Ramblings of a Survivor

A cloud rolled in. DIdn’t expect that. Life had been sunny and pink and full of music – mostly dark indy tunes that no one else knew, but that was me: dark and beautiful and unexplored. I bent over and grabbed a carrot at the base of its green and pulled. The earth gave way and out came a cacophony of roots and itty bitty new life. I grasped at the short stubby veggie, tossing aside the potentials entangled with it. All these tiny roots entangled had shaped this beautiful piece of nutrition into a twisted piece of orange that wouldn’t have ever made it to the grocery store. I hadn’t thinned the crop earlier that season, so carrots this year were a little less than straight – maybe in the years after, it would have made it to boxes delivered weekly, but in 2010, Imperfect Produce hadn’t broken in and I relished this feeling of power and validation these silly shaped veggies gave me.

My grandmother’s voice echoed in my head: “Ghandi once said that if we can all reconnect with where our food comes from, we can reconnect with each other, we can- and we would – have peace.” She’d been so happy that I had left LA and was finding myself in my new passion of growing food and returning to my love of the earth.

I tossed the tangled carrot into my basket along with the other bounty I had already collected and called Ellie over to investigate a quirky knot of greens.

We weaved our way through the garden: almost a quarter acre of hard work. The “hard” part of it had actually done by Victor – the man who managed the 72 acres of land we lived on – his wife, who had worked with me in Madonna’s household, was probably cleaning our toilets at the moment. Neat rows of the garden were outlined by a fence built from posts Victor and I had scrounged from around the property. He and I had supplemented what we couldn’t repurpose on the property with whatever we happened to need – I had the means to put up a proper fence, but I believed in repurposing and reusing. Oregon had been a logical move for someone like me. “Do what ever it is you can, with whatever it is you have” was the phrase my oldest brother Jake and I had come up with to sum up how I’d managed to figure out how to live on this vast farm land after coming from Hollywood. It really was exactly my life’s motto though a more appropriate motto probably would have been “Make Shit Work.”

We had money. Lots of it. I mean LOTS of it…and while I still to this day hate to admit it, I relished it – I’m ashamed to admit it now, and would definitely ˆ have admitted it then. I had this odd dichotomy of existence. I loved how rich we were, but I didn’t want people to know that, but I wanted them to KNOW that I was a different kind of rich….it was important to me that they know that I was rich…but I did NOT wnat to be….

A SNOB.

“Wealthy” to me always meant “shallow, meaningless, selfish.”

Victor and I had had to build a rather large encampment around the garden that I had dreamed up and haphazardly built. I’d started with a few rows of peas and beans and cucumbers, and now, a few years after moving to this haven, we’d figured out what grew best – where and how much water; how much this; how much that. Victor, coming from farmland in Guatamela had given me all sorts of random advice that didn’t quite make sense to the book knowledge I had gained, but if I was really honest, his ideas usually worked – they just needed to be adapted to the Pacific Northwest climate. He was steadfast in his planting vine growing plants like peas and cucumbers at the base of corn stalks, and no allowing tomatoes near the zinnias I wanted to be able to cut for my obsessive flower arrangements.

Bending over to check the burgeoning spears of the aspargus that we had planted a couple years prior, I heard an unexpected voice:

“Hey Boo! Helllllo!!!! Pumpkin! Are you with mama?”

A familiar tightness clenched my chest. My body shot up, straight. My back and my jaw tensed. I glanced at my daughter, looking over my shoulder. Then a smile crept over my face that I couldn’t quite control as I saw my daughter drop her Disney themed spade, and jump with joy.

“He’s HOME!” My heart swelled.

Then my heart sank. “He’s home — a day early.”

My three year old toe-head’s voice screeched in happiness:

“DADDY!!!!!”

She ran toward the rickety garden gate – not quite a “gate”…merely deer fencing supported by a single pole breaking the garden boundary that Victor and I had erected in our attempt to keep the deer from leaving the fruits of our labor looking like an entire fleet of machete-carrying soldiers had decided to claim as their sleeping quarters. I glanced up the slight hill toward the house to see my husband, glowing in his radiancy, kneeling, welcoming his daughter into his arms. They fell on the ground laughing and wrestling – immersed in the joy of reunification. I stood, smiling from ear to ear. I watched them as his arms wrapped around her, his elation meeting hers. My gift to both of them. And my heart hurt with both joy and sadness. I would never be that to him.

I silently my feet that were entangled in the ferns of asparagus, a basket full of produce in my hands, dirt under my fingernails, and an Ariel doll hidden somewhere under the piles of berries, cucumbers, radishes and loads of herb sprigs. This was my chosen life.

This is what I had chosen. And it was beautiful.

And it was insanely painful….but it was a pain that was better than any pain I’d had before.