Special family get together in the time of Covid

Alida: So we were quarantining for Kali to go to Pittsburgh and I was not really wanting to because I was not wanting to quarantine and I didn't want Kali to go to Pittsburgh. Emily and Jonas had also been quarantining for other family to come and then they didn't end up coming. So we figured out that we had both been quarantining and so we got together for Thanksgiving day, or what we thought was just for Thanksgiving day.

Terah: Well, then, we got together in Emily, Jonas and Ivy's house (no masks) so we got to hug too. And we got to do a sleepover. But it wasn't only one sleepover. It was a double sleepover. So, then, we got to play two (or three) days. So it was really fun and we got to play a lot. But some of that time me and Ivy sometimes didn't get along well so then we just worked it out and kept on playing. And, so, that's all I have to say.

Alida: Mommy, Daddy, Terah, Tala and I went on Thanksgiving Day. And then neither us or Emily, Jonas and Ivy wanted us to leave. So Mommy, Daddy and Tala went home but we stayed for a sleepover, what we thought was a sleepover. Turned out the next day we also didn't want to leave again and then we got on a phone call with mommy and it transpired that we stayed for a double sleepover. 

Terah: I felt a little nervous when we were in the house the first day because to be interacting normally with somebody, because I haven't for a long time and I was worried for Covid. So I was just scared. But I loved, I LOVED, and I thought it was funny when Ivy was my little shadow. I liked that we could have a little talk together at dinner because it was a very special thing (it was a little table we had to ourselves). It was really, really, really, really, really, really fun.

Alida: When we got there I was a little bit nervous but I easily got back into it. We were planning to invent "turkey ball" but that turned out to be inventing 2 games: Turkey Ball and Turkey Toss. Turkey Ball we invented that day and played it Thanskgiving Day. Turkey Toss we didn't end up completing until the next day. Turkey Ball we played by using furry balls, what looked like bunny tails, and hiding them in magnatile buildings. Then everybody who was playing would try to find them (there were two) and when they would find one they would show it to the score keeper and then go and re-hide it in another building. Turkey Toss, which we invented the next day, included two drawn turkeys and two people. You would use basically any ball and toss it back and forth trying to hit the other person's turkey. Whoever got to 5 first would win the first round. Then that person would go up to 6 and so on (to 10). When they were going to try to get 10 hits on the turkey, if they did they would win. If they didn't, the other person would go up and they would stay. 

Terah: Before Thanksgiving dinner, we hiked up the hill behind their house. I climbed on a hay bale with Ivy. For dinner there was turkey and mashed potatoes. After dinner Mommy and Daddy left and we had a sleepover. 

Alida: That night, Ivy came into Emily and Jonas' room crying and saying, "I waved at Terah but she didn't wave back," all teary. Although Terah was sleeping. When Emily told her that Terah was sleeping and no one waves back when they are sleeping, Ivy stopped crying and went right back to bed. I slept on the bed above Ivy and I slept pretty well. Terah slept on a mattress next to Ivy's bed. After the first sleepover, we went out and jumped on the trampolines, when spelunking in their basement, had 5-6 picnics, and that evening when it was dark did shadow puppets. The second night, as far as I know, went better. The next morning, we had banana pecan pancakes.  Both days we played toy restaurant. 

Terah: I felt sad to leave and I miss, miss, miss them. I missed my parents zero much. 

Alida: I was a little excited to see the chickens again. But I also missbeing there. I also was excited to say hi to Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa and Tala again. It felt good to be there though (when asked for more she noted: It just felt fun basically, I don't have very complicated emotions about that). 

Janelle: As the stenographer for this post, I get the pleasure of the final word. I will just add that I cried when hugging Emily upon our arrival and I had the fanciest hairdo done at the in-house salon and that was accompanied by a foot rub and nap!!

November's scrapbook pages

You can hopefully look forward to 3 guest blog posts coming in the next week or so. In the meantime, here are a few snapshots of November in advance of Jason sharing about his recent lobbying experiences and chicken butchering, Terah and Alida sharing about their double sleepover adventures, and Kali about her time in Pittsburgh (though she has yet to agree to write this blog post, so I may still have a bit more convincing to do!).

November held some traditionally "Novembery thing" and a few firsts!

Jason did his first ever "virtual seed saving workshop" with the JMU Community Seed Library. 

We found a yummy way to use the last packets of Chicha Morada we had gotten from Bolivia for our wedding punch (yes, 2 decades plus ago). It was actually tasty blended with milk and frozen cantaloupe. Now I'm kinda sad it's gone!

Kali learned to use a chain saw for the first time when working up a pine tree we had taken down.

While still healthy, this tree was leaning uncomfortably towards the house.

