Get Out into the Light

2.20.24

It is difficult to mark these days. Dripping slower than overcooked molasses. I went to the Mill and purchased 1600 pounds of organic compost and in two trips I brought it home. And we’ll plant the seeds in mounded rows. Brassicas first while the summer plants germinate under the grow light inside the pole barn: tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and melons and squash. I’m excited about the Three Sisters. I always am. Plant the corn first in rows. When the stalk is six inches tall mound the dirt around it and sow the beans. And in the space between the stalks plant the squash and pumpkins. The corn stalk gives the beans something to hang onto. The beans give the corn nitrogen. The leaves of the squash and pumpkins shade the beans and stop the weeds. Weeds dislike being in the shadow of god. This kind of symbiosis speaks to me and I enjoy feeling close to the Nanticoke Indians I feel the people who were here before me are more my brothers and my sisters than the ancestors I don’t know from distant lands. I walk on land they walked on and I touch my foot to theirs and I put my hands into the soil that touched their hands and I touch their hands and I eat the corn and the beans and the squash and we eat together.

     But the rows of corn won’t grow for a while yet and I won’t sow the beans for a while more. Yet I find a way to fall behind. It’s still cold and it couldn’t be the time yet for planting it’s too early I say and days turn to weeks and I pick up the packet of seeds and BEHOLD they were meant to be started indoors weeks ago and I think back a few weeks and what was I doing then that prevented me from doing this? Nothing. I was doing nothing and I look for someone or something to blame. And that is the space I find myself in on this grey day in February this oh so uncommitted day sucking away time with its indifference. Glassy eyed I sit. On the couch. My daughters climb me and put stickers on my clothes and face and glasses and they laugh and they laugh and I pretend to laugh with them and sometimes I can’t even pretend sitting on the couch the way the grey sits on the day. And inside the angry voice rises Get up! Get up! Get up! You waste! An hour passes 3600 seconds tapping at my consciousness get up get up get up and tap tap tap tap tap tap and get up get up get up 3600 times I am flicked with self-loathing and I wonder over this great feat of mine this amazing feat of apathy ignoring the flicking ticking tapping and sinking sinking sinking into that pitiful space I am nothing I despise myself horrible father and I stand and I walk into the kitchen and I open the cabinet and find nothing there and I open the refrigerator and find nothing there and I open the freezer and break another piece of chocolate from the frozen bar and eat it without wanting it and I sit back down onto the couch as the girls run around me. Haze and daze and WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOU MAN! I look at the time on my mobile phone and Mama will be home in twenty minutes I’ll wait until she arrives I’ll get up when she arrives I’ll lay the phone down when she arrives I’ll lay the dirt down when she arrives I’ll finish all the rows and I’ll start the seeds indoors and I’ll compost the pine shavings from the old chicken bed and I’ll retrieve the lumber for the new chicken coop from the lumber yard and yes yes yes! I’m excited to do all these things I will do them YES! And I stand and tell the girls Mama will be home soon why don’t we wait for her outside we can play outside and wait for Mama and little A. agrees indifferently and her little baby sister toddles after her wherever she goes and I put on little A.’s shoes and little W.’s shoes and my shoes and I put on little A.’s jacket and little W.’s jacket and my jacket and we got outside and when Mama arrives we walk to the garden and point and plan and point and plan again and then again we point and plan although we’ve already pointed and planned and the girls want to go say hello to the chickens the girls want to collect the eggs and the girls want to go for a walk and the girls want to go play at the pond up the road and the girls want and the girls want and the girls want and I do nothing no dirt no seeds no no no what is this February despondency? MAN! WHY ART THOU CAST DOWN, O MY SOUL? AND WHY ART THOU DISQUIETED IN ME?... DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP…*

     Deep calleth unto deep deep deep the days are longer now and I’ll accept this gift of light and I’ll use it. Perhaps. Hoping. And I know it is no longer time for staying indoors the light will not shine into the darkness of the house I must go to the light. Get out into the light, MAN! Get out into the light.

*KJV Psalm 42