The Long View, in Both Directions

We haven’t had popcorn in a while. We used to buy it from a neighbor, Joe, down the road years ago, who sold it to raise money for the Boy Scouts. He’d drive his white Toyota pick-up to the Duke station four miles away, and keep a box of the two-pound bags in the back seat just in case you stopped to get gas at the same time he did and the conversation turned to snacks. Joe’s sales pitch was all smiling and gentle; not at all high-pressure, but who could turn down popcorn from an 90-something year-old man who barely cleared 4’ 11” on a tape measure and kept a small spiral notebook in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt where he’d written today’s date and calculated the number of days until his next birthday. He’d whip out that notebook a few minutes after the usual “hello’s” and “how are ya’s?”, using the stubby point of a yellow golf pencil to show you the math. After a sharing some stories from a recent meeting he chaired for the local historical society, we’d be on our way, minus a few dollar bills but a two-pound bag of popcorn now in the backseat of our Toyota truck.

Joe died in 2016, eighty days shy of his 99th birthday, according to the penciled-in math. We’ve bought popcorn since then at the local bulk store and it pops up just fine, but it’s missing something. Some months after his memorial service, we attended an auction on his farm, touching pieces of the life he shared for 63 years with his beloved Bea, all sorted and displayed in banker’s box lids on rows of folding tables set up on the lawn. Four years later, we continue to be custodians of an impressive rock collection he and Bea gathered on their many travels, and are honored to have the license plates from that white Toyota truck that read “Old Joe”.

I’m not sure why that memory rose to the surface today, but being caught in the swirling current of relentless uncertainty these days, it’s natural (and necessary) to page through the snapshots of a pleasanter time and sit in their soothing company for a while. It doesn’t make the pandemic go away, or help the good people of Beirut recover their footing after last week’s horrific explosion, and it isn’t supposed to. I know that. But it pulls me back from the edge of an abyss too deep to comprehend and helps my news-battered heart catch its breath for a few minutes. There’s important work to do, to be sure, and we’ll set ourselves to it heart and soul and sinew, but I suspect I’m not the only person on the planet right now who’s longing for a break from the accumulated weight of the last five months. I want to be here in the next five, and pausing ever so often is not optional. It’s required if you’re in it for the Long Haul.

I find myself wondering lately about the collective resilience of the human species. How much can we bear? So far, I’d say a LOT. We’re still here, still plugging away, and though not always ringing the bell when it comes to our best values in action, we’re trying. As I pull quackgrass from the edges of the onion patch in the garden, dodging the tender poison ivy shoots in between, I feel like I’m doing what I can to keep despair a few acres away. These onions, and the beets and tomatoes and zucchini we picked a few minutes ago will feed Patrick and me at some point in the near future, and we’ll feel glad for growing them ourselves. We’ll drop off a bag of kale and tomatoes to family, happy that they love them as much as we do. Patrick’s out in his workshop now, building another raised bed that will hold our late summer garden’s transplants of more kale, more mixed greens, and perhaps a late second crop of beets, if the sun keeps coming up between now and then. Acting as if we’ll get the gift of that many more sunrises is insurance against everything else we can’t control. From here, we’re trying to see the harvest, still well-hidden beneath the soil and today’s bleak headlines.

So far, it seems to be working, this dance between the soft edges of pleasant memories and a fierce hope toward a future whose face is indistinct but trying to smile. Fear still creeps in and wants to take up residence in our souls, but we refuse delivery most days. We speak words of encouragement and reassurance to anyone who needs them, and keep it real when an angry rant is the only thing that will make us feel better. Looking over our shoulders at all that we’ve shouldered up to this point fortifies us and even makes us laugh. That’s good Medicine.

One of the cottonwoods by the creek has already started shedding its leaves, and I check the calendar to make sure it’s still summer. It makes me think of the time Dad was visiting our first August here, and we showed him where the osage orange trees grew on the slope just at mouth of the meadow. He swore by the brain-looking green fruits as a deterrent to cockroaches, and we promised he could come back in late September to pick to his heart’s content. He showed up that day, pockets stuffed full of plastic grocery bags, with Mom spotting the larger ones on the ground. The trees are growing heavy now with this year’s crop, and it’s impossible to look up into those branches and not see the grin on his face as he filled each and every one of those bags.

Somewhere in the space between what we remember and what we can only imagine… is a shower after a hot day trimming back tomato vines, dinner that includes something we planted and watched grow and then plucked from the ground when it was ready, the cool thin grass beneath a grove of young mulberry saplings, and the comfort of holding Patrick’s hand.

We live in this space every minute of every day, noticing, watching..

Hoping.