It's looks different, but I'm more or less already used to it.

We determined today that leaf raking for the fall is done - there is always more than could be raked, but at some point there are diminishing returns and we reached that point today. We have spent blocks of a half dozen or so days collecting this year's supply from our neighbors' lawn. And with my parents and Tala and five rakers in this family now, we had quite a team of helpers on some occasions. Even my mom's foot is healed enough for her to join for a short stint on one occasion! 

We've mulched garden beds and paths, given the swing set a fresh layer of pine needles and leaves, shared a few loads with the pigs if there were acorns mixed in, a few loads chopped with the mower for the indoor toilet cover material, some to chicken coops and then put the rest in our big leaf pile for the year. We'll use it down for animals and gardens and the humanure compost.

An evening activity in November was shelling corn - and with that has commenced popcorn seed testing. We are also doing a lot of delicata squash seed testing as often as we can fit squash into a menu for a meal.

There's been a lot of winnowing and tucking away of seeds for the winter. Getting the common room cleaned out in time to set up the train was a recent accomplishment.

And while I'm on the computer for many hours of most weekdays, our kiddos can often be found puzzling/playing/reading/making Christmas ornaments/baking or otherwise hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa.

Recently, Alida was pleased to be able to slip away JUST HER to play the Farming Game with Tala in her room. She was happy to not have to share that time with any of the rest of us. And it sounds like she was a very successful farmer also!

Now I'll pass the keyboard to other members of the family and next up from me will likely be an account of this upcoming weekend's hog butchering. I guess it's about time to get emotionally prepared for the days ahead! 

My 2020 Thanksgiving Reflections

We just purchased The Mourning Road to Thanksgiving and look forward to this being one of our next family book reads. It was a no-brainer-purchase after listening to a conversation between Larry Spotted Crow Mann and Senator Jo Comerford of Massachusetts on Rethinking Thanksgiving. I do not know the best way to catch the attention of the information-overloaded and media-saturated minds of those that might land here, but I'd like to try! If the images of Thanksgiving that you were fed as a child mirror mine in any way (e.g. putting on plays of Pilgrims and Indians feasting together), please give a 1/2 hour of your time this Thanksgiving week to listen deeply to this conversation! 

What follows here is an attempt to give a window into my personal process of late - my attempt to keep opening myself to continued learning and growth with a big dose of humility and the need for a lot of patience with myself in the process. It's been messy, friends! And you may be curious about my choice to put this reflection in this space, that I have labeled many times our "family scrapbook." It's a deliberate choice to name this as a big part of our family's path these days, not just my own personal one. While it looks different at 5, 9, 17, 42 and 44, it feels like this time is one in which we are being asked to reckon with what it means to be here in Keezletown, VA in 2020 and to be white and to be loved. My companion read right now is Communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks. 

This is one of my greatest challenges right now. To keep unlearning and to approach new learning with curiosity, non-defensiveness, and openness, avoiding the path to self-loathing and impatience and giving up on myself. Let me share a story, one that might shed light on what I'm trying to articulate.

Recently, a Green America email was forwarded to us with a link to watch the documentary Kiss the Ground. Our family watched it together and liked it. The film is described as one where "activists, scientists, farmers and politicians turn to regenerative agriculture to save the planet's topsoil," promoting that as the way to address the climate crisis. We immediately thought of others who might want to see it and sent the link with this note to some family and friends: We encourage a worthwhile "news break" to take a look at something that provides solid information, powerful stories and examples of ways we could engage in healing soils and regenerating the earth! While images and voices of indigenous and people of color were not prominent in the film and this felt like a glaring oversight (that is all too common), the concepts are solid and we can attest to seeing some of them at work on a tiny scale here at Tangly Woods. I am not feeling a ton of confidence in humans working together on a large scale at present, but I'd love to believe that together we could work at reversing the damage we have done to the planet in the coming decades! 

It's a meager step in the right direction that we at least had grown in our awareness enough to note the lack of BIPOC (black, Indigenous and people of color,) voices. This would sadly not have been true years ago when we watched various films that were touted as food justice or environmental documentaries (e.g. Food Inc.). And the only other disclaimers that I'll give before proceeding is that 

1. I don't think either Jason or I saw the film as giving the one and only solution to the state we find ourselves in and 2. My complete lack of knowledge of U.S. pop culture meant I had no awareness when watching the film that they were mostly using celebrities to advance their mission. End of disclaimers and back to taking responsibility for my blind spots!

