I love this picture. I love that I came to this farm when I was a child, and all the magic and beauty that awed me then, awes my children now. I love that I had the opportunity to share this place with them. This place that (during my first visit) is where I saw wild kittens, and my first live deer, turkey, vegetable garden, held my first baby chick…and ate my first truly fresh produce that we picked or dug right out of the ground. I think about how many beautiful nights catching fireflies I had running around with the most breathtaking, peaceful green backdrop anyone could ask for. I remember crying that summer when I stayed for two months because the idea of going back home-going back to my father’s house-literally almost broke my heart right in half.
The farm belongs to my grandmother’s brother, Jewell and his wife Louise. Today, they are 90 and 83 years old, respectively. They have worked hard all their lives, first on the farms of their parents, and then on the one they built together where they raised chickens and have grown vegetables for more than 60 years together. Louise saw Jewell’s picture in the paper when he returned from World War II and decided she needed to meet him, but that happened serendipitously one day when she was walking to a church event one night-he drove up in his convertible and asked her if he and his friend could take her and her friends to the event. Not long after that, they got married by a sweaty, overalls-wearing preacher who was still in his farm clothes because Jewell has always been early to everything-and they had an appointment to get married on his porch that one Sunday (Jewell declined the preacher's offer to change into clean clothes before they got started). The rest is history, and lots of it.
I never knew my mother’s family; couldn’t even tell you what all her sibling’s names are. I know there were eight of them. I met them when I was 4 and I saw them the last time when she died 18 years ago at her funeral. We don’t keep in touch, even though I know they live in the same part of Pennsylvania they have lived for literally hundreds of years (thank you, ancestry.com). My father has a sister, and I knew her growing up, but she is a lot like him, so I have never been that close to her (except when I was young and didn’t know any better). Oddly, I was always super close to my dad’s parents. Although they raised my dad in Georgia when he was little, did a brief stint in Pennsylvania and then returned to Georgia to raise my aunt (who was 15 years younger than my dad), they always lived close to us when I was growing up in Florida. So, desperate to know some family, ANY family, I took to Georgia and that branch of my family like a fish to water. We went the first time when I was a young kid-I have no idea what possessed my dad to actually want to bring us around family. He had deliberately kept my mother from hers for the 33 years they were married (her sister simply told me that they “didn’t get along”-nope-no more detail than that). I just remember that my world broke open. I had family. And they were like movie characters-with the stories, and humor, and grace, and simply fantastic north Georgia accents (and say things like "them calves was a-squallin'")! I couldn’t get enough talking to them. Luckily, they love to talk too…just like me.
The summer after that initial visit was a family reunion. We went to that. Wow I thought-even more family!! I wrote letters to Jewell and Louise for a couple years afterward, and they invited my grandmother and I to come up and spend the summer one year when I was 10 or 11. I couldn’t get there fast enough. Nothing had changed from my memory of the place-Jewell was still hilarious, Louise still the most loving woman on the planet, the veggies still delicious… I don’t know how many afternoons Jewell and I just sat overlooking the fields and talking about the world. I don’t know how many walks through the 200 acre property we took (he had sold more than half the original farm by that time), him telling me stories about his father the bootlegger, or stories about his childhood, or stories about finances (this made a huge impression on me-one conversation when he told me about his shrewd financial decisions, and said “it’s not how much you make, but what you do with what you make”). At some point during that summer-that endless, wonderful summer, he said to my grandmother, “Ader,” (her name was Ada), “I do believe that little girl is going to be somebody some day.” And how that single comment was more proud and loving than a single word my father had said to me my entire life-how at any cost I wanted to fulfill his prediction to not disappoint him. I know that at that place, it didn’t feel weird to be engulfed by giant bear hugs or to say “I love you” (my family didn’t do or say either). I know that I woke up, excited to tag along to the garden to plant seed or harvest our meals for the day, at the crack of dawn without complaint-because who knew what that day might bring. I couldn’t wait for the day’s stories, the instructions about how to plant, pick, or cook things…how to can and preserve things…how to live your life WELL. There is nothing more I can say about how that affected my world view so profoundly. That summer, I lived without the shadow of my father, and I had a glimpse of how clearly and deliberately life could be lived if a person really thought about something before making life choices. I learned that hard work gets you choices, and that having a choice lets you live the life you want to live; That having choices is the key to happiness; That choices are not always about external things-that just as often, they are about how you choose to perceive what is around you, what happens to you, and how you will let it shape you. Louise and Jewell are frugal, and have built security. When I was there that summer, and Jewell proudly had told me about his holdings, I said “Jewell, what are you going to do with all that money when you die?” and he laughed a good long time, probably appreciating my candor, and said “Well, I reckon I’ll take it with me”. They have always just lived simply, and made good choices. I also remember asking Jewell about whether or not he had ever travelled. His response was “I saw the world during World War II, and that’s all the travelling I ever wanted to do”. He doesn’t need to leave his home, because he lives in an oasis [insert tao quote about the master who never needs to leave his home]. Louise, on the other hand, decided she wanted to go to New York City (she had never left her home town). Jewell told her to “go ahead, then”, and she did with a tour group. She decided that was as much of the world as she needed to see outside home, and never travelled anywhere else except to visit her sons afterward.
So, I have these memories. These acute memories of the smell of the place, of the laughter and stories, of the love of their home that is so palpable. I want my girls to feel those things. I am tremendously sad that they might not have the longevity of experience there that I have had, but so grateful that I brought them there to plant seeds and eat country cooked meals, to hike through the rolling green hills, to marvel at the 19th century houses and barns on the land (one of which my great-grandparents lived in), to ride horses, and to catch fireflies there. I will tell you that if we had had a son, one of his names would have been Jewell, and that it would have been an honor for me to name a son after a man like my great uncle.
I’ve been thinking so much about family. I’ve been thinking about how they have been married 62 years. I’ve been thinking about how superficial we can get with what we EXPECT from our spouses and our children, and how that is a luxury of this generation. People like Louise and Jewell have arrived at a place where any subplots or undertones or their marriage are water under the granite foundation of a life well built together. I’m not sure if they ever had self pitying moments of not feeling cherished enough or not communicating in ways that didn’t hurt each other’s feelings-they were too busy getting things done, raising children and chickens, and generally approaching life like superheroes. They knew that the rule is love, and the exception was everything else. They seem to have never questioned their commitment to one another. After changing my life so much, they continue to influence my thinking-that the place they are is where I aspire to get to in my own marriage-to add some reinforcements to my emotions and keep my eyes wide enough for the big picture. I will never forget, ever, how meeting that part of my family changed the entire trajectory of my life-channeling my resolve for better, to strive for choices. In particular, I am reminded to not forget the simplest beauty, one of the greatest of which is family.
Addie, not caring that we needed to get to music class yesterday, bent over on the sidewalk and took a good, hard look at some ants working. And she said “Awwww! Mama, Look! Baby ANTS! They are SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!” and that comment just made me swell up with grateful tears (and maybe also the lady gardening, who then complimented me on my beautiful children). Kids don’t miss a thing. Worldly preoccupation doesn’t have anything on them. They are wide awake, their lenses are clear. If we learn to sit still, we return to that clarity of perception.
