Feeling the Wind

Today I stepped outside, in the sunshine, with a big basket of wet clothes for the line.

These daily chores are a mediation of loss. This is not my view. This is not my clothes line. Not my ducks.

Not my farm. Not my house. Not my life.

Yet here I am, like a ghost, still inhabiting this landscape.

Last month I posted about our divorce. That post got 2000 hits in 4 hours. More than anything else I have ever written.

Yes, my life is pretty open and public, but? I have written about way more important things, y'all. Disability advocating, motherhood, peach pie? This felt simultaneously like being hugged by our community and also feasted on by vultures. Not the best feeling.

And then the hateful messages started rolling in. Not to Chad, just to me.

Accusations that I am choosing art over my family. Choosing poetry and photography and travel over my marriage.

I never said that. Not ever.

I never once said why we are divorcing, nor will I. It is a private matter and will stay one. It is not up for public critique. It is not a decision we made lightly or in the heat of an argument. It is hard and scary and one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I am not abandoning my family, in fact, I will spend more time with the kids than before and quality time. Chad and I will still be friends and I will actively be involved in the farm for a while at least. We are still a family, just not to be married to each other.

Still, in the stillness of the farm day the loss hits me. I look around at all the budding trees. Not mine. The mulberry fruit setting. Not mine. The newly planted trees, finally, and not mine.

None of this was ever really mine anyway. Legal issues and family arrangements kept me from being a legal owner in any of it. I was expected to labour for the farm under a promise that someday it would, that we could buy it. Now? Now I leave with nothing but my spice recipes and a lot of experience, perhaps the bonus of a determination not to be undersold and invisible when I start my own farm venture.

And I will. For now, I am a landless farmer, but I carry the knowledge and the blood on my hands from Spring lambing, the milk stains from staying up all night feeding a kitchen pig, the terror of crisis management after a predator attack and sewing up open wounds, warding off fly strike, the mindset required to tend bees, and the breath of the earth deep in my lungs.

These things are not negotiable. They are mine.

Like a Willow

Yesterday Holly came to me while I was brushing my hair. She said, "Mama, my chest hurts like when Oinkers died."

Oh honey. I know. I do know. Still, I asked her, "What is making your chest hurt, love?"

"You and Daddy breaking up."

Yes. I know.

This is what has silenced me for the last month. In the midst of attending the PV2 conference, AWP, attending an art retreat in NW Iowa, getting published in Literary Mama, and being accepted to a residency in Prague this summer....

Chad and I came to the mutual decision to divorce. We've been together nearly twenty years. We have three children. We've built this farm together. Yet, neither of us are happy. Our lives looked near perfect to everyone else. I'm not going to bog down these blog posts with whys and reasons. There are so many little ones, a few big ones, and none of them make any difference in the outcome. I'm not interested in people taking "sides" because we share a community and we both really need that community right now, for support and friendship and not pity or resentment.

Yes, we are both heartbroken. Yes, we are both grieving for a future that is no longer possible.

It is time for me to stop referring to the "we" and being an "I" is scary as hell.

For now we are still living in the same house while we figure out the legal aspects, plan for the care of our children, and generally untangle twenty years of co-dependance. We have a shared history, our entire adult lives. I have never been a grown woman not married to Chad.

This is where we are. If you see me and I look distant? This is why.  I know my friends and family are worried as hell about me. Just know? Know I am resilient. Know that while I leave the farm behind (because it belongs to Chad's parents) it simply means that for a time I will be a landless farmer and I will find a way back to that life. It will just look different than it does now.

Making this public? This is part of the process too.

This is the right thing to do. It is moving faster than I'd like. Still. It is moving.

I do feel like I am being grafted, removed from the root stock of hardy timber. I feel like I am dormant while I find where to graft to, or maybe grow new roots. I am like a willow, I bend and grow. Versatile and resilient. Weeping too.

Love and Punk

Of course, when I get time to sit down and work on PV2 notes....they are outside in the cruiser. What to do?

Chad played a show. A punk show. At a gay bar. For pride week. It was pretty darn good too.  These are raw photos. I am working on a flickr album of the whole set. I have quite a few really good pictures. But for now? Here are these.

This week was a hard week for our local GLTB community. One of the local bars received a threat letter with hazardous materials in it. FBI called in and all. Lost a day of business to a grammatically horrible hate letter. This reminds us how far is left to go, to love, and accept.

So Chad and the Dalektables rocked downtown with old school punk covers. Our friends came out to see the set and support all the folks at the variety show. It was a house full of love. That's something, right?

Do The Task In Front of You

This is my mantra, Do the task in front of you, do it well, do it all the way.
I have a Spring full of busy, so much that chaos is building up around me. 5 online classes, a conference presentation on Monday, a week long training session in May. Lambing. Planting. Children ready for outside play, cleaning the mud from them when they come back inside after a good day in the dirt and sunshine.

This is my life. There are ebbs and flows, there are moments when the intersection of poetry and art cross with the tall grass and muddy boots. I was telling a friend last night how last Spring, I climbed into the farm truck after a truly brutal day of lambing, the worst one yet, and a poem appeared. I wrote it on the back of a co-op grain order receipt with a pen that died half way through the scribbles and a broken crayon for the rest. I was determined not to lose those words.

But sometimes the words are lost to me anyways.

Right now, writing is last on the list of priorities even though it is the salve that gets me through these times. I am not sure how to shift things around so it fits back in without toppling everything.

Lambs in my kitchen still. The seasons switching back an forth, not making up her mind, clothes from two needs are piling up. I must find time to attend to it or I'll end up buried in sweaters, muddy play clothes, and jeans. Goodness, and dress up costumes.....so many princess and pirate dresses.

This much on the to do list means I have to organise the chaos inside my own head too. This means inevitably that I pull away from friends and family emotionally, because I have no time for the effort that goes into nurturing those relationships. I get snappy and curt. I hate myself when I hear the words spilling out and the fallen faces of the victims. My children, my dearest friends. Destruction and devastation. Then I have to clean up the mess. More time. Time I don't have.

This year, I am trying to divide my time and corral my words so that I can nurture and grow my life instead. I am making time. Making time for friends, for my kids, for art. My art. These things come first, get my attention fully. Then second comes the job that feeds us. If laundry piles up? Well, too bad. (Though it is making me twitch just thinking about it.....) The term will be over soon enough and summer load is much lighter.

I can do this. I can write, sing, dance. I will cook in the kitchen with Bessie Smith on the radio, dancing as I stir Rooster Gumbo, taking up hands of children who join me and spin them around in a waltz. I will feed my family and friends with joy and my attention. I will learn to play Ukulele and sing with all my off tune heart. And summer will come, warm the air, and I'll make sweet tea and laugh at silly jokes, draw chalk dragons and pirates and poems on my sidewalk with the children. I will swim with them, like a mermaid, the algae will catch in my hair too. This. This is the dream.

And yes, I will, soon finish my PV2 review and tell you all about California adventures. I will. Soon.