Basket Case

It is officially spring. Finally. And Easter is nigh. We are normally in Miami for Easter, rejoicing in the Easter miracle by sunbathing, swimming and playing Yahtzee in the shade. This year, for the first time in many years, we are celebrating at home, with all the whims, beauty, and frustration that is springtime in Ohio. As I write, I see green grass and new growth outside ... 24 hours ago, everything was shrouded in 3 inches of snow.

It's good to be back on our farm in early spring. While it is “the muddy season” on any farm, the place is also percolating with new life. The trees wake up a little more every day, the fern peak out of the ground and begin their slow yawn upwards, and almost every day there is a new baby horse born in the barn.

I am pulling my various little Easter decorations out of storage, festooning the front door with a forsythia wreath, the table with rabbits, Easter eggs, and colorful flowers, smiling with guilty delight all the way. My father would not approve. Celebrating Easter was a complicated thing to navigate when I was little.

When I was about 8 or 9, my best friend Kammy, and I found these shiny new plastic eggs that my mother had bought. They each had a little hole at the top with a wire string. We spent an entire afternoon a couple of weeks before Easter carefully taking each egg out of the package and decorating the dogwood tree in front of our house. We were so thrilled with our handiwork. That little tree veritably radiated with pastel color. “Wait ‘til Marge and Jack see this,” I thought to myself proudly. But when my dad, a devout, daily communicant Catholic, got a hold of our project, he fumed. “Don’t you know we cannot celebrate Easter until after Good Friday?”

I was mortified with guilt. Not quite as bad as when I was caught playing mass on the front porch with some extra hosts left lying around after my parent’s in-home anniversary mass ... but still, wracked with guilt. The eggs came down, our tear-stained faces looking up into the tree branches to be sure we got every last one.

Today’s frivolous, child-centered Easter was not really a thing in our house growing up. Easter was all about The Passion, the waiting, and celebrating the miracle of Easter Sunday. Sure, we would color Easter eggs, that strong vinegar smell and food dye sticking to our fingertips all day. Every year, I went to an Easter Egg hunt at the park nearby, but never, never found a single egg because the big kids always raided the woods before I even had a chance ... either that, or I overslept, arriving late, after it was already over. Then, invariably, months after Easter, some time every summer, the real egg hunt would ensue as we all hunted fervently inside our house for the rogue rotten egg that had never been found a few months earlier. My mother, brothers and I would sniff the air of the family room like truffle dogs until we discovered the culprit, rotting comfortably in the chandelier or the toy box.

Easter was a serious, religious holiday, only to be celebrated on Easter morning with my dad belting out in Latin, “Resurrexit Sicut Dixit” (He is risen, as He said). We never received any toys on Easter, just some candy and that static, sticky, green plastic grass that kept surfacing until around Christmas. And so, when I received a shiny, Dawn Doll beauty pageant set on Easter one year -- complete with dolls, costumes, and a fashion runway and stage -- I was shocked. While my brothers all watched golf on TV to celebrate the Risen Lord, I set up my little dolls, dressing them and inserting them each into the mechanical walkway that would let them strut down the catwalk as I cranked a little lever on the side. Halleluiah, it was amazing. But then Jack got a look at the new toy and was not amused. We don’t, it seems, celebrate our Lord and Savior by playing with little dolls. (Golf was ok, though). The dolls all went back into the box, and back to the store, with me, yet again, hunched in shame that I could be so sacrilegious.

Also, Easter baskets were barely a thing growing up. More often than not, my brothers and I would wake to the baskets just kind of plopped in the middle of the dining room table. “There, knock yourselves out,” I’m sure my mother was saying, as she shuffled off to bed the night before. After a day or so, she would dump the candy from all the baskets into one large bowl to consolidate the goods, making it easier for her to access the chocolate eggs, I’m thinking.

