Ready to go

While breezing through pictures stored on my phone earlier this morning, I came across this picture of Dad.

I remember snapping the photo like it was yesterday.

Dad was waiting to be discharged from St. Mary’s cardiology floor, a place we visited many, many times during the nine months that I spent with him following his diagnosis for Congestive Heart Failure. With the help of my BFF Tanya, I’d taken him to the ER the night before this picture was taken, and he’d been kept overnight to receive fluids and a round of Dobutamine, a miracle drug that kept Dad’s heart pumping long after it might have shut down.

Dad grew frustrated by the “Hail Mary” trips to the ER, which occurred 1-2 times a week as he neared the end of his life. But diligent daughter/caregiver than I am, I was on top of every sign of distress I observed.

Extreme confusion, signaling a urinary infection.

Swelling ankles–more than usual–suggesting that his fluid intake was out-of-whack.

Severe unsteadiness, an indication that his medications might require readjusting.

“Those doctors keep saying the same thing,” he’d tell me following each trip to St. Mary’s ER. “Why do you come here? We can’t do anything more for you.”

Harsh as those comments might sound, they were spoken in the gentlest tones.

Dad would joke with the ER docs that he’d shown up to see whether there had been any new medical breakthroughs, something that might fix his woes. Dad had great faith in medicine and science and trusted that the best and the brightest would continue to figure out life’s mysteries, at least the ones we mere mortals are supposed to understand. His decision to donate his body to Loyola Medical School was an indication of his trust in doctors and the importance of supporting their steadfast study of human specimens.

Plus, as he frequently reminded me, “you get a discount on the embalming and transport of the body if you take the donation route.” Sigh.

When I look at this photo, taken in early November 2017, I see two of Dad’s most memorable traits.

• He was ready to go, to leave this world at any time. Every Sunday since he was a child, he prayed at the local Catholic church–long after his knees and hips prevented him from kneeling on a pew–asking the Lord to forgive him his transgressions and bless him and those he loved. Dad believed that when God comes knocking, you’d better be ready to answer the door. Don’t wait until the last minute to get your house in order.
• He was ready to head out to the fields, one more time or however many times he had left. On the way home from the hospital that day, like all the other return trips from St. Mary’s, I’m certain we drove by the fields to see what crops remained to be harvested.

 

“Slow down.”

“Slow down” was one of my dad’s hallmark phrases. Looking back, I know he said those words to me at least weekly, maybe even daily at certain points in my life.

“Slow down” meant a lot of things.

• Stop getting ahead of yourself, counting your chickens–both the healthy and puny ones–before they’ve hatched. Hit pause, collect information, and create a plan (not the parade that’s sure to follow the greatness ahead).
• Calm down. Take a breath and collect your thoughts before saying another word or taking another step.
• Prevent mistakes before they happen, at least those that can be anticipated and avoided. Words usually hurled in my mother’s direction, as she went traipsing through the house spilling out details about the places she’d been that day (e.g., teachers’ sorority) or was heading to that evening (e.g., Altar and Rosary) while failing to note snags in the carpet that tripped her up along the way.
• Be patient. Things take time. Like corn or soybeans, anything of substance needs room to grow. Along the way, there will be dry spells and nourishing rains. Those who wait will be rewarded.
• Dial back your expectations. Maybe things will turn out as you hoped, surprisingly better or disappointingly worse. Whatever the outcome, God will give you something. Maybe not what you wanted or prayed for, but something to tide you over.
• Acknowledge your place in a much larger landscape. Try not to take on too much, pile all the burdens on your shoulders alone. Getting anywhere requires letting others in, sharing the journey.

All of these messages seeped in. When Dad left this world, he’d ingrained these nuggets of wisdom in my way of thinking about the world and my role in it.

That’s not to say that the advice to “slow down” is easy to implement.

I sometimes worry that slowing down will mean that I arrive too late to the party. Diagnosed with breast cancer at ages 29 and 40 and with a non-functioning mitral value at 55, I sometimes fear that I won’t reach the finish line. While I’d be surprised to hear anyone say they’ve done absolutely everything they hoped to accomplish before they die, I pray every morning and every night that I nudge at least a little bit closer before my time to depart comes.

I have so many dreams.

To see both of my daughters graduate from college and settle into careers they love.

To see my 83-year-old mom live out her life surrounded by love and kindness.

To help more women access health care and to reduce cancer health disparities in underserved communities.

To tell my story and make sense of both the gifts and challenges I’ve been given.

To bring to fruition a program that helps kids who are passionate about agriculture but lack the means to enter the field (literally) get a start.

I just have to figure out how to keep reaching, one measured step at a time, no matter how slow the journey might be.

I know what Dad would say: “Do what you can. Keep trying. You’ll get there, and wherever ‘there’ is, it will be enough.”

Pallets, Rack Wagons, and Pens

Today consisted of more “lasts.”

The last time I would sift and sort through my parents’ lifetime of “things” in preparation of an estate sale.

