Stuff

It's January, and the last thing you might expect in the heart of winter is a post about a tornado. But a couple of weeks ago, an F2 tornado whipped through a rural area south of here and destroyed the home of a couple who are members of the church my husband and I belong to. The tornado tore the roof off their house, and although all four walls were still standing, the house is a total loss. We spent some time last Saturday helping with clean-up, and I had some (half-formed) thoughts to sort out.

The first thing we did was at the church's family life center, where the couple had brought things to dry out. My job was to unpack dishes, wipe them down, and leave them on a table so the woman could re-pack them for storage. I felt a little bad because I found it sort of fun, kind of like opening Christmas presents. She has a lot of neat, unique dishes. Some of them were obviously pieces that had been given to her by older family members, like a couple of small china bowls with a really lovely pattern of violets. I have no idea what the bowls were for (maybe finger bowls?) but they were SO pretty. As I was wiping down her dishes, I started thinking what people would see if the contents of my kitchen cabinets were packed into boxes and spread out on folding tables in a church gymnasium. The answer is - not much. Most of what I have is pretty functional, and most of it is not all that pretty or valuable. I do have a partial set of stoneware that was on my wedding registry years ago, but we didn't get the whole set. I also have a little collection of creamers that I put together during a phase in which my mother and I enjoyed going "junking." Some of them are kind of neat.

But....during Christmas break (before the tornado), I was trying to make room in my cabinets for another functional piece (a grain mill, which I might talk about in a different post), and I thought, "Why am I keeping these creamers? And why did I buy this set of handmade mugs from a student at the university's art sale? I'm never going to use them. Why do I keep them?"

Later, we went over to the site of the damaged house to help with clean-up. I got the job of scooping up mushy drywall scraps and insulation from the living room/kitchen floor to be carted out to a trash heap. (I discovered something about myself - I am a compulsive "cleaner." I would have stayed all day or until all the mess was scooped out, if I hadn't had to take my husband's wishes into consideration, ha ha.) Most of what I saw while scooping was just the soggy remains of the ceiling, but I did come across a few items, like a picture of the family in a frame with a broken glass, or the remains of a potted plant. It's amazing to think how all that destruction happened in seconds. It's also sobering to think these houses that we think are so solid are basically just a collection of toothpicks and cardboard, no match for Nature when she gets serious.

I may not have pretty dishes, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't be a lot of "stuff" to go through if a tornado hit this house. I look around the rooms and there is so much stuff we've accumulated over the years. Functional stuff like the canisters full of beans and rice. Outdated stuff like the collection of CDs we haven't listened to since digital music came along. Stuff that other people have given us, like the antique typewriter from my dad. I have big weaknesses for three categories of stuff:

• Books - I think I've kept almost every book that came into my possession; I have nearly every picture book and chapter book that belonged to my kids, even the ones I didn't like that much.
• Fabric - I have, over the years, accumulated a lot of fabric that I intended to make into clothes but somehow never had time for. Now my kids are grown up and my husband is retired, and no one really needs me to sew for them. But the fabric remains.
• Family pictures and memorabilia - This is another thing I didn't have time for - yet. I've kept all kinds of stuff from our family vacations, planning to make scrapbooks so we can relive the fun. But right now it's all stuffed in boxes and bags, waiting for "someday."

Again, I ask myself, "Why do I keep all these things? Would I really miss them--even the brochures I picked up on our trip to Yellowstone--if something happened and I lost them?" There's a big move toward minimalism these days, and I understand the appeal. But still, I sort of like to have more than one set of placemats to switch around once in a while. And some of the creamers are really pretty, even if they are in a box where I see them maybe once a year.

I don't know. The relationship with stuff is complicated. Maybe it takes something like a tornado to clarify that relationship. While wiping down dishes, I accidentally let a small piece that was tucked inside a larger piece fall out, and it broke. I felt terrible about it, and while I was apologizing to the woman who had already lost so much, she said something to the effect of, "Things are just things. I think the Lord has given me a view of what really matters through all this."

