We had fallen into a routine. After Christmas Jen started leading dogsled trips. She was up before light in order to make coffee and eat before driving over to Theils’ to hook up the dogs on the gang line, lay out harnesses and water bowls, scoop poop, and greet clients. Some mornings I hardly even noticed her leave. She would grind coffee the night before and dress downstairs in the morning so I could keep sleeping. I would wake a couple hours later with Miles curled behind my knees and dust floating through the light from the window. I would read in bed or downstairs by the fire and after a chapter or two and a bagel and a cup of tea or coffee I would open up my laptop and write, taking breaks to stoke the fire, or add hot water to my tea. I finally felt like I was making progress. Sometimes I would take Arrow for a walk down the road or drive to the Corny well to fill our water jugs. And every evening, just before or after dark fell, Jen would come home with the smell of the dogs on her coat. We would make dinner together, watch a movie or play cards. Sometimes we went out. Often she fell asleep on the couch before ten.Then half way through January the temperature starts fluctuating. First a thaw: icicles dripping from the eves into dirty snow, winter jackets ditched for hoodies and down vests, but boots still on to navigate the slush. I know in my head there are at least three more months of winter, but the warmth and longer days wake up something in my body. I feel like I do when I have to start my day before the sun is up: disoriented, groggy and out of sync.
I email everything I have written to my advisor and Davi (who is spending all of January in Chicago with her girlfriend). The rest of the week, I fend off boredom by perusing Facebook, cooking dinners, and picking up extra shifts at the bar while I wait for Jen to have a few days off so we can drive to Chicago.
I am just out of the shower and standing over the wood stove in my parents’ kitchen to let my hair dry when my mom looks up at me from the table and asks what days Jen and I are planning on being gone.
“Can you make sure to check in on Grandma when you get back?” she asks. “I’m going to visit Ann in Wausau for a few days, Jon is driving down to Florida with a friend, and Chris and Honey are driving out to North Dakota to see her family, so I want to make sure Grandma has someone she can call on.”
“When did that all happen?” I ask. After working with my brothers all spring, summer, and fall and seeing everyone over get-togethers during the holidays, it feels weird to now be out of the loop, but then I remember the last time we were all together and think it is probably good that we all get away for a bit. A couple weeks ago, dad scheduled an annual meeting for the farm. It went well, with good discussions about the direction we want to take the farm, and general agreement over any decisions, but when the meeting went later than my brothers expected and we were all hungry and tired, the meeting ended with curt tones, hurt feelings, and awkward exits.
*
The temperature drops. It begins to snow again on the morning we leave, but as we head south, the snow turns to rain and the snow in the ditches to dirt. In Chicago it looks and feels like November. We leave our boots and jackets in the car.
“I swear there was snow on the ground a week ago,” Davi tells us, yet it’s just another reminder of just how far away Chicago feels from home.
Jen and I catch up with friends, spend an afternoon wandering around the aquarium, eat chipotle burritos and a pub lunch and sushi. On Tuesday I meet up with Davi at a busy hipster coffeeshop near her girlfriend’s apartment. We leaf through my writing page by page. She has made notes in the margins and I add to them as we talk. At one point she slips as she talks, saying “So here in the movie I think…”
“Movie?” I ask as she catches herself and laughs.
“Yeah… about that…” she says, “When they want to make a movie based on your book, I’m telling you now I’d be more than happy to direct it.”
Davi, always the big dreamer, and believer of big dreams, and believe-in-er of friends with big dreams, is exactly who I need right now. The nine hour drive and money spent to get to and be in the city is all worth it if only for this one hour with my best friend sitting next to me on a worn couch, clutching my arm as she reads her favorite parts, and helping me imagine the pieces that have yet to be written, that will flesh out the story for a reader who doesn’t know me so thoroughly. I know we are both happier since we’ve moved home—Davi to NYC where she is closer to her family and surrounded by friends and the resources she needs to make her movies, and me up north with Jen and my family and the farm and deep snow—but I do miss the days of our treehouse apartment and making the most of small holidays.
I have arranged to meet with my thesis advisor before driving home the next morning but he doesn’t show. I call him and he apologizes saying he has a lot on his plate right now and he forgot and he hasn’t even had a chance to read it, but he will and he can email me feedback. Just as well, I think, because I’m tired and ready to be on the road, even more ready to be home. I’m not conditioned to the city anymore. Even with only a few things I’ve really needed to do in these few days down here, the stimulation of so many people and buildings and cars, leaves me exhausted. Jen drives for the first few hours and I sleep. North of Milwaukee we switch and I drive while she sleeps. A few hours from home we switch again. The highway has narrowed to just two lanes and we are both awake. There are fewer cars, more trees, and lots of snow, fresh snow. While we were gone the snow continued to fall, blanketing the bare trees and dirty snow in the ditches with white. The sun has just gone down. Between the trees I can see the moon again, almost full. I put my face against the window so I can watch it holding steady as the tree tops flip past.