The last time I drove from our farmhouse to the local auction house, following racks piled high with a host of family treasures–wagon jacks and bottle jacks; milk cans, oil cans, and gas cans; mowers; wrenches and saws and hammers and screwdrivers of every shape and size; seeders and seed bags; kerosene lamps, early 20th-century knife sharpeners, and assorted other memorabilia from previous eras, what the auctioneers refer to as “primitives.”

The last time I’ll pull into the driveway at the farmhouse or wind my way around back by the sheds to a place that has represented “home” for 56 years.

Plenty of tears have been shed during the past two weeks, since I arrived in Illinois for the final push towards “closure”–of the estate itself and of the emotional journey I’ve been on for close to three years, a journey that began when Mom went to the nursing home on the same day Dad showed up in our small-town ER with Congestive Heart Failure.

Still, here and there during these past two weeks. I discover plenty to smile over and laugh about. Sometimes when I’m alone, sliding into slumber. Other times when I’m surrounded by friends who show up to help in any way they can.

As I was leaving Martin’s Auction House for the last time today, tears and laughter came in tandem. After turning in my “inventory list” chronicling items clustered on every palett and rack wagon of goods we’d unloaded in the yard out back, I asked the employee at the desk whether she had any pens listing the auction house address and phone number. She nodded before handing me two pens, alongside a business card with the contact info I might need prior to the sale on September 5.

It wasn’t until I set the pens and card alongside my dirty work gloves on the passenger seat that I recognized the irony. Dad never left a place without picking up a free pen, a piece of candy, a matchbook. It was a habit born out of Depression-era mentality, a perspective that prompted him and many of his generation to take with them anything being offered that might come in handy.

Clearly, I am my father’s daughter, walking away with not just one, but two, new ink pens.

“I got a pen for you, too, Dad.”

Leaving home

We all–at least, the majority of us–leave home at some point.

I left my small town in Central Illinois the day after I finished high school. My last official day of classes occurred on a Tuesday, during which I gave a presentation in Mrs. Rinkenberger’s 12th-grade English lit class last period. The next morning I took off for the rest of my life–starting point: Chicago. Since that day, I’ve returned home plenty of times–for years, on my own, and then with my husband and eventually daughters in tow.

In recent years, the purpose and tenor of my visits have changed. No longer did I return simply to visit my parents. Rather, I came back to care for them as they aged, often during brief or extended illnesses or recoveries from surgeries.

The scope of “home” has changed over time as well, as visits to the farmhouse led to frequent trips to the nursing home where Mom resided for close to three years before we moved her to Alabama. And excursions home to care for Dad turned to business trips to tend to the farm and time spent at St. Pat’s cemetery to brush off Dad’s stone.

This Wednesday (August 12, 2020), I’ll leave home once again. While I anticipate returning many times in the years to come to visit friends and family and check on the crops during planting and harvesting, the place will never be quite the same once I depart this week.

When I shut the kitchen door Wednesday morning and lower the garage door before pulling out of the driveway to head South towards Birmingham, I’ll be closing a chapter in the history of my family home.

I’ll return next time to sheds and corn cribs emptied of the generations of equipment and tools that grew my family’s farm legacy.

To a house whose character has been revised to suit the tastes of its newest resident, my best friend who will move into the house once it’s been renovated.

The one thing that will remain the same?

Good people doing good things for their neighbors and friends.

Like family. Like home.

Foxes and rainbows

I’ve been at my family’s farm during the past five days, sifting through the remaining items in my parents’ house and sheds in anticipation of an estate sale. The days have been long and equal parts draining and uplifting.

As I pulled away from the house this evening, two images emerged in succession.

First, a beautiful rainbow visible above the roof of one of the out buildings that friends and I have worked our way through these past few days while contemplating the appropriate home for items ranging from shovels to milk cans to grain buckets to an antique hitching post for a horse.

 

The second, a small fox hiding in the grass that’s grown up in the orchard alongside the farmhouse, an area where I picked apples alongside my mom and grandmother when I was little in anticipation of a day of preparing homemade applesauce and apple pies. Just the head of the fox is visible, its body tucked into the grass safe from whatever creatures (large and small) might make an appearance.

 

 

End of life and Alzheimer’s

An essay in this morning LA Times by Nicholas Goldberg addresses a politically-contentious issue–the right to die–in the context of Alzheimer’s disease: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-15/california-aid-in-dying-law-assisted-suicide-alzheimers-dementia

As I’ve watched my mom struggle with Alzheimer’s during the past four-plus years, witnessing the devastation and fear she faces every time she forgets (and then has to re-experience) significant life moments like my dad’s passing in 2018, I wonder what it means to live with such a debilitating disease.  Is existing with little connection to the past, to self, and to the sphere she currently occupies really living?

As an onlooker and a daughter who loves my mom, I can’t put into words what it’s like to see the essence of a person fade away. While Mom has days when there’s a glimmer of her humor or idiosyncrasies reminiscent of her old self, more often she seems to be turning into someone else–distant and vacant and increasingly impatient and angry.