As a young mother myself, I walked the line at Eastertime between paganism, Catholicism, capitalism, and pragmatism, stuffing my girls’ baskets with chocolate crosses, jelly beans, Polly Pocket Dolls and sunscreen for the beach. One year, at our annual Miami Easter stay, I had sent my husband out to purchase prepackaged baskets from the convenience store nearby. Mr. Buzz Kill returned with only 2 baskets, declaring that our oldest, at age 10, was “too old for Easter baskets.” I protested, but then, in the chaos of a large family beach vacation, never got around remedying the problem, or organizing a “big girl” basket for her ... until it was too late. There we were, on Easter morning, with my three girls excitedly looking for their Easter baskets hidden in our hotel room. One found hers in the shower. The next found hers behind the window drapes. And there was my oldest ... searching and searching, with me sweating and pacing back and forth, scolding myself for having not solved this issue in time. “Mom, where’s my basket?” she asked, befuddled that she couldn’t find it. “Um ... sweetie ...” I stammered. I don’t even remember the rest, except that the poor thing fled the room, spending the rest of Easter crying and giving me and my husband evil glances at the pool. It was awful. We deserved it. Once again, I was filled with Eastertime shame, not because I wasn’t holy, but because I just didn’t have my shit together as a mother. Ugh. Sure, she’s forgiven me, but I just can’t let it go.

And so, some twenty years later, I’ve just mailed out an Easter basket to my eldest, now a grown adult. In it, she will find some trinkets, some candy, some practical little gifts, all penitential efforts to purge my guilt from years ago.

But in this Easter season of redemption, forgiveness, resurrection, and renewal, perhaps it is time to forgive myself, move on, and let it go. Just as soon as I throw away my hair shirt.

The Game of Golf

There is a home movie of me. It is 1968. I am about four years old at the driving range at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, West Virginia. My brothers are there, too, in their goldenrod-colored shorts and tube socks. I am thrashing away at a golf ball, rivulets of sweat running down my bright, apple-red face. My dad, tall, lanky, just starting to develop the paunch that gave him his signature water tower silhouette he was famous for later in life, is maybe 49 or 50 and he is giving me pointers. The air is thick with humidity and, although the 8-millimeter movie has no sound, I can just hear the cicadas singing in the valleys below. Looking at my dad on film I wonder ... when did he take up golf? And why? Surely, he didn’t get started until after World War II. He was the only son of working-class Irish immigrants. How did he find his way to this ridiculous sport?

Jack was a rather serious man, but never took golf too seriously. A member of the Greatest Generation who lived through The Great Depression, World War II, and raising a big family through the Sixties, he realized that golf is a game, not worth getting one’s shorts in a bunch. Perhaps he found that golf is a subtle way of saying, “Life is not all wide fairways and easy greens, my friends.”

Over the years, Jack introduced all nine of his children and even my mother to golf. He never joined a golf club or a league, but each summer would lug the tribe of us down to the hot hollers of West Virginia to golf. He may have found golf was a way to “peek under the hood” of each of us to see what we were all about? He must have known that a day spent golfing with someone gives you a window into someone’s true nature. Is he honest? How patient is he with himself and others? How is her humor? How does she handle the pressure and embarrassment of people watching you give it your all and only move the bloody ball a few feet forward ... if at all? How deep is her vocabulary of swear words (mine is an abyss)?

My dad would take me golfing with him every now and then, complimenting me on my “natural swing.” (It turns out, my swing is a happy accident, benefitting from my spinal curve from scoliosis, but it was dear that he only saw the swing). He was not a verbose man, not one to have deep talks or shower one with praise. But while golfing, the whole afternoon would be filled with gentle encouragements: “That’s the right idea,” “Nice and easy, like sweeping the porch,” “Eyes on the ball, head down,” “Bend those knees, like you’re sitting on a bar stool,” (could there be a more Irish coaching tip?) ... and the inevitable, “That’s enough, pick up and let’s go to the next hole” and “Don’t keep track of your score, it will break your spirit.”

I don’t think Jack even knew his handicap (nor I mine because the whole process feels like an SAT math problem). He consistently golfed 100, which is respectable. Plain old crappy golf takes a long time and to become a good golfer with a low handicap takes a lot of practice = a very, very long time. Golf was low on Jack’s priority list, way, way behind his Big Three: Faith, Family, Work. (I am often suspect of someone with a low handicap, honestly. I mean ... Come on, aren’t you needed somewhere more important than the fairway seven days a week, sir?)

Several years ago, in an effort to better my own golf game, I was convinced to join a women’s league. With my dad’s compliments from childhood ringing in my ears, I went into this league experience feeling rather confident, wearing my snazzy new golf skort and sparkling fresh shoes. “Oh, yes, I’ve been golfing my whole life,” I told the ladies. But what I didn’t realize is that when you’re playing with serious golfers, those who actually keep score – like really keep score (whiffs, flubs and all) – well, my golf score climbed up there. It turns out I am not a good golfer at all.

