Appeared in Pioneer Press Newspapers
May 31, 2010
The poet tells us that April is the cruelest month. Then again, he weren’t from around here.
The cruelest month for us this year was May (though there are still seven good chances coming up to top it!). But perhaps the Fates can be forgiven for getting their timing crossed, as April was what May is supposed to be, while May played like April – until it became August.
In any case, May is when reality hit. Reality or, as it is alternatively known, Despair.
We’d been doing some chores around the farm – preliminary stuff; not actual farming; just some gardening, some cleaning up. As we were calling it a day, we went to close the big barn door. And it’s a BIG barn door, a good 15 feet high. Slides on a track. It was open just a couple of feet. The door ran down the track just fine till it reached this point. Then it mysteriously stopped, though nothing was visibly obstructing it.
So, I pulled it back about six feet to get a good running start. It glided along smoothly. Then jammed. Pulled it back a few feet further. Same thing. One more time, a few feet further.
Then disaster. Then despair.
Lis said, “The door’s struck in the dirt.” Well, that’s impossible. It runs on this track, see. It can’t touch the ground. Silly girl.
Yeah, it was stuck in the dirt.
So, we dug at it for a while. Seemed to have freed enough space beneath. But, no go. Being stuck in the dirt meant it was off the track. And several hundred pounds of great big door were too much for us to slide back in by hand.
And that’s when it struck. I’d grown accustomed to the nature part being overwhelmingly bigger than I am. That’s just a short definition of life, and that I could live with. But now I was finding that the man-made part was beyond me, too. And that’s when the voice asked: “What the hell are you doing owning a farm?”
And I found I didn’t have such a convincing answer.
And then a memory came drifting back, de profundis. Back in October, I’d visited the farm with Jefferson (not his real name), a builder of excellent repute, who’d already done what I hoped to do in becoming a successful gentleman farmer, to get a professional opinion as to whether or not we were crazy in taking on this property.
“Are you handy?” he’d asked, as we examined some romantical ruination.
“Not in the least,” I replied. “But I’m ready to be.”
And that was true enough. Just like I was ready to play the guitar when I picked up one the kids had lying around about a year ago. I would, indeed, be happy to do either . . . if only it didn’t require all that learning how.
I could have learned plenty about handy-manning as a kid. My dad is an all-purpose fixer-upper. He not only gets the job done, he actually enjoys doing it. I, therefore, hadn’t the need. Nor the inclination. Nor the skill.
But, I figured, now’s the time. I can do it. People do, right?
But, standing there, at the base of our gigantic, broken door, the spell was broken and I remembered, “Oh, yeah – I hate this stuff.”
While it’s neither the proverbial rocket science nor brain surgery, it may as well be to me. I will improve at the handy arts over time. The farm will make me. But it’ll never be natural. And I’m sure I’ll take some pleasure over time in gradually becoming less loathsomely incapable. But I really don’t see this stuff ever becoming an actual pleasure, like it is for Dad. The upside, of course, is that he can still have the satisfaction of coming out and easily fixing things that have flummoxed his over-educated, under-utile son.
So maybe there’s the silver lining – the everything-happens-for-a-reason of it. The cosmic balance is restored.
Shantih. Shantih. Shantih.
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