I can’t speak for what Mom would or will want as her disease progresses, so we stand by waiting to help her as much as we can to make her journey bearable. But I’ve determined that I don’t want to participate in life after the features that make me me have vanished. I can’t imagine living without the ability to process ideas and put words on the page. To engage with family and friends. To occupy myself with the simple pleasures I most enjoy.

Some say that aiding someone in the process of dying is taking the easy way out. I have to disagree. I think the easy way out might just be deciding to remain complacent, to allow a disease to dictate how and when we exit this life.

 

Black lives in my hometown

For folks like me who grew up in (White) rural America, a story in today’s Washington Post strikes a chord: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/11/midwest-changing-demographics-black-lives-matter-protests/?

As I kid, I knew of one Black family in my hometown: the Covington’s. The dad, Curt, was the custodian at my elementary school, and he and his wife attended the Catholic church in town. My family often sat alongside the Covington’s, who regularly occupied the back pew at mass. Dad wouldn’t let us sit anywhere near the front of the church; he believed that people who positioned themselves there did so more out of show—”See, here I am, front and center!”—than devotion. Come to think of it, my parents began their slow ascent to the front pews at St. John the Baptist only in their later years, as Dad became harder of hearing (and refused to spend money on a hearing aid) and Mom’s disability meant she had to be maneuvered from her wheelchair into the pew and have the Eucharist brought to her seat.

The Covington kids were older than I, so I never really talked to them, ate lunch at their table at school, or visited their house. So while a hint of diversity came to my hometown, my world—and the worlds of many others in a farming community of roughly 7,000—remained monochromatic.

When I was in junior high, a brown family from Saudi Arabia moved to town to run one of the local motels. Khamal was in my class and a nice guy, though I can’t say that our paths crossed more than occasionally. He was shy, especially around girls; at least, that’s how I perceived Khamal growing up. Now, I wonder just how out of place he must have felt, from the color of his skin to his culture to his Islamic faith.

That was about it for black and brown diversity in my community in Central Illinois. When I ventured to larger towns like Bloomington or Decatur or Champaign with my parents or friends, I’d see people who looked different than me and sometimes talked differently, too. But I didn’t “know” them, and I certainly had no idea what kind of lives they led or challenges they met on a daily basis. In fact, it wasn’t until I left home at age 17 that I came to know people whose lives were nothing like mine (on some counts) and more like mine than I’d been led to believe growing up.

Even today, according to the most recent census, 94% of people in my hometown are White, 4% are Hispanic, 1% are Black, and another 1% fall under “other.” During more recent visits home, I have noticed a slightly wider spectrum—but not enough to shake things up significantly. What I do see is greater poverty, a wider divide between landowners, business owners, and educated professionals and those who earn hourly wages in a shrinking local economy.

 

 

 

Reflections on Aunt Jemima

My post yesterday addressed the decision by PepsiCo (the parent company for Quaker Oats) to move away from the racial stereotype of Aunt Jemima appearing on its pancake mixes. Today, I came across an excellent opinion piece by Michele Norris for the Washington Post in which she asks why it took recent events for the corporation to make this long-needed change: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-did-it-take-so-long-to-set-aunt-jemima-free/2020/06/17/788d0112-b0db-11ea-8758-bfd1d045525a_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_opinions&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions

Norris writes about her grandmother joining “an army of women who worked as traveling Aunt Jemimas” in the 1940s. As living, breathing stand-ins, these traveling women came to life as pancake-making emblems of modern convenience. As servants there to help women whip up a stack of fluffy sweetness in no time.

Norris’ writing style is engaging and her argument is spot-on. I’m planning to order a copy of her memoir, The Grace of Silence.

Baby girl

Today is my youngest’s 19th birthday, She and Celia, my older daughter by three years, have reminded me several times today that this is the last year that my husband and I will be able to say we have teenagers. Quite true and a little bit sad.

I remember the day my 19-year-old entered the world like it was yesterday. Cliche, I know. Within hours, Helena’s disposition became evident–and it hasn’t changed a bit since then. Calm. Independent. Delightful. She was the kind of baby who occupied herself without making a fuss, biding her time until one of us swept her up for food or play.

Helena remains a caring, considerate young woman. She’s smart and driven, finishing her freshman year at Auburn with superb grades, meaningful volunteer experiences, and many good friends. We are so proud of all that she has achieved and know there’s plenty more to come.

Even if this is her last year as a teen.

To buy or not to buy?

The second installment of my column, “Farming from Afar,” for Prairie Farmer was published today on the website (the print version will appear in the July 2020 issue).

https://www.farmprogress.com/management/buy-or-not-buy-weighing-land-acquisition-afar?

This piece addresses my thinking process when faced with the prospect of acquiring more farmland some two-and-a-half years into my inherited role of absentee landowner.