough to feed us.


As I planted the green beans memories of harvesting out in my grandmother's garden played with me. Out, in the damp humidity of central Alabama, my cousins and aunts and me would choose a row and start harvesting the beans, tossing them into the outstretched skirts of our summer dresses as we went. That evening, Nanny would store some in her Ball canning jars. The rest she would pour into several large bowls and we would each pick one to carry out to the porch. In the fading light, we shelled peas late into the darkness, my cousins and I listening to my aunts gossip and Nanny tell stories. I listened, wondering about times long ago and if one day I would have a patch of land bigger than my back patio in San Francisco to plant on. I wondered, doubtful, if I would have a garden with enough rows for each of my grandchildren to run through and if they would ever sit beneath me, listening, while I shelled peas.

Planting these green beans now, hundreds of miles away from where I first stuck my hands in the soil, gave me some pride and a new sense of patience. Like Nanny, I would learn how make something grow out of a naked patch of dirt. I would sweat in the sun for days, bent over, dropping seeds into finger-made holes, water seemingly bare ground, and then wait days, even weeks to see if the baby sprouts would emerge. I would be patient and eschew my city girl need for instant gratification. Some things I held nostalgia for, but I would not be nostalgic for shelling peas. Shelling peas was not lost. Shelling peas was not forgotten.

"Shelling Peas" by Carl Larsson

Full grown green leaf lettuce & scallions 

It took ten days to plant that garden and it took two weeks for the first seedlings to emerge. That was a week into June. Today we can go into that garden and pick arugula, surrey greens, mesclun, red and green leaf lettuce, scallions and radishes to make the most fabulous salads I have ever eaten. And it has been so for the last two weeks. Solid Rock Farm now has six gardens planted by fewer than ten pairs of hands. We have everything planted from strawberries to sunflowers, broccoli to tomatoes, gladiolas and asparagus to thyme and artichokes, and we still aren't done.

An Embracing Chaos

For the last month and a half I've been living on an organic farm in Stockbridge, MA, a small town about 10 minutes from New York, 20 from Connecticut and 45 from New Hampshire. After a few chilly months working as a hostess in Cambridge, I remembered my WWOOF-USA membership, made a few quick phone calls and scurried my way to the New England countryside. Before I moved to Maui I joined WWOOF-USA, a network of organic farmers and volunteers looking for opportunities to learn about sustainable agriculture, hoping to find an opportunity on the island. It came to naught, until a couple of months ago when I was desperate to get out of the city. Katherine was equally desperate for help on her farm in Stockbridge and had just joined the WWOOF network herself. After leaving many messages at potential farms, most of which went un-returned, I talked to Katherine, the owner of Solid Rock Farm and an industrious horse-riding instructor with a whirlwind of information and energy.

I had just left work and gotten off a two and a half-hour bus ride from Boston when I first met Katherine and was met with an embracing chaos. Katherine graciously invited me into her home where everything seemed to be moving or changing hands constantly. Piles of horse, cat, chicken and dog food lived in a corner in the kitchen below beaming photographs of her children, siblings and parents. Packages of more food and grain were stuffed into old-fashioned tin garbage cans, "to keep the rats out!" Katherine said with a smile and kept going. Horses... horse trinkets, horse paintings, horse statues peaked from beneath stacks of paper, the windowsills, and the magnets of the fridge. The counters were covered in pots and pans, packages, papers and dishes. The laundry room was filled with riding pads and girths, towels, and winter clothes tossed aside as soon as the weather warmed up. She apologized for the clutter in the kitchen as we passed through, explaining that her mother came and reorganized her kitchen about once every five years. As Katherine detailed various projects on the farm to me I caught glimpses of vibrant finches eating at the bird feeder in her window. She kept chatting energetically as she led me through her dining room, which had been turned into a temporary greenhouse. She handed me a clipboard to take notes on as I scrambled to keep up with her. I had barely been in the door five minutes but I was already beginning feel overwhelmed and a looming sense that Katherine's ambitions would require colossal strength, patience and motivation to tackle.