*
Jen starts trips again the day after we get back. I run errands, do the dishes, and clean the house while she is gone. It hangs over my head that I should start writing again, but I find other things to occupy my time. My mom calls and invites us over for brunch on Sunday. My uncle will be up visiting from Minneapolis and it can be a belated birthday meal for my Grandma. Jen has to work that day, but I have nothing planned so I offer to come early and help my mom cook.
It’s nice to be with my family again, to take away the distance of our trips and to move beyond the hurt feelings from the farm meeting. We catch up some, but mostly we sit around the living room with coffee cups in our hands and watch my nephews play. After we are done eating Chris and Honey bundle up the boys to get them home before naptime. Uncle Dan takes Grandma home and Jon heads down to his shop to work on a project.
The bustling house has dwindled to just my parents and me. We sit in the kitchen and they ask me how my writing is going. I talk about Chicago, how nice it was to see Davi, that I’m still waiting on Michael’s feedback, and then I tell them I’m still conflicted about using the Ojibwe names for the moons to title the chapters of my writing. I talk about how I feel they describe the seasons of this place more specifically than months do and I connect to that because I connect to this place, but I also worry that I’d be using something that’s not mine to use. Both mom and dad are listening to me, maybe formulating how they want to respond, but the silence feeds my uneasiness so I keep talking, trying to explain.
“And then that just opens up all of these issues that I’ve never been good at articulating. I was born here, I grew up here, this is my home, I know that so deep down... but then there is still this lingering guilt about how we came to be here, not you guys moving here, because I know you just wanted a piece of land where you could put down roots and you partly chose this area because it was both rural and diverse, and I’m so glad to have the roots I do and the diverse friends that I do, but I guess I’m just saying I’m envious of the people with the deep deep roots to one place, like Andrea, even though she’s part white too, at least she has some of her roots in this place and she can learn the language of this place and use it and feel like it is hers to use, or Gio whose family has lived on the same land and spoken the same language for countless generations…” I breathe in deep and exhale with a sigh. Then add, “I hate even trying to talk about this because it just comes out like I’m complaining, and that’s not what I mean. I love my life.” My voice cracks as I say it. I get so bogged down every time I try to analyze this part of me and my writing. I am so fearful of doing something offensive, of being that ignorant white person (who I know I have been before), that I have considered avoiding the subject altogether, but I know that a story without this part of me would be incomplete.
My mom is sitting across the room on the red kitchen stool. She touches her chin with her hand and then turns her hand in the air as she says, “I think you can just say, ‘This speaks to me...’”
“I’m not Indian and I’m not trying to be Indian, but I am of this place.” My dad adds from across the table. I’m not completely convinced it’s that simple, but I do feel lighter sitting there with both them listening to me and offering their advice. I don’t remember the last time the three of us had a moment like this. Normally I just talk to one or the other, and yet today I appreciate that I have the balance of their personalities, and of their responses.
Dad gets up to retrieve a Wendell Berry book from the living room where he was reading this morning and thumbs through the pages looking for a certain passage. Mom steps into boots, pulls on a jacket and hat and goes outside. As Dad sits back down at the table and begins to read out loud to me, I watch though the window as mom steers a wheelbarrow full of wood down between the snow banks to the back door. Dad’s voice reading Wendell Berry mingles with the heavy bell dung of mom pulling wood from the wheelbarrow and the clack of the logs being stacked in the wood box. Harmony between our human economy and the natural world—local adaptation—is a perfection we will never finally achieve but must continuously try for. There is never a finality to it because it involves living creatures who change. The soil has living creatures in it. It has live roots in it, perennial roots if it is lucky. If it is the soil of the right kind of farm, it has a farm family growing out of it. The work of adaptation must go on because the world changes; our places change and we change; we change our places and our places change us.
As I drive home the sun is pink behind the trees and on the snow. Carol King sings on the radio, then Norah Jones, their voices rich and smooth. I pull in my driveway and wait for the song to end before I cut the engine.
*
I’m eager to write again. I knew my story would begin in Chicago, in spring, before moving back to the farm, but I had yet to settle on the specific first scene. While driving to work the other day it came to me, like a movie playing out in my head while I drove the stretch of Country Rd C from Mountain Rd to Washburn. I considered pulling over to write it down before I lost it, but instead I kept driving and played the scene on a loop, adding details, and making cuts, until it was perfect. At the bar, I opened and stocked quickly. I had an hour before anyone came in for a drink and during that time I opened up my laptop and jotted down notes for the opening scene.
I knew I would need a whole day to even begin writing it properly, a day that begins with a lazy morning, then coffee and my open laptop with no time in mind that I need to quit by. I’m still waiting for that day to come. Instead of writing, I watch my schedule fill up with commitments. Things I can’t say no to, like telling my brother I can come out to the farm and watch Silas while he helps my dad fix the tractor. I see the captain of the high school soccer team while I’m up at the school and she asks me if I’m going to coach again and if I’m excited for the season to start. She is clearly eager for the snow to melt so she can be on the field again, and oh how I can remember that feeling, but I don’t share it with her this year. I smile and tell her I could use another month of winter and then I’ll get excited. I can’t blame her excitement. Spring does feel closer as we’ve entered another warm spell. There is still plenty of snow around, but before driving into town, I don’t need to warm up my car as the sun as has already done the job for me, beating down on the hood and through the front window.