Our dear friend, Jonathan McRay, took the time to email me a thoughtful response, complete with the reasons they have been wary of the film based on critical reviews written by food justice/agroecology advocates. I will admit that upon my initial reading of the email, I felt a flood of shame and a sense of "will I never get it right?" My Type 1 on the Enneagram flared up and I was ready to just shut my mouth forever because I am clearly not learning quickly enough to not keep tripping over my words and hurting others with my good intentioned misled actions! While the emotions were doing their thing, I was also remembering my need to accept myself (recent definition I'm pondering, thanks to bell hooks: to refuse to be in an adversarial relationship with myself) and to go beyond that to work on a radical self love (thanks Brene Brown for hosting a conversation with Sonya Renee Taylor on "The Body is Not an Apology"). 

So a few days ago, Jason and I spent one of our rare early mornings with mugs of decaf coffee in hand, to take a deeper dive into the critiques of the film we had shared around. Here are the things we read/listened to, that we urge anyone who watches Kiss the Ground to also commit to engaging with. Without the resources below to deepen and complexify your understanding of the documentary, I am hesitant to recommend it. If you can't carve out time for all of them, I recommend the first link if you can only read one thing and the interview if listening to something is easier for you to find time for:

• 'Kiss the Ground' film on regenerative farming is neither regenerative nor groundbreaking 
• Farmer Rishi Review
• 'Kiss the Ground' Misses the Complexity of Climate Solutions in the Soil 
• Chris Newman interview (a Black Indigenous farmer of Sylvanaqua Farm)

If reading or listening to interviews isn't your cup of tea, I have a third option for you: a show or a film! In one of the critiques they recommend watching Gather, a recent film about Indigenous food sovereignty, or the show Tending the Wild. We are eager to begin watching Tending the Wild but did purchase Gather, which we watched together the other evening. We recommend it, and if you do not have the means to rent or purchase it yourself, please be in touch so we can share our copy with you! 

What are a few of my learnings (there are many) from all of this?

• Jason reminded me this morning of something his Grandma often said: "Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can."
• I haven't arrived anywhere, but I'm taking steps.
• I have a lot of deep listening to do. There are things I will never be able to fully know and understand because of the body I inhabit and other aspects of my identity. It's important to acknowledge that and take that awareness with me through life. 
• Indigenous people are not gone! We should not talk of this country's history as if the people no longer exist. Right here in Virginia, the Monacan Nation is currently fighting to save Rassewek, their ancestral burial grounds. James River Water Authority (JRWA) is attempting to build a water pump station on top of it. 
• I have been fed lies for much of my life about the history of this country. Unraveling them is a complex and messy process that involves deep grieving, anger, sadness, embarrassment, a desire to seek something that comforts or paints a brighter picture, taking responsibility, and looking for ways to acknowledge the truth and seek ways to contribute to healing from harms.
• I need to be cautious about "throwing the baby out with the bath water" and not discount completely the contributions that things that are deeply flawed can offer. That's a tough one! 
• White supremacy, capitalism, racism, U.S. exceptionalism, colonization has hurt ALL of us. Our healing is interconnected. Reparations can be one of many parts of the healing process, and it can help all of us.
• As we work to understand our complicated and painful history, to take responsibility, to acknowledge harms, to heal wounds and fight for justice, we need to be cognizant of the temptation to become like the very thing we are attempting to dismantle and heal from and fight against. 
• I'm not going to get it "right" or "perfect" all the time. It reminds me of something I heard years ago that was so important in my parenting journey - that rupture is normal in relationships but what is most critical for healthy attachments is the repair. That feels useful here too - I will make mistakes. I can wallow in those (I have a long history and much experience with that approach) or I can reflect, take responsibility and work at repair.

If you have made it to this point, thank you! And know that I'd love to hear how my thoughts intersect with yours. These reflections are in process so I share them in an incomplete kind of way - you could say they are "in motion." I was reading parts of something I wrote a week ago, and already I would frame some things differently. My commitment is to stay in motion and to keep unlearning/learning and to engage others in the process. I'm very grateful for many others who have not given up on me and keep challenging me. In the end I feel grateful we watched Kiss the Ground as a family, grateful we sent an email around to some about it, grateful to Jonathan for taking the time to engage us at a deeper level about it, grateful for the time Jason and I took together to process that and expand/deepen our understanding of a lot of really complex and painful things, grateful for new resources for our family like watching Gather, grateful for having a few more of my blind spots exposed, and grateful that our girls are getting to be part of their parents' processes and maybe getting a head start on things I'm just learning in my 40's! 

Nora's 13th birthday and Halloween

Friday, October 30 marked 13 years since Nora was born. After a long 10 hour sprint for work Thursday to try to catch up from being off, I put on my autoresponder again for the day of her birth to be able to fully focus that day on our memories of Nora and time with Jason and the girls. I'm so grateful looking back on the day that it included a hike up to Hensley's Pond. I needed that time then and need it as I look back on that anniversary day! Our first stop along the way, was a persimmon tree that was starting to drop ripe fruit. Since our trees are bare this year, this was a special treat!