During one round early on, I was paired with a crabby old bitty of a woman who seemed hell bent on, I don’t know, making me cry? The entire round, she reprimanded me for chatting, for casting my shadow in her lie, (so I guess shadow puppets are a no-no, too?), for taking too long to find my godforsaken ball – so much so that she made me tee it off again. Sure, those are the “actual rules,” but clearly, she was not worried about “breaking my spirit.” She scowled and trudged through her round as if this “game” was a crappy job and I was the new hire, ripe for hazing. The entire round I had that woman on my shoulder like a vulture, sneering at me. The more I worried about her, about my shitty whiffs and flubs, the worse I got. That death march continued for an eternity with me hacking and whacking away, like an old timey prisoner breaking stones, until my arms finally gave out. Yes, that mean ole fuddy duddy did make me cry. She probably went home to her hairless cat, feeling satisfied that she broke another golfer wannabe.

And so, since then, I’ve retreated to golfing mostly with family and a few close friends. When the stakes are low, golfing makes me feel like I’m with my dad, now that he’s gone nearly twenty-five years. It makes me appreciate nature, being outside, just like he did. I love the soft glimmer of the grass in the early morning as I M-F my drive, sending it soaring into another hole’s fairway, n’er to be seen again. I love the long, quiet shadows of late afternoon golf as a hush falls over the green while I putt ... and putt ... and putt again, urging the ball into the hole with a limbo-like dance that only sometimes works. I enjoy taking a close look at the trees surrounding the fairway ... because I spend a lot of time in their dappled shade, bouncing my ball off their strong, stoic trunks or trying to chip my way back to where I’m supposed to be.

I will occasionally golf with my husband, who came to the game only about twenty years ago and now is Sir Golf A Lot. For someone who eschews “the rules” in life in general, he is a strict rule follower in golf, which is a buzz kill, honestly. He does not appreciate my antics on the golf course. No fart noises on the backswing? What’s fun about that?

As I write this, I am unpacking from that annual family vacation where, by some clerical error, I won the annual Women’s Open. I played rounds with my daughters, my sister, my cousin and even a couple of my brothers, which was a treat. When they were adolescents, my brothers were golf hot heads, taking each swing seriously, easily frustrated to the point of throwing clubs into the woods or cracking them over a knee. Watching them swing away ... or hunt and peck for those balls sliced into the “love grass,” they are much more mellow. They have my dad’s same balding pate, sweating in the insufferable West Virginia heat. I think how happy he would be that we are all continuing this tradition of playing golf together. Much like his tradition/torture of gathering us all to do yard work together – an equally time-intensive endeavor, filled with sweat, tears and swearing – this tradition is not really about the golf at all. It’s about just spending a few hours together, taking Jack’s lessons from golf forward into life: keep a sense of humor, enjoy the scenery, don’t keep score, and, when the going gets too rough, pick up and move on.  I mean, it is a game, isn’t it? It’s better than changing a poopy diaper, paying bills, snaking a drain or going to war, for chrissakes. It’s a game. A long, difficult, embarrassing, humbling, enlightening, beautiful, ridiculous game. But with the right people … worth it.

Slow Dancing With Susan

July 23, 2019

I am swaying back and forth in a loose embrace. There’s no music, just the soft humming of the two of us, accompanying ourselves with a little improvised ditty. Just feet from us, my niece is talking earnestly, leaning in, consulting her notebook. I look over my dance partner’s shoulder every now and then to wave at my niece. I add a few points here and there: “But if we alternate between Ativan and Seroquel, that seems to keep her kind of calm.” More humming ... “If we put her on a low dose of antibiotics to prevent recurring UTI’s, we’d better put her on a good probiotic.” Swaying back and forth ...

We are in a psychiatrist’s office with a paid caregiver, my niece and myself. And I am slow dancing with my sister, Susan.

Susan is in the mid-to-late stage of Alzheimer’s. She is 69 years old and can no longer read, watch TV, cook, dress herself, shower herself adequately, go to the bathroom by herself. She is frightened much of the time: of clouds, of the wind moving the bushes in the back of her yard, of any sudden noises or movements. She is hallucinating more and more from the medicines she is on, picking up things that are not there, worrying about people who do not exist. It is exhausting and heartbreaking to witness.

She looks great to someone who doesn’t know her. She’s lost so much weight, she is the size she was in college, and her mismatched clothes now hang off her narrow frame. But she is not well. Her eyes dart, looking for the familiar when nothing and almost no one is. She blessedly remembers me, my siblings, her kids ... for now ...

