Covid #InAmerica + goats + nature

We are so many months into this pandemic, and the relentless pressure and loss of it all weigh. On me, on many. On most? I suppose it depends on where you live, what you choose to believe, who you have lost, and what meaning you put into life, community, “freedom,” and duty.

I suspect you all know where I come down on this, but in the meantime, I spent a meaningful few hours on the Mall last Friday with my friend M in service of a local artist’s installation regarding Covid in America and the scale of what we’ve surrendered.

Some of you definitely saw this exhibit; others read about it. I couldn’t fathom its impact until I was there. I had volunteered to transcribe online submissions from people who wished to honor their loved ones. M and I sat at a Cosco table, armed with fresh Sharpies, white flags on metal stems, and printed cards to copy onto them. The volunteer to my left lost her brother to Covid last year; other volunteers didn’t share, at least to me, but some had helped for many days, and if I’ve learned anything at 45, it’s to never assume you know what someone is struggling with, processing, or feeling.

After more than an hour of transcription, M and I offered to tend plots of already-planted flags. Part of me hated to leave the writing tent: there was something so powerful and important about bearing witness to grieving people’s testimonies. By writing their final tribute, we, too, honored the dead they mourned.

But carefully, tenderly straightening flags felt almost like tidying a graveyard. Watch your step, provide honor where honor is due, memorialize.

While we were there, the artist, Suzanne Firstenberg, changed the number board to reflect the updated official death toll: 700,327. I mean, the sadness-rage cocktail became a frothy, shaken mess laced with ice chips. New Zealand’s count was like 14 (see tiny patch in above photo). This could have been different, the numbers could have been infinitely lower, perhaps we’d be done with this masking, distancing shit by now.

But no! ‘Murica. SMDH.

I am so glad M and I volunteered, but at the same time, it was a sad cap to a shitty week. A poo bonus, if you will.

Now, I am in WV. I drove out Monday morning after getting the boys off to school and finagling a childcare logistics schedule that any mother could do while sleeping but which would likely boggle the mind of most men. Because there are no longer llamas here, our pastures are overgrown and in need of serious mowing. I have spent many hours trimming, but this is beyond the scope of one woman and her motorized weed whacker. I priced brush-hogging it before asking about renting a herd of goats. Goats are half the cost.

And, goats are the answer. They are darling, friendly, make amusing sounds, require no gas, need to eat, love to eat, and poop liberally which amends our rocky “soil” in fabulously beneficial ways. Sixteen arrived Monday around noon, and I have loved every minute since. Well, I have loved everything except smelling the billy who is the sweetest animal but who smells so foul that it cannot be articulated. He is as if an ancient fraternity-house carpet, sodden with years of spilled beers, decided to start asking others to pee on it with abandon. And never washed. Holy shit.

Anyway, I love them, and it is so healing to be here by myself, including without Nutmeg and Ruthie, and to have no schedule and no one to feed or talk to other than the animals. To garden until I can hardly move another muscle. To order mulch and sifted soil. To eat a donut. To indulge the barn cats. To think and simply be. To acquire a Neighbor Account at Tractor Supply Co.

This is Romeo. He is my boyfriend.

Romeo from the back, omg. ;)

Earth Day

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― Wendell Berry

Despite my enormous fortune, I would be lying if I said this past year was anything but enormously difficult. From cancelations that led to disappointments and distance to my parents’ loss in Hurricane Laura, from the staggering death toll of Covid 19 to the unconscionable and incessant toll of racist and Republican brutality, from the hundreds of days of “school” in distance learning to the relentless constancy of cook/clean/feed/console/decide/guide/repeat, I am running on fumes. Everyone I know is.

One friend who I’ve not seen for at least a year pulled up alongside me in traffic today. We rolled down our windows at a red light, delighted to see each other and yet stunned by our mutual exhaustion. Therapy, severe eczema, glistening eyes, warm smiles! Who knew so much could be shared in seconds at a stop light?

Back home, I began baking pies, one for a dear friend my age who just endured her first round of chemo. Her children are the same ages as Jack and Ol. My friend is effusive and vibrant. She is lustrous. She said pie sounded good, and so I got busy.

