Farm Day(s) 2010

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Farm Days 2010.

My family came to the farm for the weekend, just to play. Oh, I love them! It was a small group this year, 26 of us, about two thirds of our usual group.

Fresh air, cornhole and ladderball, picking and shucking sweet corn, eating our fill of tomatoes, chasing ducks, creating masterpieces with sidewalk chalk, picking and eating loads of wild blackberries and catching and cuddling with quail. Tents, bonfires, a huge RV, fireflies, shooting stars, making bamboo & shell wabi-sabi windchimes, eating DeeDee's exotic Thai fruits, playing euchre, walking the path, sitting in the shade, playing tag, jumping on Brian, Don and Peter, looking for pumpkins in the pumpkin patch, eating Lesley and Brian's thawed wedding cake one year later and watching them eat their wedding plum, Peter coming in from LA for the last day. Just being together.

I'll let the photos fill in the blanks. You can click to make them bigger.

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-We are only 21 here, as some had left or hadn't arrived.

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Pre-Farm Day: Fun & Games

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Don is building a game; these ramps will lie down, 

and we will toss small bags of sand corn toward the holes.

If it were left to me, Farm Day this Saturday (Family Reunion #3) would consist of eating lunch and dinner, and between meals, 30 people (my siblings, their spouses, and their children) sitting around in a circle of lawn chairs, carrying on in discourse, while my siblings' grandchildren are occupied in something or other. So it is a very good thing that Don grew up playing games, sports and excelling at being a kid, which has made this hobby farm where we live a very fun place for Farm Day three years running. (2006 was the first Farm Day, then 2007. 2008 was the last one, as last year's Farm Day was Farm Wedding Day.)

Some fortunate people are nimble of mind and body. My mom was one -- a genius, and a tremendous athlete as a young person. By the time I knew her (I was born when she was 40), she was no longer agile of body, but her mind was a great resource to me, and to everyone who knew her. She also understood the value of games for mental as well as physical acuity and played word games such as crossword puzzles and solitary Scrabble to “clear the cobwebs." It was Mom who taught me the rules of American football, baseball and basketball, so I could watch them somewhat intelligently. At our house, we were not encouraged to play sports, as church was the important thing.

Recently, as I’ve focused more on writing, my mind has gotten more limber. That quote on my side bar by David McCullough is becoming more of a practice: " Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's hard." But I’m afraid my body is still not nimble for games. I do Pilates [sometimes] to keep muscles and tendons flexible, and I run and lift hand weights, to try to stay in some kind of reasonable shape. But games? I didn’t play them much growing up, and I never played in sports or participated in track and field, or did much of anything besides ride my bike around town. It's hard to develop coordination if you didn't do it when you were young. Oh, if you saw me throw something, a ball, anything, you would weep, or laugh. It's OK, I'm used to it. I learned not to cry when my brother taught me to sing, "Hahaha, look at me, I struck out" after striking out at softball for the umpteenth time in our neighborhood. Now I laugh. I didn't play many board games either, and learning to play euchre (a Midwest card game) with my in-laws was terrifying.

Thanks to Don, Lesley, Brian and Peter, game lovers all, there will be badminton, croquet, ping pong, and Ladder Ball at this little farm fest. There may even be tournaments. And this sand bag tossing game in the top photo, that Don is building. I forget what it's called. Hole Bag. Sand Bag. Sand Hole. Hole Toss. I don't remember, and Don isn't here to ask. All I know is I will be great at it.

I’m off work this week, part vacation, part sprucing up for Farm Day. Phoebe's steps need cleaning, and the parsley, sage and basil (and the corn, kohlrabi, tomatoes, mint, cucumbers, beans) have to be set free from those choking, unsightly weeds.

I wonder if you grew up playing games, or if you're like me and saunter off in the other direction when someone asks, Let's play . . .