Susan is my older sister, or rather, one of them. She is fifteen years older than me and has been one of a team of powerful, smart, capable older sisters who were co-mothers to me my whole life. She was a nurse, a post 1960’s hippie who was forever ready to pitch in, raise money, organize her coworkers, her family, her community. Always helping others fix their problems. “Need a therapist referral? Done. Looking for a specialist in scoliosis? Got it. You’re painting your nursery before the baby arrives? On the way over with paintbrushes and a ladder.” She would swoop into everything she did with energy, smarts, and efficiency to observe, assess and do. She thrived on it. 

I miss her. The real her. I miss reaching out to her with news or a problem or concern and feeling better about whatever it was afterward. I miss her calling me on the phone, “Mary ... Susan. What are you doing for lunch?” I miss planning family events with her: Christmas, birthdays, family vacations. I miss her utter faith in me and my abilities. I miss her talent to organize and fix problems and I want her to fix this. Fix this disease. Fix herself. Make this stop.

She always hated being on meds, though she eventually was on an antidepressant. Now she is on that, plus an anxiety pill, an antipsychotic pill, a pill to help her fall sleep, a pill to help her stay asleep. Each pill has its quirky side effects that may or may not be worth it. And just when we decide on a medicine, her disease changes and she’s struggling again. Over and over this happens. For years now. Six long, brutal years.

Susan was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease at age 63, though we realize that she was symptomatic at 59? 58? Erratic behavior, unexplained comments, more drinking. She just wasn’t herself. Then, her husband of 40 years got sick, so sick and died quickly, before anyone could even digest the news ...  was that months ago or 100 years ago? Time is a blur these days. The weeks since his death have been full of suffering, confusion, tears, and worry for her and her tribe of family and friends as her Alzheimer’s Disease is accelerating at heartbreaking speed.

I want this dance to stop, for her to catch her breath and come back to us, fully healthy, bright and smart and capable and funny. I want the dance to be one of carefree joy from before all of this, twirling to Sinatra at the Sands in my parents’ back room, grooving to My Sharona at family weddings. Once Susan started to get sick, dancing was her escape. Hiding in plain sight, she was just one of the many sweaty bodies on the dance floor, smiling and jumping around like everyone else. She could have fun and not have to worry about keeping up, following a conversation, remembering someone’s name. She could just move with the music, dancing like no one was watching. Only everyone was, with worried eyes and heavy hearts. 

As Alzheimer’s enveloped my once bright, shiny sister, she became enamored of the movie Mama Mia, thrilling to its sound track over and over again. We would watch it in my family room and dance together to the song Dancing Queen, singing and laughing loudly. “This is fantastic!” she would say. “Have our sisters seen this?!” After a while, the dance simplified to a sway back and forth on the couch, holding hands, feet tossing to and fro in time to the music. 

Now, in this office, she is leaning on me, rocking back and forth, barely moving.

Months later, she is settled in at a memory care unit and finds her groove again, moving to whatever music is playing on TV, at sing-a-longs or to the sound track of music her kids made her on her iPhone: Love Me Do; Blowing in the Wind; and yes, Dancing Queen. When she dances here, she’s acting very much like herself, full of vigor and joy. She’s working the room, making sure everyone is having as much fun as she. Again, it is exhausting to watch because it feels like she is indeed acting, struggling so hard to be “normal.”

A year and a half later, when Covid ripped through her facility, Susan’s legs went out from underneath her, her coordination gone. She recovered from Covid, remarkably, but the dancing stopped. She kept trying to get up, to be a part of it all. “We all know you are terrified. We are, too,” I would think. The spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. Watching her from a remote camera in her room I would think, “Enough now. Stop trying to perform for us, to make us all think you are okay, happy, yourself. And who is there to dance with you? Enough now.”

Finally, little by little, Susan slowed down. At the end, a few of us were able to come in and sit with her and all that was left to dance were her eyes, open and darting around the room until her body finally went to sleep. The dancing finally, blessedly, sadly stopped. Shhhhh. 

Thank you, Susan, for all the dances we had throughout my life, before and after your diagnosis. At weddings, family vacations, in my family room in front of the TV and yes, even in the doctor’s office, holding you close, rubbing your back, calming both our fears ... my sister, my friend, my confidant, my mentor, my co-mother, my Dancing Queen. 

