Saturday, July 30, 2011

Front row seat

Today I observe my oldest man-son rest in the sea.  Where do sixteen-year-olds find solace these days?

Sitting solitary on his board, he is hardly alone.  















Gulls soar in formation overhead while ponderous pelicans scour for breakfast and plummet around him.  He has front row tickets to the majesty of Creation, reminded quietly and impressively throughout the show that he is not the Center of it.

Winds and waves shift inexplicably, the magic and mystery that rouses teenage bones from bed at dawn.

















He needs only to rise, to be, to wait with patience, and enjoy.














Thursday, July 28, 2011

Rounder where it counts.

"You look.." she looked at me deeply and then searched for the perfect word, "...rounder".

















I had just returned home to Austin last summer after a few weeks away.  My friend welcomed me with a tall iced tea and plenty of space to have the conversation wander.

"Yep.  You look rounder."

Her eyes crinkled up in a laughing, happy smile.  This soul friend who knows me so well had not the slightest worry I would take this all the wrong way, despite the obvious five pounds I'd happily acquired in a short fortnight.  I understood what she was communicating in that choice of a word.  She knew that is exactly how I hoped to return to Austin, to life in the real lane.
















And here I am again.  For over twenty years we have been coming to this familiar and beloved place.  A solitary, sanguine beach tucked away on the Atlantic ocean has become the salty landscape woven into layers of Hall family memories; David and I newly in love, newly married, newly parents, and now this year, newly able to sit and read while the children surf and swim.



I usually arrive flat, squeezed, brittle, breathless.  For the first few days I have trouble reading, writing, or sitting still.  I pace a bit.  But as the tides ebb and the afternoon storms roll in day after day, we all melt, exhale, expand.


I need this annual pilgrimage because I leave it better than when I stumble in.  Like the praying mantis who shares the inside of my new screened porch, I shed my wafer-thin, too-tight, crackly skin of the previous year and emerge, hopefully, greener.




















I realize more each year that it's not really the place, but rather a place that I seek expectantly.


















How do I nurture a roundness to my soul?  How do I keep my smile ready, my edges soft, my gaze gracious and patience deep?  How can I keep open spaces for reading, for prayer and thought, for people and interruptions?

















I don't know, exactly, but I like these questions much better than the ones I was asking before I arrived.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

To remind myself

How To Be a Poet

BY WENDELL BERRY
(to remind myself)
i   

Make a place to sit down.   
Sit down. Be quiet.   
You must depend upon   
affection, reading, knowledge,   
skill—more of each   
than you have—inspiration,   
work, growing older, patience,   
for patience joins time   
to eternity. Any readers   
who like your poems,   
doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   
the unconditioned air.   
Shun electric wire.   
Communicate slowly. Live   
a three-dimensioned life;   
stay away from screens.   
Stay away from anything   
that obscures the place it is in.   
There are no unsacred places;   
there are only sacred places   
and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   
Make the best you can of it.   
Of the little words that come   
out of the silence, like prayers   
prayed back to the one who prays,   
make a poem that does not disturb   
the silence from which it came.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Wake up call

I need no wake-up alarm here at the farm.

















At 5:59am every morning Larry peels up our gravel driveway in his rusty and not-so-trusty Ford and begins hammering, sawing, nail-gunning, scraping our porch.  All this carpentry commotion is merely backdrop to Larry's music hullabaloo, which also commences at 6am.  Country, rock, 80's dance pop (the style matters not ) is all played exceedingly loud.

And above all that din, Larry sings.  Every. Word.  Whether he knows the song or not.

Larry teaches the Hall boys how to properly scrape paint from the porch

We all appreciate Larry.  He is quirky, kind and works without ceasing.  A master carpenter who could not keep a steady job due to the bottle, Larry is now in a program for recovering alcoholics and has been sober for two years.  No matter the weather, he is usually shirtless by mid-morning and has a huge tattoo on his left chest that reads "God saved me".


Larry brings fresh farm eggs and blue ribbon summer squash from his garden.  He surprised Colvin with a rope swing so she could "swing above the ivy".  He can fix anything and knows something about everything.  Who knew that bleach helps poison ivy?  Mothballs keep snakes away?  The praying mantis eats horseflies?  The kids regale their father every evening with all their Larry learnings.

Last night, my sweet six year old was having a good boo-hoo over missing her best friend, Kate.  She released the floodgates with shuddering sobs that had built up in that little, brave body the last few weeks and we talked about friends.

















"Larry is my only friend in Maryland", she sniffed.

"Mine, too, baby." I hold her tight.  "Mine too. But he's a good friend, isn't he?"

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

You say tomato. I say tomato.

A brave friend of mine recently sent me a letter regarding her life-long struggles with beauty and body image.   Here's one of her questions...

"How do you defend the statement, 'It's not about physical beauty, it's about inner beauty'?"  Such a good question and worth a thoughtful answer.
















The desire to be beautiful haunts all women, regardless of age or race. It is our curse, from the days of Eve, none of us exempt.   Part of Eve's punishment for her sin of wanting to be like God was that she would forever "crave her husband" (Genesis 3:16).  Enough from him would never be enough for her.  



















