“Life Is No Brief Candle To Me”

The leaves are unfurled. The view from our kitchen window is green. Living in the woods means that we essentially live in a tree house: everywhere we look there are either leaves or tree trunks. In the summer months it means that the house is darker, but I would not trade this feeling of solidarity with nature even for the light.

We are, quite literally, knee deep in spring work. This morning there was no Sunday breakfast for us or the dogs. Lyle arrived at nine with a trailer stuffed with hay. Our in-between delivery. The sheep are on pasture but still come up each evening with the aid of shepherdess and sheep dogs. Their bellies full of new sweet grasses, they aren’t as interested in the dried grass variety but, as they are ruminants, we have to have the midnight snack available.

Once the big blocks of hay have made their way into the loft above the barn to be stacked, the elevator laboriously hauled back onto its hangers, we quickly grab a few eggs from the hen houses for breakfast before heading off to a bee-keeping class.

As I write, I hear the engine of the ATV over the excited barking of Muir, coming up the hill toward the house. Paul is bringing our “mobile garden” to be filled with soil, manure and tomato plants. This year he has added a large tray for growing basil so that we can have enough pesto to keep our pasta happy during the winter months. This wagon will be dragged around the fields following the sun. And Muir.

We have peas shooting up toward their fencing and bunchy paper bags of seed potatoes plant this afternoon in the moist black soil of our waiting garden.

This farming life spills into everything in our lives. One of the most important lessons I have learned is to keep my word and show up.

Each morning I have to bring two of my ewes Meloxicam- the sheep equivalent of Ibuprofen. I carefully pour out six tablets for each of them, mix them with a bit of cracked corn and then try to isolate Mrs. Chubs and Daisy to give them, and only them, their meds. Without these, they would be limping and uncomfortable. Every morning I have to show up.

I’ve just finished playing a five gig concert series. Each week for the past four months I have driven to rehearsals. I have practiced daily with devotion. During the concert series I finished teaching, stuffed a performance top over my crazy hair, loaded the car and headed to the venue. I committed to this, I needed to keep my word and always show up – in all of the ways that entailed.

On Mondays, the only day I don’t teach, I cook, online, with Emerson. She appears on the screen with the big green Holiday Chef’s hat that I gave her perched on her beautiful head. She grins at me with newly braced teeth. We talk about cooking, classrooms, and life. When dinner is warming in the oven, I read Mother West Wind stories to her, pointedly assuming all of the characters. There is dry cleaning to pick up, banking to be done and coffee with friends. But at 4pm- no matter what, she is waiting and I am there.

As we pass through the time of Covid, there were many good things that we learned. However, this time also seemed to open the door of irresponsibility. Perhaps politeness, kindness and gratitude were social norms that are now outdated. I not only liked them but appreciated and miss them.

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

It is walking with intention. It is arriving, with dirt under your fingernails, to perform music. It isputting the device down and listening to who you are sitting with, looking them in the eye and really hearing them. It is laughing from your belly, crying from your soul, reading from Mother West Wind. Remembering to taste the food, write the note, take the time.

It is keeping your word. It is showing up.