I Wanna Iguana

“What is that odd smell?” I thought to myself, stepping into the apartment. It smelled swampy, frothy, vaguely fishy. I followed the scent to the kitchen. The air was heavy and humid with the dank odor. There, standing at the stove, enveloped in the putrid steam, was my husband. 

“Hey! I’ve got about ten pounds of iguana boiling here. I thought we’d make iguana tacos tonight.”

I am an omnivore. Growing up in a big family, I was expected to eat whatever was put before me. I’m a “good eater.” I am a proponent of “slow food,” local food, and sustainable practices. And, while I am not a hunter myself, I appreciate those who hunt mindfully, consuming or sharing the meat, walking humbly on the earth, giving thanks and participating in the circle of life. Also, I am married to The Fishmonger. I am used to him walking in the door with something completely random and me having to figure out how to cook it: cod cheeks, blowfish, squid, octopus, crayfish, whole fish of any kind. Being married to The Fishmonger is like being on a cooking game show. “Contestants, are you ready? Get set! Figure out how to COOK THAT!” 

Bottom line: if I’m hungry enough and willing to figure out how to cook it,  I’ll choke it back ... 

But iguana? 

Green iguanas are an invasive species in south Florida. Over the years, folks who had second thoughts about owning them as pets have set them loose in the lush, tropical environment and they have flourished to the point of pushing out the indigenous species of brown iguanas. Green iguanas are a problem. They are eating vegetation and procreating faster than they can be eliminated. The same thing is going on in the Florida Everglades with pythons. With no natural predators there, they have propagated like post WWII families and now the baby boomers of the Everglades have become a serious problem. In fact, The state of Florida pays registered hunters good money to catch and kill invasive pythons.

Which brings me back to my husband, Iguana Dundee. Not one to chill out on the beach for more than a podcast episode, Dundee will often arrange little adventures for himself while we holiday in Florida: deep sea fishing, bone fishing, checking out what the local fishing charters are bringing in. This year he was invited to go iguana hunting. With all the togetherness of the past year of Covid, the time and space apart was much appreciated, thank you. “Buh-bye, now,” I nodded as I sipped my morning coffee. “I can’t miss you until you go.”

We had encouraged my brother, sister-in-law and niece to come down to this part of Florida, enticing them with descriptions of the quiet beaches and tasty local food. I’m certain this is not what they had in mind. I peered into the turbid, roiling pot to inspect the iguana meat. Legs and tails danced to and fro in the bubbly water. Scrunching up my nose in revulsion, I snapped on the exhaust fan. “It smells like swamp ass in here.” The reptile parts in the pot were a jarring addition to this posh kitchen with its stainless-steel appliances. I exited to the balcony with my brother’s family, taking in the spectacular view of Miami twinkling in the distance and inhaled the salty air to cleanse my palate.

“My guide said to boil the legs and tails for twenty minutes, skin the meat and prepare it just like you would chicken,” Dundee said from inside, excitedly tending his cauldron. “I’ve got twenty more pounds of meat in the cooler!”

“For the record,  I am not skinning anything,” I shouted back into the kitchen. 

Dundee left to take a shower because, you know, he smelled like a dead iguana and before I knew it, my sister-in-law and I were wrist deep in iguana parts, picking meat off of little legs and tails. White and firm, it had the texture somewhere between frog legs and chicken. I noted that the tail meat was striped, just like the iguana skin itself, which struck me as kind of cool. Who knew?

We chopped onion, garlic, peppers, sprinkled taco spices into the pan and stirred in the iguana meat. Feeling like I was entering into a frat house hazing ceremony, I shouted out to my daughters, “Someone order a couple of pizzas as a backup plan!” I swigged my wine.

One by one, our three daughters kept circling through the kitchen, like curious sharks, sneering at the concoction on the stovetop. My brother cracked another beer and mused that this would be a great business opportunity: use the ample supply of local iguana to start a taco truck on the beach.  “We’ll call it I Wanna Iguana!” he shouted, pleased with himself.

I waited for the pizza to come and poured myself another glass of wine.  “What is taking him so long?” my daughter Flora cried, getting more hangry as the minutes ticked by, fervently refreshing her app.

