Dirt and Words

an auto-fictional essay

Nicole Chung from the Atlantic reminded me this morning that “there is a place for imagination and creativity and storytelling when our rights are eroded or threatened, as indeed they always have been. We need to be able to expand and nurture our imaginations in order to imagine a different world.” So that is one of things I can keep doing. Nurturing and sharing my imagination.

1.

The land does what I can’t. 

2.

I never really noticed that poplar trees shimmer a million silver disks—until we buy a piece of farmland and move outside the city. That’s when I really start to look at trees differently. They have names! Poplars also shed tufts of white cotton candy. How come it takes me 40 years to see? My son collects a jarful of poplar fluff and plunks it on the kitchen table with his other bits. Wildflowers that have gone limp, a growing rock pile from the beach down the way, a series of drawings of ghouls and lonely looking people. “Boy with bangs stands on dirt pile” is the name I give to his drawing in my head after an extended period of staring. Soon I hear the stretching sound of the trampoline in the distance. I have missed another moment with him.

3.

The breakup I am escaping happened on a sidewalk. So maybe I want nothing to do with city pavement ever again. It seems reasonable in my broken condition. It’s also the pandemic. “Let’s move to the country,” I say to my husband. “I mean why not, right?” I say it with a shrug, as if I know how to be casual about anything. My life has already been upended so what’s one more change? 

4.

Wouldn’t it be neat if I could pretend that dissolving a business was nothing—that it didn’t feel like a knife in the stomach, twisting, splaying my insides. I ask my husband if he will run with me. He admits that he’s also needing some disruption, after months of working from the basement, against the mind-numbing glare of his computer screen. “So, yes?”

5.

We are excited about becoming different kinds of people on our farm, the kind who think about the nuances of the weather and the state of our sod. We will talk about different things and only eat vegetables that we grow. In our dreams, none of us combs our hair and all we need is one pair of cut-off shorts. 

6.

My oldest is the first to get a tick. Then my youngest. Then my cats.

7.

Our last meal in the city is bulgogi. We thought it would be more ceremonious. But nobody cares. Just go already. I’m worried that I’ll be lonely without the murmuring of our neighbours's conversations through our rowhouse walls. 

8.

But I’m broken and I need the earth to fix me. 

9.

On the farm we will ask different questions of our surroundings and find different answers. 

 10.

The house that we can afford is not romantic. It’s a prefab from 1970. I think if I push hard enough the walls might come down. It feels symbolic. Like my heart that was so easily mowed over. I married my husband when I was 22. I’m not very experienced with the feelings that accompany break ups.

The first thing we do when we move in is paint. Everything white. Instead of bright orange and purple. The previous owners had a penchant for colour and curtains. Now everything they loved is in a garbage heap. Just like my heart. “Stop saying that,” my husband says. But I can’t stop seeing symbols of what’s broken inside my chest.

11.

My brother comes to visit. He helps me tear down the last of the floral curtains, the makeshift curtain rods put together with miscellaneous chunks of plywood. I consider leaving them by the side of the road out of respect for whoever was so fervent with the staple gun. All endeavours should be respected. Maybe someone new wants to take up their effort. On the other hand, we could also bring the pile over to our neighbours who like to burn things. That’s another way.

12.

On the land, everything is new. I don’t know how to do anything and everything that is done must be redone in a week. We mow and weed whack all the edges. Then we do it again. I feel anxious at the lack of progress. My husband encourages me to treat the new things as an experiment. “An experiment In what?” I ask.

13.

Soon the pump in the well breaks. We don’t know about pumps. Or wells. But my husband is determined to fix it himself. He performs a biblical act and descends into the well. Meanwhile, I defend myself against a swarm of flying ants that have descended suddenly onto the front porch. They cling to each other, rearranging their puddle into imagistic configurations—a sheep, an ear, a girl riding a unicorn. The internet tells me that they are mating (which disturbs my children greatly) and to sprinkle cayenne. Or cinnamon. I sprinkle both then step back to observe. The kids scream and take refuge inside with a video game. “The circle of life,” my husband calls out from inside the well. 

14.

One morning I am alone at the farm. I see a neon butterfly for the first time. It’s beautiful. And then seconds later a duo of black snakes slithers across my path. I realize for these blissful seconds how wonderful it is to witness creatures up close. Also, this is the most alone I have ever been in a very long time, with no one to hear or save me. I used to be busy traveling the world. Steak tartare was a favourite menu item. Today, I will eat a piece of lettuce that I have grown and stand here in the middle of the road. 

15.

I start to send them a text, but then I remember, we don’t do that anymore.  I scratch the word “alone” into the dirt. It feels mournful and dramatic like I’m performing a scene in a musical. When I crouch down, for a second I only hear my own breathing. I wonder if it’s loneliness I am feeling or solitariness? The state of being alone or kept apart from others. And maybe it’s a good thing to wake up my senses with this garden dirt? I wonder when it will feel good.

16.

For two days when the family is back in the city I try to make my own self-care retreat. I amble out of bed only to return there a few hours later. I write a page or two. I put my pen down as soon as I feel the urge. I binge half a movie about a chef with an angry father and sick mother and then an episode of Korean Food Made Simple. I eat an entire bag of All Dressed chips. “All I needed was some dirt,” I mutter giddily to myself. I can feel my wound evaporating. My grief is the synthetic tang of the chips and I am sucking it dry.