The front of the homestead from the "L" garden

As Katherine led me around the farm I couldn't help but notice the nostalgic charm of the land and the barns, the main house, older than the United States itself. In 1762, Larry Lynch bought 55 acres of land from a Mohican whose Christian name was Solomon. Together Solomon and Larry Lynch worked the land for an unrecorded number of years. Part of the main house of Solid Rock Farm is still the original built in 1762. It's multiple fireplaces and shuttered windows evoke images of winters spent collecting firewood hidden beneath several feet of snow and candle-lit reading sessions next to dying embers. The new part of the house, built in the 1950's isn't nearly as well insulated and hasn't weathered the decades as gracefully as the original homestead. Solid Rock Farm sits on 13.5 of the original Lynch acreage, which was dissected when the Mass turnpike was built in 1952.

Katherine's daughter Chantal with the two Falabellas 

As we walked around the property Katherine introduced me to all of the animals: 12 chickens, which turned out to be roosters predominantly much to our surprise, two rescued miniature Falabella ponies named Clair and Luna, a grey cat named Max, two geckos, two cockatiels, a canary, and an aquarium of tadpoles. Later during my stay we would acquire two dogs, Remi and Kona, a morbidly obese tabby named Calvin and another rescued pony, a mustang mare named Misty. Sometimes while working out in the garden I would point to a strange bug or grub or worm I had never seen and Katherine would collect it into one of her plastic reptile containers and tell a story about it. Then she would keep it in her makeshift classroom with food and water for a day or two just so that everyone could get a good look at it and learn it before she released it back into the wild. That's what she did when I saw my first cocoon and when two little girls stumbled upon an injured Cecropia moth on freshly mowed grass. I had never seen anything so small and majestic at the same time. The moth laid eggs. Katherine let the moth go and now its baby caterpillars are leaving droppings all over the classroom table, ballooning in size every day.

Walking around the property was refreshing after being in the house, and as we went Katherine had me jot down notes of the various things that needed to be done. Eventually, Katherine brought me back inside and showed me the room that I would be staying in once I moved. The room had a couple of boxes and a chest-of-drawers that was falling apart and filled with uncased VHS movies. It also had a bathroom, piled high with boxes and clothes and clutter. The bathroom, she said, hadn't been used in 20 years, which is exactly how long she'd been living there. It hadn't been working when her family moved in, so they just used it as storage. She brought me to the room next to mine and opened the door and out leaked the stench of juvenile body odor and stale alcohol. I then knew that it was her youngest son, Lincoln's room. He was 20, absent, and had an insatiable appetite for beer. She pointed to the mess inside reproachfully but with a smile. We continued on. The weight of the clipboard dangling in hand, already with an extensive list of would-be projects I would tackle, began to feel too heavy. The prospect of living with rodents and a strange alcoholic I had never met in the midst of this chaos unnerved me. To top it off, Katherine had to leave for several hours and left me with the list to brainstorm while she was away. When she got back, I was gone.

The upside to working at Solid Rock was that it was right around the corner from my boyfriend, Julian's house. This I didn't know until I got there. But we decided after, that it would be best for me to seek an opportunity elsewhere. The next week in the city, I halfheartedly tried to find another living situation. Boston had everything you would need in a city, but to me the streets were grim and the noises and rough scents overwhelmed my senses. I hadn't found a community yet the way I had so easily in Maui. It wasn't my city. I kept thinking about the farm with its pandemonious insides and all of that land that needed to be tilled and all the people Katherine desperately needed to get her farm up and running. My talents went unused at the new restaurant I was working at but I recognized that with a little adaptation on my part, I could blaze my own path and learn something new in the process. So after my final apartment prospect fell through and my reluctant declination to play as concert mistress for a local orchestra, I nervously decided to give Solid Rock Farm my undivided attention for the summer.

A week after my introduction to Solid Rock Farm, Julian and I drove down the Pike with my mattress and box spring haphazardly tied on top for four hours. More seasoned movers honked and signaled us along the way as my mattress lifted dangerously like a sail in the wind from the roof of Julian's Jeep. We joked about the challenges waiting for me on the farm and about Katherine's mystery son. Once we got there I raced to my new room to shuffle things around to make room for my things but the room was bare. When I opened the bathroom, the clutter that had been piled high only a week before was gone. Next to the commode you could see a quaint porcelain sink and a large claw foot tub. Everything worked. Excited and confused, I ran to find Katherine.
 "You didn't have to do that," I expressed. "That was really generous."
 "Well," she smiled, almost giggling, "We really need you, and I really believe that you can't outgive God."
And despite the numerous challenges that I've faced and we've faced since my upheaval and arrival, Katherine has proven that to me over and over and over again.