“The hell with it,” I declared. “I’m starving and I’m now officially drunk. Let’s do this.” Setting the table for dinner, I rallied the troops. “This is no different than any other meat or fish you eat. It’s just that this animal was in someone’s backyard this afternoon, about twenty miles from here, scaring their shitso. And Dad killed it. Big whoop.” I doused my iguana taco with picante sauce and raised it to the table. “Eat local, ya’ll.”

Emboldened by wine and hunger, I pushed the image of the iguana’s reptilian mug out of mind and bravely took a bite. It was a bit slippery, kind of bland, really. Better than I feared, a little tough. It was food. It was edible. I was hungry. Nuff said.  I swallowed hard and  took another generous gulp of my wine. “Where the hell is that pizza?”

That night, I woke up with a fever, chills, and visions of green iguanas dancing in my stomach. Just as I was about to panic – did we consume some awful, rare iguana toxin? -- I remembered it was twelve hours after my second Covid vaccine. Bad timing for an iguana tasting party. So much for going to bed early and pushing liquids. Well, there was that wine ...

I am certain there is a better way to prepare iguana; my attempt was admittedly half-hearted. Plenty of people eat iguana. It actually is a pretty lean meat, contains more protein than chicken, and Lord knows it’s plentiful. Restaurants in New York (before Covid times) were paying $100 a pound for iguana meat. Some day, I would like to try out a good restaurant’s version of iguana tacos. 

For now, it’s all too soon to think about. And besides, I’m resting up, getting ready for the next Fishmonger Cooking Challenge. God help me if he walks in with python meat.

Papa Was a Garden Gnome

We have a garden at our farm. Not like my suburban garden, full of hostas, spiderwort and hydrangea, but a “Garden garden.” The previous owners were real farmers and had a huge, lovely vegetable garden, overflowing with tomatoes, squash, beans, and a beautiful strawberry patch. While I’m a halfway decent suburban gardener, I’m a lousy farm gardener because – guess what? – you have to tend a farm garden. The first year we tried, we ended up with a weed garden that had a few spindly vegetables fighting for existence.

Whenever I am working in the garden, I think of my dad. A son of Irish immigrants, he had a deep love for the land: nurturing it, fiddling around with the soil and whatnot. It’s not like he was a farmer by any means. He as a lawyer, an estate planner, a numbers guy. But he loved a beautiful yard, a large expanse of freshly cut grass with beautiful flowers tucked in around it. 

When I was two years old, he moved our family of eleven into a house on an acre of land in Rocky River, which is a good-sized plot for a suburb. Our family spent the next 33 years working every square inch of that yard, weeding it, cutting it, planting it, trimming it. With 9 kids and an ever-growing army of grandchildren providing free labor, Big Jack would dream up all sorts of projects to direct us. Dad had 5 sons who were coming of age at the height of the mid-60’s. Any parent knows that a busy teen is a tired teen and a tired teen is much less likely to be a naughty teen. (My brothers proved that axiom wrong, but still it was a good thought.) So it was Jack’s mission to keep us all tired.

Every Saturday growing up, our yard was abuzz with activity. My older brothers were in charge of heavier manual labor – hauling grass clippings, cutting the grass (another never-ending chore). My job was to weed the front myrtle patch. And the grass. And the flower beds. It was a Sisyphean chore, never, ever done. I’m sure Jack sprinkled weed seeds around that garden at night, just to keep us all busy weeding the damned thing all summer long.

I was the only person I knew whose job it was to weed the “wild grass” from the front law. On scorching summer days, as friends would pedal by our house on their way to the pool or Dairy Queen, I would be bent over, like a crop worker picking cotton, a hot sunburn cooking at the base of my back where my t-shirt would ride up. Hard work for a gal who was up until 1 a.m. watching Johnny Carson with her mom (there are benefits to being the youngest of 9). Any friend who wanted to play got roped into weeding with me so as to free me from my chores sooner.  By the end of the summer, they too had the “Mark of Jack,” that same low back sunburn.

Nothing pleased Jack more than a yard full of child laborers whom he rewarded every Saturday with freshly grilled “skin on wieners.” To this day I have no idea what those are, but of course it always sounded dirty. They were delicious, but after slaving in a hot, humid yard all day, sunburnt, freckled and dehydrated, I would have eaten a boot.

