March 24, 2021
I miss my friends from Ocean Springs. I loved the checking in with them once a week, reading my little essay, having a drink and an excellent dinner that John had jubilantly cooked and splattered around the half acre of their functional and cheerful kitchen. “You two have to clean up. This is the most delicious dinner I have ever cooked,” and he helps himself to seconds, a splash of red beans and rice, “Don’t worry,” Ginny says, “These tablecloths wash and dry right up.” A blue and white striped beauty from Oaxaca, always spotless at our table with the flowery blue china, service for sixteen of all necessary items for a perfect 1950’s southern dinner party.
Moving to Sedro Woolley, Washington, must have been a real shock to them. By the time I met them, somewhere in the early 1980’s, I’d made some sort of peace myself there and had learned the names of most of the plants and trees in the marshy area where we lived and the birds as well, made some good friends, had a community. I was drawing every day in hopes of figuring out what to do next; having sold $1000 worth of art work one spring, I was on top of the world, but then my Volkswagen blew up, what to do next? I tried picking daffodils for money; a farmer friend said he had winter cauliflower to sell so I tried that. Ruined my back lifting boxes of cabbage and cauliflower. All those wonderful vegetables; I switched directions from drawing seeds and weeds to drawing beets and beans and erotic carrots, but that’s another story.
Meanwhile, here I am home in my little blue retirement cottage. The only thing that really worries me is if I should fall down and no one would notice for weeks, I’ve been gone so much that I’ve become invisible. When I turn eighty I’ll get one of those buttons that you press and say, “Help, I’ve fallen and can’t get up.”
I must remember that this time here in my cottage is but a brief hiatus, that the journey is still in progress.
Figuring out what to have for dinner needn’t be any more complicated than it was in my camper. Last night I took my life in my hands trying to cut up a cara-cara orange into a little salad with an avocado, it was one tough orange peel. Meanwhile, I partially heated a yam in the microwave and then popped it in the oven, it’s good to have a real oven for a while.
There are a lot of things I haven’t talked about yet about my winter in Mississippi, the book Dispatches from Pluto, by Richard Grant, for one. Now, on this rainy evening, dang, but I really don’t like daylight savings time, the mornings are bleak enough without being dark, and I like shutting down early, but dang, it’s still light. Anyhow, I’m listening to T. Model Ford, a blues guitarist from the Mississippi Delta. “Jack Daniel Time,” is the name of the album. Put on your red dress, baby, we’re goin’ out tonight.
My young friend, of the fava beans at the seed swap, comes for tea. Opening the cupboards, I pull out plates and soup bowls, and give them to her; later a small table, a lovely wool rug, extra nice queen size sheets. Every time I come back from an adventure I think, why do I have so much, what can I get rid of? In the camper, one plate, one fork, one spoon. Simplify, simplify, says Henry David Thoreau. Someone told me once that Henry went home to his mother’s for lunch every day, and she helped him out with his laundry. Do you think that’s true? Oh, how we move around our collective Walden Ponds, Henry says,“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” And then go to someone’s house for dinner: dear friends in Ocean Springs, thank you. And thank you, Henry David Thoreau, though you still needed your mom and her good cooking, always a role model, a good mom.
Once this winter in Ocean Springs at Rouse’s Market there were three bins of beautiful cabbages. I bought a big leafy one to share, and of course it wouldn’t fit in my tiny refrigerator. On the weekend I put the cabbage into the pillow case I use for laundry and at my friends’ popped the whole thing in the washing machine. Well, whaddaya know? Cabbage washes up nicely with underwear and sheets, little green leafy
shreds everywhere. My friends laughed and laughed and told their friends, “That woman who comes over to do her wash and use the internet, you wouldn’t believe what she did this week.”
Maybe now is the time to tell you about the twelve sixty pound boxes of fresh cabbage that I had to lift into the back of my blue pickup truck, when I had that fresh produce delivery business years ago. Sixty pounds is heavy and I’d manage to lift a box, resting it on my thighs before the herculean task of getting it onto the bed of the pickup. I could barely manage. I never needed more faith, or strength, than that day, the sun slanting through the barn boards, dust mote beams in the morning light, twelve boxes of cabbage; where were the apostles, strong armed as they were? Each would have to lift but one box. “Dear Lord, give me strength.” The farmer, Cecil, had said, “Maybe you can sell these in Bellingham, honey, beautiful cabbages, I’ll leave them for you in the barn on the Cook Road.”
“Thank you, Cecil,” I said.
And thank you, Jesus, whispering and panting I fell into the the front seat of the truck when the boxes were finally stowed. And they were, beautiful cabbages.
Later in the week I hiked with a friend to our favorite mountain lake, to swim as the sun slipped low behind the cedars. “What happened to your legs?” he said, aghast at the bruises.
“Oh,” I moaned, embarrassed, “Cabbages,” and quickly diving in, swam for all I was worth through the late light, the cool green cedar rimmed August water; swim as if you have faith, swim, for all you are worth. The news, if you read it, swings us from despair to hope and back again. Swim.
Could be I’m turning into my friend, Ginny, from Mississippi, one story weaving into another? Perhaps I’ll keep my mouth shut, and try to hold it all together, here at the perimeter of my own little Waldon Pond. It’s the best I can do, until I tell you about the erotic carrots. But that’s another chapter.
With special thanks to Mike and Jean Youngquist for all the years in the strawberry and vegetable fields. Without you would we ever have had such erotic carrots?
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