Last Hurrah

I looked in the mirror this morning as I dryed my hair and thought, where did winter go? 

 

Clearly it didn't go anywhere.  It's right outside my window.  But January, February...poof!  Gone.  March, how funny you are with sunny, sixty degree days interspersed with this season's only true snowstorm, and thunder-snow at that.  What a mid-week treat.

 

Adult Diapers

 

I wasn't ready for adult diapers until Saturday. I hit the trails again for a blood-pumping two hours, pedaling through the cold, from the cold with my new best friend, a mountain biking game changer. Strangely they reminded me of work. There was the diaper factor, the wheelchair cushion-like gel.  Luckily I was using them to run into trees, derail my chain, hop over logs, avoid the dreaded endo instead of the alternative and by the time it was over I could hardly think straight. My thighs burned, my stomach wanted ALL FOOD IN SIGHT and my brain was toast. Nothing does me in more than mountain biking and this girl pushes me. She says she's out of shape and if that's the case then so am I!

 

To avoid wuss-dom and live up to my new motto that "I can do what I put my mind to" I kept my commitment to run eight miles with Mimi on Sunday.  I'm enjoying the outcome if I decide to just go for it, to see if I can take it, so go for it I did.  I may have had a close call with a passer by while relieving myself roadside (if I'd been wearing real diapers they'd have come in handy) and a few stray cattle on the road but I plodded along the country miles and felt new strength and a new blister.

 

Surprisingly I haven't yet crumbled into a pile of whining bones.  I've lost a toenail, my pants are getting tighter and I'm slowly learning how to train and eat and fit it all in.  But for someone who once thought three miles of running was her limit I'm proof you just never know what you can accomplish until you try.    

 

Lately motivation has come from thinking of the alternative to health and being overwhelmingly grateful for what I have.  That I can run and bike at all seems catalyst enough to brave the cold, to slough off the pull of lazy.  I recall other types of pain and realize that losing a toenail is nothing in comparison so I keep going.  There will be time enough for diapers of another sort but for now I am on one hand running from that day and on the other more than content to pause here and ride these for all they're worth.

Good with coffee

 

I do love these sunrises.

Anonymity, gossip and the city girl

Gossip is theology translated into experience. ~Kathleen Norris Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

I picked up the mail the other day and right on top was a big, shiny, brochure for a professional conference in the large city where I grew up. I opened the pages and saw the bright lights, the tall buildings, the familiar names and places that seemed so exciting and the center of all I once knew. I felt the pangs of memory, of familiarity. I considered attending.

I remember first arriving in the small town where I attended college and had my first of what was to be many experiences of being an outsider upon just walking into a local restaurant. You know, the kind of place where you walk in and all heads turn in your direction, eyes roam over you from head to toe as if to scan for viruses. I vividly remember remarking to a friend that I wished I could be back in St. Louis where one could be completely, unequivocally, almost absolutely anonymous in any hundred restaurants in town. I remember longing for that degree of solitude, the feeling of fading into a sea of people, of being able to do anything I wanted without constant monitoring.

Flash forward to what seems a world away from those days to yesterday at the local post office, just a few miles up the road from my house. It is a friendly place. The postmaster and I are on a first name basis as she is with probably 80% of the folks who walk through her doors. She knows whether they pay by cash, credit or debit. She knows if they want "insurance on that" or shipping confirmation. She never has to ask if there is anything perishable, hazardous or illegal in your package. She knows the answer. We exchange pleasantries, mothering stories. She knows my children.

While there I ran into two "country" neighbors (not the kind whose house you'd hit if you threw a stone), one I go to church with, along with his wife and 10 children. They recently sold the wine distributorship they owned for many years. They now run a growing Montessori school on their farm. They are a singular, unique and driving force in the community and I am glad to know them. The other I know by pure chance. He is a business partner with his wife, who herself used to work for Martha Stewart Living. They now own and run an exquisite stationery company. "God is in the details" they state in their business profile and it is clear with just one look...he is.

Turns out, we all three knew each other. Of course we did. And we all knew the postmaster. She knew us.

I wonder if these are the things I missed out on in that sea of anonymity in the big city. I wonder if it takes a special sort to search out the small places and stay here, where we have our wide openness, our aloneness and yet nearly all of our comings and goings are common knowledge. There is not much that passes by unknown in a small town. Word travels fast. Networks are tight and farreaching. Sins are dark and deep as in any other place, only here we pull for each other.

