Hearing the fields

For as long as I can remember, when I smelled the scent of grass or rain on the wind, I was overcome with longing to return to a home that had never been mine, “It almost smells like I am home” I found myself thinking. “I can almost feel myself surrounded by fields.” I puzzled over this for years, wondering if I might be longing for my childhood home, which was on the fringe of the suburbs, or for the dairy farm where I worked as a teenager. Neither of those answers brought me peace. I wondered if it was possible to inherit memories and longings from family, the way we inherit mannerisms and temperament. Maybe I was wishing for the home of my grandmother, my namesake, who died when my mother was still a child. I expect that I will never know.

Even though I could make no rational sense of it, I experienced searing beauty followed by loss almost every day. It was a heavy weight to carry. For a while, I tried to stop hearing the power of the sky and the growing things around me because I did not want the grief that followed my awareness. For a while, I stopped praying because in my prayers, I would also see the fields and then fall into sadness.

Now that I have lived in the country for a year, I still don’t know how to respond to the wild power that comes to me in the smell of grass, or to the fields that I see in my prayers. They don’t bring me grief anymore though, only uncertainty and joy.

The other night, I was trying to pray for a friend of mine who is in trouble, and in Quaker fashion, I started out in silent worship, waiting for an awareness of Christ’s love and peace. Instead of hearing God, I heard the fields to the south of my house. They were a riot of growth, covered over with the peace that accompanies most green, growing things. Expansiveness called the fields up towards the darkening sky, and the soil beneath them was alive with tiny movements.

I finally had to give up on praying for my friend and just go outside. Once I was standing in the grass, accompanied by trees, I tried again to pray. This time, I stomped my feet on the ground and sang, and let my arms go where they felt like going. Finally then, I felt the peace of Christ. I prayed for my friend, still shouting and dancing. When I was done, I stood alone in my isolated yard and had the sense that I was being watched by women. I had the sense that they were pleased.

Ethereal

“Ethereal chicken” is almost always an oxymoron, like “plastic silverware.” For just a day or two though, when they are tiny and completely covered in golden down, chicks can be ethereal. Our new birds are in this brief phase of their lives. When they stand under the red light of their heat lamp, they almost glow. Watching them, I remember the lightness of their little bodies as we lifted them out of the boxes on Thursday. They could almost be like little wisps of air, except their tiny little feet make the quickest little pattering sound as they dart around the brooder.

My mother-in-law helped me construct a cardboard wall across part of the brooder so that we could have a separate “room” for ducklings. The ducklings came on Thursday, the day after the chickens, and we have been amazed by them. Picking them up is a completely different experience then picking up the ethereal little chicks. The ducklings are more substantial, with a long neck, active feet, and a bit of softness cushioning their belly. Ian described them best when he called them “purposeful.” They seem driven in their pursuit of any bug that has the misfortune to wander into their part of the brooder.

Up and down

Wednesday night, for the first time since I hurt my finger, Ian said to me, “Let’s go for a walk after the children are in bed.” As we usually do, we strolled towards the western edge of our lawn, through the trees that form a shelter belt around our house, and we stood looking out over the cornfields. He loaned me his jacket because I was shivering.

After we admired the wispy clouds and the gentle rolling land, we each chose an aisle between the rows of corn, and we walked south, followed by one of our cats who also liked the idea of a companionable evening walk. I looked over at Ian and the fields behind him, and it seemed like a scene that I would see longingly while my eyes were closed in worship. I had the mildly uneasy sense that maybe I was just worshiping or dreaming. The image of Ian walking beside me like that is stamped in my heart, with colors that are almost too bright.

We circled around our garden and headed back for the house. “It is good to have you back,” Ian told me.


Thursday night I was feeling woozy again, and I lay on the couch, unable to shake the feeling that the space around my body was blinking with colors. The colors were too bright, and they were blinking too fast. I was afraid to open my eyes and look out the window at the treetops swaying in the wind, because I was afraid that they would feel menacing. I made myself look at the treetops anyway, and it was almost painfully intense to see the blinking lights as the leaves shifted front of the cloudy sky. Nothing looked menacing though, and I forced myself to keep looking. The longer I looked, the more peaceful the trees seemed.


Today, I drove to the post office to pick up 15 ducklings in a box and bring them home to our brooder. I felt spacey and disconnected with my body as I drove the car home with the ducklings peeping beside me, and I worried that I might not be the best driver. “You are in the fields,” I reminded myself, and in my peripheral vision, I could see the wide spaces of green, hemmed in sometimes with trees. I relaxed instantly. It is a feeling that I remember from early childhood, when the presence of my mother made the world safe and right.

It has been a quiet week

I had no idea that smashing my finger would be such a big deal. I had surgery on the finger on Wednesday, and the doctor said it went well. I am also on antibiotics as I had a fever and the doctors were worried that infection would get into the broken bone. Before I took the antibiotics, I started drifting into mild visions, which cleared up once I got on the medication. I am aware of several mystics who had their major visions while being seriously ill, but I skipped that opportunity.

“Good Lord! Of course you did!” my mother exclaims from her permanent seat in my imagination.

I am also taking pain medication. At first, I was very conservative about taking those pills, but I am now downing one every four hours on the dot. Perhaps this is why my books about farming seem especially exciting. Yesterday, I was giddy with delight as I read a rather academic chapter about the parts of flowers. “Growing Fruit in the Upper Midwest” is a must-read for anyone taking narcotics.