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Family reunion #2: my family at the lake cottage

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I did pull down a jigsaw puzzle. It says it's the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, although the castle-like house looks European. It was just what Nancy and I wanted, lots of green. In this shot midway through the weekend, my brother-in-law Rodger only has about 750 pieces to go. I don't know if it got completed after we left Sunday evening.

The kids keep us young. But they didn't stay as little as they were at the last family gathering. They keep narrowing the gap between short and tall. I wish I could harvest and store the youthful energy that was spent running, jumping, diving and swimming. Not that I know what I'd do with it if I had it. You also have to have something you want to do, and the will to do it. I am a sedentary person, but Don and I have decided we're going to start biking around our beautiful state. At least I can do that sitting down.

There were play fights. There were serious adult conversations too. Sometimes I think some play fighting as adults wouldn't be a bad idea, as long as there are quick peace talks, the way the A-team, Aden and Asher demonstrated.

There was sport and adventure. Eric, my tireless fisher-nephew, was no end of entertainment for his nieces, nephews and first cousins once removed. (Did I say that right?) But poor Lydia didn't have a stomach for the fish's pain.

Eric tried to show how to cause the least amount of damage extricating the hook, before letting the fish go.

We have gobs of love and joy in our family, but we also have pain, just like everyone. There is illness, there is heartache. In the cycle of family, new ones being born and starting life's journey, it's up to the older ones to show the younger ones how to not only endure suffering, but how to gather around each other, encircling and touching, even when we don't understand. We fail sometimes when we can't stomach the particular type of hardship we face. Other times the younger ones show the older ones how to do it better. 

Life gets so messy. When you're at the cottage with 20 or 30 people, life really gets disheveled, and you're sleeping pretty close to someone else. You might be closer to the person in the next bed than you are to the one in your own. You wouldn't do that with just anyone.

We all have shadow selves, the parts we don't really want anyone to see, the aspects that cause us shame. But these are thankfully only part of who we are. What I saw this 4th of July, more than any other in memory, were some of the greatest challenges we've faced to the cohesiveness and flexibility of our big, and getting bigger, family. Look at us. We look like oddly shaped countries, with distinct borders, and big bodies of water separating us. The nice thing about being human, and not land mass, is that we can easily grab hands and shoulders and instantly thin the distance to a stream. One that flows between us and is easily crossed.

There is a Blogger issue I have reported at a forum, along with many other bloggers, that comments that get posted (since at least 9:30pm EST July 5) do not appear on the post. I received email notification of 8 comments from Mystic Rose, Gemma, Anna, Terresa, Delilas, Gwei Mui and rauf, but they have not appeared at this post. When I posted a comment about this below, it appeared when I posted it, but when I refreshed the page, it was not there. I hope you are not experiencing this at your blog, and I sincerely hope it is rectified soon. I am still not over the grief of discovering some time ago that I had lost at least the first year's comments at this blog, and also at Paris Deconstructed. These were precious exchanges with dear friends, including the first time rauf visited synch-ro-ni-zing, with Wordsworth's daffodil poem. :(

UPDATE: As of 11:30AM July 6, comments seem to be sticking. 

UPDATE: As of 1:00PM July 6, some comments don't stick! It's a random comment stickiness.

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It's a puzzle

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Friday we are away to the lake cottage for the weekend, Family Reunion #2. I don't fish for fish. I fish for jigsaw puzzle pieces. Well I haven't done that in a while, so I think I'll pull down one of the boxed puzzles from the tall stack at the top of the linen closet, spread the hundreds of picture fragments out on a card table in a corner of the living room, and corral them into something whole. Others can stop and sit and search for a piece too, through the hours of the weekend, between intervals of swimming, fishing for fish, boat-riding, eating, talking, playing guitar, singing, drinking coffee on the screen porch, playing cards, roasting marshmallows around the deck fireplace, watching fireworks bloom in the black sky above the lake, and sleeping.