Amen.

It's About Time!

For most of my life, I've lived in the same rural community. I've had a couple of stints of living and working in a couple of different towns, and I spent about a year and a half in Kansas working on my graduate degree. But the greater part of my 57 years has been spent in a small corner of the world tucked up against the Ozark Mountains, where lies some really beautiful scenery.

Sad to say, I haven't really taken advantage of that fact the way you might expect a person to. A case in point is the Strawberry Bluff, which offers a nearly 180-degree view of the Arkansas River Valley some 30-40 miles away. I've lived within five miles of this awesome spot all my life and had never been to see it - until yesterday.

As often happens, we made this visit on a whim. We had gone to town for a short errand, and on the way home, my husband said, "Let's go for a drive." The day was chilly, thanks to lingering clouds, but it wasn't too cold to hike the short distance from the road out to the edge of the bluff. I don't know what's more fascinating to me - the panoramic view or the massive bluffs.

We didn't stay very long because it was chilly and Jeff didn't have a jacket. So there wasn't much time to sit and take it all in, which is what I felt that I wanted to do. I'm a slow thinker (ha!), and I need to be able to sit and look at something for a while to process it. But now I know where it is, and it's not going to be another 57 years before I go again! I need to remember that work shouldn't take over our lives and that I need to take small moments to treasure this beautiful place where I have the privilege to live.

Life....Abundantly

Later today, I am going to cut up this pomegranate. Not because I want to eat it, although I'm sure I will. No, my plans for this pomegranate are to try to plant some of the seeds in hopes of being able to grow a pomegranate tree.

Will it work? I don't know. I've read online that pomegranates are relatively easy to grow from seeds, BUT that it is unlikely that the fruit produced by the seedling tree will be the same as the original fruit. Why bother, then?

That's the question I pondered this morning in the dark when I woke up at 6:00 (school habits remain, even on Christmas break), and I came up with an explanation that sounds a little weird but is exactly what I think is going on with me right now.

The news is so depressing these days - tensions that could lead to unnecessary war, impeachment hearings and questions about adherence to the processes outlined in the constitution, immigrant children being separated from their parents and the trauma from that stretching into the future, policies that roll back all the protections for the environment and that ignore the damage we are doing to the world. And that's just the national picture; add on the little frustrations from work and family, and it was would so easy to despair.

As all this is going on, I find myself compelled to grow things. Part of that could be explained, I suppose, by the fact that we are trying to get our farm business in the black. I think it's more than that, though, because pomegranate is not going to be a viable farm product. I don't need three fig trees. Why am I planning to pay better attention to the ginger pots in the aquaponics house? Why am I trying to come up with a rotation that will keep something growing in the herb garden all summer - and all winter? Why am I feeding that bowl of sourdough starter on the cabinet every day when I bake maybe once a week, less as school gets going? Why do I have three jars of kombucha brewing in my bedroom (the warmest part of the house)?

The answer I found this morning was that all these things are life and hope, and I crave them. Even in January, when the apple trees are dormant, they promise life; in the spring, they will put on buds that will uncurl into soft green leaves and maybe those beautiful flowers and maybe, this year, the first little green apples. The bright green lettuces in the aquaponics house and the little outdoor greenhouse have a short life span, but they look so cheery, whether they are waiting to be set out or are grown into a full-size head ready for harvest. Even my kombucha, with its creepy-looking SCOBY suspended in the jar, is teeming with innumberable bacteria and yeast, sharing with me the delicious by-product of their life.

So I will go and prune the apples in the next week or so, and I will water the lettuces and feed the sourdough starter, trying to do my part to nurture and support that life. I will clean off those pomegranate seeds and stick them in potting soil, hoping to see a pale green stem bending its back to break through the surface in a few days. Little green things - the antidote to despair.