When we returned from the hike, it was a tight hour or so of preparing our family to get out the door and in the elements for the next 7 hours or so. We had decided some weeks back to give an "in the time of COVID" memorial blood drive a try. While I had been questioning the wisdom of that choice in recent days, I was ready to make the best of it and was prepared that it would be different in so many ways from the previous ones - no homemade snacks, no kids, masked/distanced visiting only, no hugs... It was especially hard to not be there as a whole family (but we knew the kids would much prefer cousin/aunt time down the road to sitting outside in the cold by the parking lot for hours - and they did!!). 

I'm still trying to process many of my mixed and messy feelings about the drive. So let's start with the "easy stuff" to share. In the end we had 38 donors come to give. 9 of those that came were "deferred" which means that they were like me and turned down for some reason - in my case I was one tenth too low on my iron! And then 2 had unsuccessful donations, one of those being Kali as they missed her vein and didn't get it even after some uncomfortable digging around. So 27 pints of blood donated via the drive and so I'm told by the Red Cross that it was a "good drive" or a "success." I very much hope all that was donated makes its way to bodies that need it and are helped along in their healing journeys by it!

And I feel really grateful for our friends who joined, for the friends of our friends (whose daughter Norah died) who joined, and the other persons that didn't know either of our families but were just looking for a place to give. I was especially heartened by the first time donors who had come and were clearly facing some fears in order to give. I was glad for these human and real points of connection. Are you waiting for the "But...?" If so, you are right that it is coming! And it is not just about the fact that by the end of us sitting outside for many hours, it was pretty cold! That would have been easy to bear on its own!

I think, for the purposes of this space, I'm going to just share the analogy that came to mind the morning after the drive as my thoughts and emotions were still tumbling around. I was partly a little surprised and perplexed by the intensity of my anger at the end of the drive. The sadness and tears was less surprising as I sat reading our blog book compilation of writings about Nora's birth and life and our grief journey following her death. But it was the mixing of that, with some intense frustration about the drive that had me doing a bit more stewing. 

Here's what came to me: Working with the Red Cross to host a blood drive is to our NICU experience like working with Virginia Blood Services to host a blood drive was to our PICU/palliative care experience. In other words VERY different! I was noting earlier in the day how often Nora's birthday is a more painful season for me even then the time around her death. While that has always seemed strange in many ways, it also makes a lot of sense in other ways. The weeks that Nora was in the NICU were so full of confusion, difficulty connecting with caregivers, trying to bond and care for a baby that nurses sometimes called their baby, separation from Kali, feeling out of control and like we weren't fully integrated into Nora's life and care, etc... After 6+ months of loving and living with Nora, we arrived back at UVA and got connected to palliative care. We were seen as "the experts" on Nora, were fully included in her care, were allowed to form relationships and partnerships with her caregivers, were listened to and relied upon, etc... When it was clear that she would not live, we were given the freedom to have family and friends come to say goodbye and to rearrange the hospital room into a sacred space for saying goodbye and were allowed to fudge on normal protocols--if and when reason suggested such--to fit our needs and Nora's. The end result was the same and excruciatingly sad, but the process made so much difference to Nora at the time and to us as we grieved her death.

At the blood drive the other night, I realized that if I find value in giving some of my time and energy to organizing blood drives, I can still feel free to do that in the future. But I need to extricate that from Nora's birthday and her death anniversary. These blood drives started as a meaningful way to remember Nora together and to invite others into that process and ritual of remembrance (while doing something valuable together in the process) - and the staff at Virginia Blood Services became meaningful parts of those rituals of remembrance and even found ways to make them extra special. We still want to donate blood together. And it sounds meaningful to invite friends and family to join us in that. But hosting a Red Cross blood drive puts me right into the mix of a massive bureaucratic structure with what seems like miles of red tape that seems to strip it down to an extractive industry mostly caring about # of pints and not much about the humans giving those pints. On Friday, it was just too much for me...

Let me end on a cheerier note about last evening! The girls were dreaming of finding a fun way to celebrate Halloween at Tangly Woods, and it was indeed a fun time complete with apple bobbing, eating homemade donuts off strings and the adults hiding for the kids to find and get treats from us! We had a fairy, a bunny and a flamingo searching for us. Tala won being the most difficult and the last person the kids found!

And I do think it's the first time one of our kids has decided to take a dip in the tub AFTER apple bobbing. Leave it to Terah!