I remind myself that it is only February and to just enjoy the week for what it is. My schedule will clear up again and the temperatures will drop. I run into Krystle at the library and she tells me that she and Andrea have been playing basketball again. They are trying to get a team together to go down and play at a tournament at a reservation south of here. It’s an Indian tournament, so I wouldn’t be able to play on the team, but they need more people at practices if I want to come out. I haven’t really played since high school, but I wouldn’t mind the workout or the chance to hang out with Krystle and Andrea on a more regular basis. I am nervous the first day I show up for practice, but I quickly ease into the game. I know how to play and I know how to play with Andrea and Krystle, my high school teammates, the ones who taught me to play really. I even drive the lane once, something I never had the confidence to do in high school. Even though I’m trying to not fill up my schedule, I know I’ll be back next week.
*
I make it through my week of meetings and bartending and babysitting. Saturday morning I sleep in for a bit and then get up and check my email. A friend from college has sent me a story she wrote. The title of the email is “Autobiographical Fiction.” She has changed the names of characters and condensed time and we have been out of touch in recent months, but I can piece together what is autobiographical. It is so beautiful and raw and honest and I am honored that she shared it with me and glad that we are friends. I only have time to email her a quick “I love you” before heading into town. As I drive, little images and pieces of her story come into my head.
I get home a little before five. The sun is setting and I figure Jen will be on her way home soon, so I take Arrow on a walk down Happy Hollow. I figure it will take me at least an hour to walk to Theils’ and sometime in that hour Jen will finish work and get in her car to drive home. Arrow runs ahead of me a ways and then doubles back, gets distracted by a smell in the snow bank, sniffs around, and then runs ahead again. I love watching her, so suited to the cold. In the summer she shows her age, but on these winter walks she acts like a puppy again. I watch the sun come through the trees for half a mile then spread out over a snow-covered field. I am almost to the Faye farm when I see Jen’s black Subaru coming towards me. As she gets closer I can see her grinning. Arrow makes circles around the car, but won’t get in. Jen gets out of the car and pounces to get a hand on Arrow's collar, then guides her into the car. Once Jen is back in the car she looks back at Arrow and says, “Sorry Arrow. I’ve dealt with enough independent-minded dogs for one day.” As we drive she tells me about her trips that day, clueless clients and feisty dogs and the workout she got trying to keep things running smoothly. I tell her about my lazy morning and reading my friend's story and playing basketball. We arrive home in the half-light of dusk, let Arrow out of the car and walk inside together. Jen hands me a beer and grabs one for herself. I put water on to boil for pasta.
The next day I have to open the bar at one, but before I leave I send my friend a longer email. I write.
yesterday jen was up for work before the sun was--pulling an extra
blanket over me before she left to balance the loss of her warmth.
when i decided to get up a couple hours later, i jumped straight from
bed into two layers of sweatpants (oberlin sweats on top :) a hoodie
under a wool shirt, wool hat and winter boots. i went outside to pee
in the snow, and chop kindling. came in and got a fire going in the
wood stove before opening up my email. i had no real obligations for
the day and could spend the morning reading your piece. pausing
half-way through to toast a bagel and make coffee. i finished reading
at noon, shaking my head at the reminder of how talented and honest
and beautiful you are. i threw a thick log on the fire to hold it for
a few hours and then changed quickly into workout clothes and drove
into town to meet friends for a game of pick-up basketball, the whole
time wishing you were closer and could come play too. remembering how
i've also always loved the way you played sports-putting all that
intensity and honesty and fearlessness and messiness into the quick
connection of head to ball.
only three turned up to play and so we were left to shoot around
and run gassers if so inclined. andrea's daughter (almost four years old now) was
there too, skipping laps around the gym and saying, "good one mama!"
every time andrea swished a shot. during a water break andrea tells
me that the other night after watching a pick up game, her daugther
had said to her, 'mama, i have to tell you something. that ball is
yours.' i try to remember a time someone stole the ball from her
and i can't, instead i see her dribbling down the court, head up,
strong hand over the ball, thick black hair pulled back tight and dark
eyes reading the play. then that crisp hard pass, the same pass that
would knock my glasses off in high school when i wasn't paying
attention during drills.
i drove home with my window cracked, the sun pouring in and reflecting off the snow, thinking of mothers and daughters, lovers and friends, the ways we connect, and pulse, together and apart. your story is with me all day, the images and the essence, and i am glad i have the day to spend with it.
where are you these days? new york still? will you go back to AZ ever? are you coming to my wedding in september?
love,
magd