One of my other jobs in the yard was planting little pockets of flower gardens around. Because I was the youngest and smallest, Jack thought it was cute that I could fit under the bushes, squeeze behind the grill, duck in just under a window. I would battle the midgies and mosquitos and then, like an urchin chimney sweep, I’d emerge all dirt covered and sweaty, but the task was done --- a lovely little pop of color just outside the dining room window. A little floral surprise just under the sweep of the pine tree limbs. A tiny begonia bonanza under the mushroom lights over on the swale. I have to admit, it did look pretty as I lay with an ice pack on my head, applying Noxzema to my sunburn in the air-conditioned living room.

God, I hated working in that yard. But of course now, I am thankful for it. I am thankful for the time together with my family, all of us pissing and moaning and cursing under our breath. Talk about bonding. I am thankful for the lesson of hard work, working together for a shared goal. I am thankful for the lessons of cherishing the land, walking gently upon the earth, reducing, reusing, recycling. (A man who was years ahead of his time, he had 3 large compost piles at the back of the property to recycle grass clippings, leaves and yard waste.) And above all, as my nieces so beautifully said at my dad’s funeral almost 20 years ago, I am thankful for a dad who was wise enough to know that all the manual labor wasn’t about the yard at all. It was about us. About keeping a large family busy, engaged, in touch, humble. And yes, tired.

This Father’s Day, with the help of real farmers who know what they’re doing, we’ve figured out the vegetable garden (raised beds and plastic covering!). As I plant my little pots, weed my garden and look out over the awesome beauty of the sun rising over the mist covered hills of our farm, I will think of Jack, smiling down on me, arms akimbo with that big Irish grin. He would never say, “told you so,” or anything like that, but rather an understated “God love you,” or “Keep the faith.”

Thanks, Dad. Happy Father’s Day. You would so love this farm.

Listen ... I'm not Amish

"I just want to stop and look at this farm while we're out" he said. "Oh for chrissakes," I thought. I had been down this road before.

Five years prior, my husband, brought me and my three daughters to a godforsaken, wouldn't-hit-a-dog-in-the-ass-with-it, muddy, lumpy farm in northern/mid-Ohio. At the time, he was wild for a goat farm...

"We should get ahead of this growing market. It's the fastest growing protein in the country. We could raise goats. Get a jump on the competition, corner the market, be the goat gods."

So, there we were, trudging through this desolate property, and the girls are going wild with the prospect of owning a farm. Here's the scene...

Daughter #1: "Dad, can I get puppy on the farm?!"

Him: "Sure!"

Daughter #2: "Can I get a pig, Dad?! I looove pigs. Omg, they're so cute! Like Babe...”

Him: "Sure, why not?!"

Daughter #3: "I want ducks ... ducklings! Ooooo. Ducklings, Dad!"

Him: "Ok, ok. Yeah."

Me: "Um .... wait. We are just looking everyone. No one is getting a pig ... or a duck, or a puppy. Or a goat, for that matter. Just slow down everyone. Slow. The heck down."

A farm? Really? A farm.

Later that night, after putting exuberant, ecstatic, delusional 4, 7 and 9 year old little girls to bed, visions of farm animals dancing in their heads, I sat down next to my husband, looked him straight in the eyes and spoke my truth:

"Sweetheart, I get it. It get it that you have long had farm dreams. I get that you want a connection to the land and that you want the girls to have that too." He nodded, his eyes dancing with excitement as he picked the dirt (or was that goat shit?) off his sneakers. Then I lowered the boom ... "But, when I look at that filthy, stinky farm, all that mud, that piece of crap house that feels like an Alice in Wonderland reject house ... when I think of, God help me, owning farm animals ... Pigs for chrissakes ... all I see is work for me. Me. Not you. "

I started to gather steam. "So, what's the plan? We are going to move from our suburban home to be ... what? Farmers? I don't know anything about farms or farming.  And frankly, neither do you. Maybe we should start with you pulling a weed or two here in the ‘burbs. You don't even cut the grass, for God's sake."

You see, my husband is an entrepreneur and he's an expert at delegating. He is the original Tom Sawyer. I could just see me slaving away, mucking stalls and wiping my brow like a Dust Bowl era heroine, while he would breeze in and out of "the farm" carefree and happy. Nope. That was definitely not happening.

"I get it," I continued. "I get it for you. But me? I am not that person, dude. Not me." He nodded, silent, the glimmer going out of his eyes. "Look, I get that YOU want this. If you’re going ahead with this, you and your Amish wife will be very happy together. Knock yourself out. You God bless you. I'm out."

Sorry, Babe, it is what it is. Dodged that bullet.

Fast forward ... 10 years later. We have a farm.