I have spent most of the last week in bed, and I am very grateful for friends and family who have been taking care of me and my kids.

Another wild Friday night at the farm

For weeks, Ian and his friend Chuck have been fixing up an old field cultivator that we were given, and last night he finally pulled it behind the tractor to prepare our garden for planting. The machinery still wasn’t working properly, so Ian asked me to come out and help. My job was to walk behind the tractor and encourage a mechanism on the field cultivator to turn as Ian went around the corner. We started out very slowly with visions of me falling down and being sliced up by the tines that were digging up the earth, but we never gave that an opportunity to happen. The first time I helped the mechanism turn, another piece of metal turned faster and came up and squashed my middle finger.

I shouted and went tearing across the field. When I got to the yard, I did not want to stop running, so I just ran in circles. I could feel something flopping off the injured hand, and I asked Ian to look at it because I was too afraid. He took one look and said, “We are going to the doctor.” This confirmed my worst fear, and it wasn’t until we were getting in the car that I found out it was not part of my finger that had been torn off, but just the nail. It was the entire nail, including the portion that usually sits under your skin.

As we drove to urgent care, I belted out hymns and folk songs and wiggled in my seat and stomped my feet because I thought that if I sat still I might throw up. The folks at the urgent care tried to stick my nail back inside my finger to give a new nail a chance to grow, but they could not do it. They said I have a week get someone to do that, and if no one can do it, then I might never have a fingernail on that finger. I am remembering this is a distinct possibility, but Ian said it sounded to him like I would probably eventually have a fingernail of some sort on that finger. It will likely be a weird looking nail –bumpy or discolored, but it will be a nail. What a shame that it is not my style to flip people the bird because I will have a unique instrument for that purpose.

The bone in my finger is also broken, and the skin is pretty sliced up. We spent so much time at the urgent care that my son had time to watch the whole Toy Story movie in the waiting room.

Back at home, I tried unsuccessfully to find a substitute for my Pilates class the next morning and then went to deal with the chicken that had been in the oven when I got hurt. The chicken was standing upright, balanced on a Coke can, just as I had left it, but in the intervening two hours it seemed to me like it had acquired more personality. I tried in vain to pull the Coke can out of its cavity, but my finger hurt too much, so I had to put it in the refrigerator as it was. It is still standing there bare naked like a cranky gnome.

I have no idea how we are going to keep up with things while my finger gets better. It hurts so much.

More possum repercussions

Last week was a heavy week.

After the possum bit me on a Friday night, we were supposed to kill it, refrigerate it and then give it to the University of Minnesota so it could be tested for rabies. We did that, and on the following Monday the University called us to say they could not test the possum because its brain had turned to mush. They recommended that I get rabies shots.

I did not get the shots. The Minnesota Department of Health says that only one possum in the state has ever tested positive for rabies, and so I had a pretty low risk of exposure. Also, my wound was small and shallow, which lowers my chances of getting the disease, according to my doctor. (She strongly encouraged me to get the shots anyway.)

If that possum has given me rabies, I will die a terrible death and there will be nothing anyone can do about it. I went online to learn more and ended up looking at pictures of people and animals that were dying of the disease. It was like catching a glimpse of a demon. I think it is possible that diseases have awareness and a spiritual character much like plants do. If I were around it, I might be able to “hear” the disease, the way I “hear” the awareness of plants, but I do not want to be around it. It is an embodiment of horror. Thankfully, the chances that I will experience that horror are very low.

I was afraid of getting the shots because my osteopath said the shots might cause me more chronic sickness and pain. I believe this guy even though his advice runs contrary to other information because he has healed me when other people could not. When my repetitive stress injuries prevented me from picking up toys from the floor or washing dishes, the regular doctors gave me braces that messed up my elbows and started talking about surgery even though they said I was not a good candidate for it. The osteopath started working with my collarbone, and my arms got much better. When I experienced a low-level stomach flu for a few years, the regular doctors gave me pills that did not work. The osteopath put me on a strict diet that helped me feel like a regular person again. It seems to me like he goes to the root of the problem instead of fixing the symptom and leaving the main problem alone. (He also said that in spite of his concerns, he could not advise me to forgo the shots.)

As I considered getting the shots, it seemed like I had to choose between a very low chance of death and a fair chance of pain and disability. I have had enough pain and disability. I don’t want any more. There are so many things that I want to do with this life. Every day, I find myself panting after breathtaking beauty. I want so much to be free to dance and run after it, and to lift heavy things as I pursue it.

Hefty handfuls

The chickens have a new pasture now. We are letting them out the door on the east side of the coop (instead of the north side), and this is especially exciting to them because this yard includes both tall and short clover. When we mowed, we left a strip of pasture untouched, and now these plants are knee-high. The chickens love to nestle into the tall clover and munch on it or settle down next to it. We can see white faces peeking up from a green tangle of plants. Even though they enjoy the tall clover, we mow their pasture because we understand that they are able to eat more greens when the greens are shorter. When the plants are taller, the chickens tend to trample them more.

This group of birds has two more weeks to live. We will try to make sure that they are good weeks. When the birds stay out late, and I have to pick some up and put them inside their coop at night to protect them from predators, I can no longer pick up two at a time. Each chicken takes two hands, and some of the larger ones already feel like very hefty handfuls. Last evening, a little rooster was so determined to sleep outside. I must’ve put him back in the coop 5 times because he kept wandering back out as I went to fetch another wayfaring chicken from the yard. He felt huge in my hands.