When I go on a walk, a turkey vulture circles in the wind above me. I shake my fist at it, ready to do battle if it sees me as prey. I baptize myself multiple times a day in the above-ground pool, feeling confident that as I emerge, I am becoming more equanimous.  

17.

But then the night comes. My thoughts are worse at the farm. Everything here is amplified. More silence. More darkness. Whereas in the city I could distract myself with the sound of passing cars and busses, here the silence is deafening. There’s a thud on the exterior wall; the howling foxes feel like they’re attacking our siding. My cat scratches a hole in the screen and mosquitoes buzz around my head. I thrash around in bed, memories of someone who used to be my friend flooding my mind. I had never considered the possibility of an end. When I wake up the sheets are wet. 

 18. 

“The soil is bad here,” I tell my husband. “We should sell.” He nods multiple times then passes me a cup of coffee.

19.

I pull on my real farm uniform—sweatpants and a plaid shirt—and head outside. I climb the weed mountain that we have inadvertently grown to survey all the things I could do today. I feel hopeless and berate myself on the peak for coming here, for thinking that leaving would fix everything. I’m annoyed that the children aren’t out here with me so we can experience this pain together. I curse their easy lives while I have to exist with the ongoingness of my grief. Today, I can’t think of a single question.

19. 

There is a mysterious bug eating all the leaves. I sit between the garden rows with my phone and google kale pests. It turns out it’s the offspring caterpillars of those neon butterflies. They make a clicking sound as they travel along the kale stems. I experiment with snipping one in half with my clippers. I’m vicious. Then I start down the row. Snip, snip. My back is aching by the end, but I feel victorious. This is something I can do.  

20.

When I find some open dirt, I plant more seeds. I poke holes into the dirt and pour in a watermelon seed. The bag slips and I pour in 20 instead. When I have finished patting the dirt, I realize I have failed to mark the spot. Now I won’t know where to water, where to spread my best wishes.   

21.

Someone said to me you can’t be grateful and angry at the same time. I try to practice gratitude with the kale. I’m grateful for you, kale and your bug friends. But I don’t mean what I say. I think I might be fundamentally unfixable. I schedule an appointment with my therapist who tells me I need a container for my grief because it will always be there now. I grieve that my grief is forever a part of me. But I still follow her advice and scour the barn for a container. 

23.  

One night when the dreams refuse to settle, I get up and walk around the silent farmhouse. I look out the window and I see a group of wild turkeys busily devouring the herb garden. Little demons out for a night play. One of them is pecking savagely at my sweet patch of dill. Not the dill! I swear I hear it cackling as it pulls at the delicate fibers. The next morning I tour the wreckage. The two purple basil plants have vanished like they were never there. The great basil is still there but scorched and brittle around the edges. The curly parsley has been reduced to a few morsels. Maybe they’re coming back tonight to finish their work?  

24.

“The cycle of life,” my husband says once again, reaching for my hand.  

25. 

I replant all the onions when I realize I planted them too close together. I do it on a day the temperature hits 40 degrees. It’s not a good idea, but then again at the farm I don’t know anything for sure. Sweat drips down my front and back, and I can feel the crimson quality of my face. My children look at me horrified when I come inside for a glass of water. They want to know what’s wrong. I say, “Just life,” and they roll their eyes.

26.

Mother needs a lot of space. Mother needs to brood. Mother is broken and needs time to heal. It’s a 19th century novel out here in the country.  

27.

It’s on one of those brooding days that I realize how the mistakes I’m making in the dirt also make me feel…alive. The garden even seems to withstand my mistakes and surprises me with things in return: a green leaf sprouting at the top of the blueberry plant that we thought was dead; a dwarf onion growing up beside its mama. Small markers of healing.

28.

The children are happy when I’m happy. My son draws more pictures of people with bangs, but they’re smiling now. We eat homemade rhubarb compote and make plans for a treehouse. Later, my oldest helps me pick away at a path, exposing the hidden walkway underneath. I watch my son poke holes as he prepares to plant his own package of Lupin seeds. I feel like a conqueror. I trusted my intuition. I knew this life would be healing and I ran toward it. Who can I tell?

29.

My husband spends a week trying to excavate a tree trunk. I keep him hydrated while he sweats out half his body weight. It seems like it will never budge, but he persists. Chopping at its roots, pulling it with a chain if that’s what it takes. He is determined to conquer something too. “This is Farm 1.0,” he says just before he collapses.

30.

I stare up at the osprey’s nest. Bits of hay and cardboard hang over the edge. I’m amazed at the resourcefulness of birds that even make nests in the closed BBQ! I realize that there is no one watching and waiting to see what I will do with this moment. The osprey doesn’t care. It’s just for me. It makes a chirping noise and circles around my head. It would prefer if I went somewhere else to do my slow thinking, but I hold my ground. I want one more minute to watch it feed its babies, to watch it be. 

32.

Two deer frolic across the path. I mourn with the Mourning Dove that sits on the wire and then smile at my own play on words. I note the Black-eyed Susans and patches of anemones—the kind of contrived beauty you might expect from a magazine cover about rural life. I wonder how I can make this moment of elation last longer. I stop moving and close my eyes to take in the sensations. For a brief second there is no longing or resistance. I feel…good. 

34.

I check in on the indomitable stump. I like how it now rests on our patch of lawn, a symbol of a journey taken. When I go in for a closer look, I see that there’s a new tree growing out of its rot. Little buds. Though the world may break me and I think I’m crumbling, there’s still life in all this dirt.