...the tales of small-town gossip are often morally instructive, illustrating the ways ordinary people survive the worst that happens to them; or, conversely, the ways in which self-pity, anger, and despair can overwhelm and destroy them. Gossip is theology translated into experience. In it we hear great stories of conversion, like the drunk who truns his or her life around, as well as stories of failure. We can see that pride really does go before a fall, and that hope is essential. We watch closely those who retire, or who lose a spouse, lest they lose interest in living. When we gossip we are also praying, not only for them but for ourselves. ~Kathleen Norris Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

Country life

These are the ratty, old coveralls I put on the other day so I could shimmy under the house to try to find the mouse that had died somewhere up under there. I did it partly on a dare, (husbands you know) but partly because I said I would, because I could, and because sometimes I like doing things I have no business doing as long as I know no one will get hurt. It's my chance to feel like a pioneer, a frontierswoman, you know way out here in the boonies, 5 miles from the suburban mega mall in my farmhouse, crawling through the dirt in a two-foot crawlspace under 80 years of timber and spiderwebs looking for rodent carcasses. Of course it was yucky, but then, what would you say you've done lately that really reminded you that you were alive? That's what I thought. And no, to answer your question, I didn't find a cotton pickin' thing.

Why we like the country

1. There isn't a neighborhood association to tell you what you can and cannot do.
2. The outside is just as important as the inside (sometimes even moreso) and space to run and play is part of who we are.
3. It smells good.
4. Getting away from people forces you to figure out who you are. That's important.
5. I can tell the kids to "go outside and play" and not have to worry about them getting snatched.
6. It's pretty almost everywhere you look.
7. You can see the stars and have big bonfires and play baseball without smashing any windows.
8. The kids can ride their bikes without leaving home and without helmets like it used to be.
9. They know how to play with virtually nothing for hours and have a ball.
10. I can run without ever leaving home. Follow me.....

I start off at the tire swing and go past the tool shed,

across the slate path,

down the hill,

past the firewood,

by the dogs (hi dogs),

past the chickens (hi chickens),

up to the beanfield,





down the path that the man of the house cuts for me,

by the neighboring field,

dodging the deer tracks,

and past the newest brushpile waiting to be burned (hint: this is what yard waste looks like in the country),

into the trail through the woods,

past the old remnants of farm,

under the big branches,

and old cedars,

out into the clearing and past the neighbors,

saying goodbye to the summer's poison ivy (good riddance),

dodging the mine fields full of black walnuts that smell strangely like lilies in springtime,

past the old rusty farm implements left behind so long ago,

and the well-house-turned potting shed,

next year's garden,

crazy children,

and back up to the house where the cannas have forgotten it's November and are on their second bloom.

Around and around I go, over to the barn, out to the road, and back, and I feel awakened, alive and at home.

One man's junk

"I saw it and thought you could use it to make jewelry on," he said. "They were taking it to the dump so I put it in the back of the truck. It came out of an old church parsonage."

This from the man who has been known to tell me he doesn't like a house full of "hodge podge" furniture.

I just kept quiet, doing little leaps up and down inside where no one could see. This is the stuff that belongs in a farmhouse after all, and being the family that rescues old buildings, animals and even a soul or two, I'm sure it will have no trouble fitting right in with the rest of the hodge and the podge.

It has an enamel top that pulls out, was obviously used in the kitchen and is even on casters and the wheels are made of wood. I wonder what Country Living Magazine could tell me about it if I sent them pictures? I'm sure there would be some great story and they'd tell me it was really old but that it was worth $50 due to it's few structural issues.

Oh well, I'm sure we can salvage it, the man can do the structural repairs and I can do a whole lot of scraping, cleaning and painting before we bring it in. Trouble is it's too big for my office, it'll probably end up in a hallway somewhere, or the mudroom, who knows.

But I leave you with the takeaway message in all of this, that lies in the fact that people that you think you know really well will still surprise you from time to time. Be happy when they do and thankful too. And, sometimes the most thoughtful gifts don't come pre-planned or in pretty packages wrapped up with bows. At times they're disguised beneath decades old peeling paint, on wooden wheels and just a little bit broken.

Gathering

We couldn't have known ten years ago what buying this old place would actually come to mean, what it would really be like with two adjoining family properties, and the space to come together or move apart when necessary. It's been more than any of us could have imagined and it's the coming together that occupies my thoughts today.

An old barn, renovated,

provides ample space to gather, cookout, make homemade ice cream, put on family plays, open presents at Christmas, have birthday parties.

Fields for soccer, or kickball, or baseball, wagon rides,

go carts, tractors, farm toys.



My three children.

My nephew and two nieces.

Coming together to share the crazies,






a tour of the addition,

and walks. All at this place where the adventure started, the break from the norm, our escape from the ordinary, and really the only place we've found where we're free to be ourselves.