This 4th of July it is difficult to find something to celebrate nationally. It's even tough to believe any more that working on one piece at a time will accomplish anything. A jigsaw puzzle this 4th of July is a prayer, that it is still possible to reassemble broken pieces into something whole. As Lovely You at the good in you powerfully said in her post on lemons & limes, The 7-Up Lesson, the sour side of life is essential to transformation. As I connect the pieces in my jigsaw prayer, I will meditate on how the broken is also part of the whole.

If you live in the U.S., enjoy the long holiday weekend. If you are outside of the U.S. and a citizen of another country, or an American abroad, please accept a humble American's heartfelt wishes for a wonderful weekend. I like thinking that I have connected with you out there, and we help make the world more whole, like puzzle pieces, together.

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Family reunion #1

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In Michigan we know how to make the most of heavenly summer days. November through April - half the year - we wrap every bit of our bodies except our eyeballs in layers of down, Thinsulate and wool to go out in cold, snow and freezing rain. Evening is coming on by 4:30, and after soup for supper we light candles and read by the woodstove. (I actually love winter.) So when abundant June, July and August warm up the stage, we take advantage. Don and I both come from large extended families, and we have three family reunions, one for each month of summer. Two of them are one week apart, Don's family's at the end of June, and mine over the 4th of July holiday at the lake cottage. Then we have a third gathering for my family at our farm the first week of August, which we call Farm Day. (Last year's Farm Day was Farm Wedding Day.)

Yesterday was Don's family's - Reunion #1 - at his second cousin's farm, over in the thumb. When you live in Michigan, and you want to explain where you live, you hold up your hand, and point. We drove about an hour and a half to get there.

You can't choose the family you're born into, or adopted into, so if you like them, it is one of the good fortunes of life. You can choose the family you marry into, so if you don't like them, it's really your own fault. Or maybe you bear your in-laws with gritted teeth, because your partner is so winsome that you're willing to pay the price. Well I have had good fortune both in my biological family and my married family.

The farm wagon was covered with green salads, bean salads, fruit salads, 
fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken salad, 
baked beans and taco salad,
but desserts are the most important part, 

especially Jolie's flag cake, which she unveils to cheers every year;
this reunion is always just a few days before the 4th of July.

Michigan berries are world famous; this American flag was stitched
with blueberry stars and raspberry stripes.

To put icing on the cake, my husband's family reunion on the final Saturday of June every year is at the farm of Don's second cousin Cheryl and her husband Pete. I know I usually try to sound positive, so I wonder if you think I wear rose-colored glasses. Maybe sometimes I do look for silver linings, but I am not positivizing anything when I say that Cheryl is one of the coolest and favorite people in my acquaintance. You can see from these photos how she and Pete have saturated their farm with loving attention. It's like a personal park. In the photo below, you can see Cheryl in turquoise welcoming young distant cousins with a Hello, Cousin! and a kiss, making everyone giggle as the boys wiggle. By the time she got around the table to the eighth little one, he was hiding under the table. But I know he still adores her, you just can't help it.

There is a pond, and it was plenty warm for all the kids to swim and play on the raft; 

then they played on the farm equipment.

You can guess that Pete and his son Todd run a landscaping business. 
(In the winter they specialize in snow removal.)
One of their specialties is crafting with stone, like this yard chair where Nickie is wiggling
(he's the one who hid under the table from Cheryl's smooches); 
it's anchored in the ground and bounces when you sit on it;
they put the stones on the wall of this barn,
and the fireplace and window sill below that in their family room.

I'm sorry, I am not a thinking photographer. I should have gathered everyone in one shot for a full frontal family picture of the forty or so of us.There were many missing this year, including our Lesley & Brian, and Peter.

I wonder if you have family reunions in your neck of the woods, and if you do, what you eat, what activities you do, and how far people travel? Do you meet at someone's home, or in a park, or a hall?

I really hate saying this, because I don't like it when someone else says it, but here I go: Why does it seem that as soon as summer begins, it feels as if it's already coming to an end?

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