Beauty is our power.  When we are deemed beautiful, our husbands, and others, give us what we crave, which is complete, undivided attention.  When we feel inadequate in our beauty, we feel powerless, invisible, and not worthy of anyones (even God's) undivided attention and love. Elective plastic surgery, exercise addictions, eating compulsions, materialism, depression, discord, discontent and envy all spring from our constancy of wanting this power to draw and hold attention.  It's a losing battle.  Beauty does not bring life, it is the result of true life.  























It seems that there are two routes women take to deal with our problem.
1.  I will do anything and everything to maintain and create my beauty because I realize it's my power
2.  I will pretend that beauty is not really that important to me anyway. 
So, while we don't struggle in equal measure with every branch of this issue, the ROOT of this cursed tree is the same.  Just like Eve, enough is not enough for any of us.
















These days I am eating mid-summer-just-picked-from-the-farm tomatoes each night.  This is real beauty and a great joy.  The fruit looks like a tomato, smells like a tomato, not perfect in form (kind of squat and ugly, actually) but tastes joyously like how a tomato should taste.  It's wholeness and wholesomeness gives great pleasure.  Before I slice into one of these tomatoes, I know exactly what I'm going to get.   
















Put a fake, genetically engineered and pretty-on-the-outside grocery store tomato on the same china dish and I am left sorely disappointed.  Expecting one thing, I get so much less.  Chalk in the mouth.  Blech.

This is what I mean by inner beauty.  It delivers more when it is devoured.  When you meet and know a "farm tomato" woman, it is a feast.  She is beautiful to all the intuitive senses, not just sight, and she does not leave you feeling disenchanted.  She delivers more than what the eye can take in.  She might not look perfect on the windowsill, but she satisfies your deeper yearnings of real beauty, and real life.  

Our culture consistently settles for perfect, fake, tasteless tomatoes.  We've lost the taste for the real thing.   It's not men or the media driving this train wreck...it's us, sisters!  Fight it.  See it.  Reckon with it as you examine your own heart and deliver it  in to the hands of your loving and ever-attentive Maker.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Panic Ditch

Today I put our old-timer tractor in a ditch.  Not a big, scary ditch, just a shallow, panic ditch.


Wanting to surprise my very special agent by clearing a front road before he came home from his ugly Washington DC commute, I grabbed my cowboy hat and heard the screen door slam.

"I'll be out on the tractor!"  I yelled to the sleepy-eyed kids.  This all felt very cool.

















I vaguely recalled David's ominous tidbit yesterday evening as we were bush-hogging the meadow and watching the sun set (not quite as romantic as it sounds, but still very nice).  He said off-handedly "You know, there are several people each year who die from tractor accidents."  For added impact (or maybe because I did not look appropriately appalled), he added a not-so-subtle warning "...you need to know your limits when you drive a tractor." 

















All this did not dampen my enthusiasm for taking back the land.  

Just like the most wasted words in the world are "Be careful!" to Hall boys, the phrase "You need to know your limits" is just foreign to me.  

One must test her limits always.

















And now I know.

Wild blackberry bushes and fragrant honeysuckle vines are not as important as finding a suitable place to turn a 1950's diesel tractor.


Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Heaven and Hell

"Go to hell" is a phrase that is now permitted on the Hall farm.

Gasp!

You may wonder at our newfound parenting skills, and grandma might need to visit soon, but this is one phrase we mean quite literally in certain cases.  

Ticks and poison ivy will not be in heaven.  They belong only in the depths of hades with all other manner of evil.  And that, dear friends, is where we are telling them to go.

Titus is always on the losing end of the battle with poison ivy

The back yard as of last week (now it's gone!).  Mecca for ticks and poison ivy.                                   Come visit soon!

Can you see my chicken coop through all the poison ivy?

















In the two weeks we've been here, I've seen an army of caterpillars, spiders, beetles and weeds.  The array of buzzing insect life is astounding and actually quite entertaining.  It's entirely possible that God will allow these creatures and plants through the pearly gates as part of the new creation for us to enjoy forever.


But not ticks and poison ivy.

They will reside in hell for all eternity, banished there by the Halls with much relish and dancing.


A few guidelines are in order if you come visit and desire to use the phrase yourself.

You may say "Go to hell" while burning the tick that has been removed from you, your little sister, or your dog.


















You may not say it to your little sister or your dog assuming that they probably have at least one tick on them at any given moment.

















You may say it to a poison ivy branch or patch that you have triumphantly hacked out and thrown into the fire pit.  You may not mutter it over your shoulder as you are traipsing through said poison ivy in search of a lost lacrosse ball.

My sister-in-law Stephanie helps me remove weeds and poison ivy.  Bless her.


Colvin surveys the battlefield

















Two weeks and 100 less ticks on the farm!
Two weeks and 200 less poison ivy plants banished to hell!
There are always things to be thankful for...

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

A New Dance

 I hardly know where to start.

As I write, I look out over 200 acres of southern Maryland corn.  Fields of teenager stalks wave from every window.



I am choosing to ignore the cobwebs, the crumbling porch, the long day ahead, for now.

Ignoring the spectacular spider silently munching on her bug breakfast is more difficult.

There are buckets o' blogs and piles of stories ahead for you as the new days unfold, always surprising.

We are all trying to hear the Maryland farm music, find our rhythm and our way.


Our family has been tapping the Texas two-step for a long time, and this new dance will take new eyes and ears, a humble heart and some sweaty practice.