Meanwhile, after two days of school, Jack was home once more. He and I helped Mom and Dad move a few heavy items, and I kept my fingers crossed that Tom could break from Zoom long enough to get the pie out of the oven while we were out.

Home again, I found that one of my beloved trio of housekeepers got good news yesterday: she and her family were granted asylum here after being terrorized out of life in El Salvador. They had received videos, multiple videos, with pictures of each member of the family, identified, graphically threatened. I hugged her and saw more glistening eyes, these of gratitude for her family’s safety, yes, but also of profound exhaustion born of months and months of fear and uncertainty. I tucked a note and some money in her pocket, hoping it might cover a bit of celebration tonight.

On the way to pick Oliver up, I delivered my friend’s pie. She is beautiful as ever, but I have never seen her look so deeply fatigued, surely a fatigue also born of months of uncertainty and fear and that cautious hope that feels both essential and risky. We hugged so tightly, twice, and it almost felt criminal in this time of distance. But it also felt right, and I only hope the pie tastes good to her.

I, too, am tired. My heartbreak over this country, my worry for my friends and family, my sense of profound dislocation from self. It’s been a lot. It continues to be a lot.

One thing that holds me straight and strong though remains nature. My yard and the many tiny ecosystems it nurtures. The birds and squirrels who sing and chase and eat in picky fashion through the buffet of options I leave for them once or twice daily. The decomposing leaves, the perennials budding anew, the stubborn hope that is a garden shrugging off winter and throwing its shoulders back proudly in the advent of spring.

My Nanny always said that you could bury your troubles in the soil. Yes, you can do that. But I have found the process of burying to be even more profoundly healing and helpful than the entombing. And perhaps, probably, that’s what Nanny meant all along. I suspect that’s why my parents have always found gardening so fulfilling; you focus and give and plow and sow and then after a long while, or seemingly suddenly, you are rewarded with a clearer mind and a bounty that only nature can generate.

I struggle to relax. I always have. I am an anxious soul for whom action is often liberating, at least momentarily. Productivity, accomplishment, giving, growing. These things heal me and yet these are the very things I have found so horribly elusive since Covid struck. When you’re never alone, the opportunities to sink into flow, the way one does when hoeing and spading and weeding and amending, become the rarest of birds. For me, the lack of flow has been the more painful struggle this year.

And so, spring is such a balm. New growth takes time, and you must patiently, carefully watch. You must listen for the quiet tune. Each day I visit my gardens. I thank the worms, I exclaim over every new bud, leaf, shoot, speck of green promise. I send whispers on the wind to the monarchs and pollinators that the milkweed and Joe Pye and bee balm are all growing as quickly and mightily as they can. The penstemon and anemones and forget-me-nots are waiting. The Columbines are taking over again, the raspberries are betting the blackberries that this year they’ll claim more square footage. The irises have gone insane, as have the hellebores. It’s flora-fauna mayhem out there, and I delight in it.

Our county has banned Weed-and-Feed, much to Tom’s chagrin and much to be absolute satisfaction. RoundUp and Sevin should go the way of napalm, in my opinion. Let’s let nature do its thing; she’s only trying to keep us all healthy and well.

Tomorrow, on Earth Day, I beseech you to say thanks to the green spaces you see. Plant something or perhaps pick up some litter or pull some weeds. Listen to the birds and the insects, leave a little extra seed for the damn squirrels who really are so dear if you get past their voracious, crafty ways. Breathe deeply where you can, when you can. If we’ve not learned this past year that life is short and precious, well, force be with you. It is both, and we need to live well but also live for future generations.

Tomorrow, on Earth Day, Tom and I are making official our ownership of 72 acres in West Virginia. I am beside myself with joy and gratitude. With thrill over a truly magnificent parcel of land that I can tend and love, that my children can run across with unbridled freedom, that my family and friends can use as a respite of the sort only big nature can provide. It will be an honor to love and protect this land and to let it hold and heal us as we make our way back to ourselves and each other after such a hard time.

”Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” -Rachel Carson

Black Lives Matter.
No Justice, No Peace.
Know Justice, Know Peace.