Opening Will Be a Requirement

We’re in the bardo, the limbo, the in-between. We’re in a time where it seems like everything could stay just as it is, if we got really quiet and closed our eyes, if we pretended we were sleeping. Life could stay this way forever. The dead, dull heat of the afternoon, the flies interrogating the backs of our knees at breakfast, the clouds that threaten rain but never release their water, the way the heat pulls my appetite from me like a sneaky child who wants to feel what it means to get away with something. Life could continue on in this rhythm. We are just starting to understand the rhythm of this particular season and then, life will take that understanding from us once again. The changing of the seasons will demand us to understand the yellowing of fall and the closing in of winter. But for now, it’s as if this hot breath on the back of my neck has always been there and always will be. I am blind to the continuation of our spinning world.

I’ve been saying this limbo period is, “the calm before the storm” but I’ve been advised to change my language. Why does it have to be a storm, Jen? I guess it doesn’t. It doesn’t have to be something that can devastate or ruin. I mean to say that the tempo is going to change. The rhythm will speed up. Life will soon be full and robust and abundant and ripe. This is what I mean by the storm — it’s really not a storm at all. I’m trying to be more positive. My wife tells me I need to be more positive and she’s right. It’s time. Preparing for the worst is really not very meaningful anymore.

We’re waiting for many things. We’re waiting for our cow, Rose to give birth. We’re waiting to see how our dog will recover from the small stroke she had on Tuesday morning. We’re waiting to see if anyone will put in an offer on our property so we can move onto our new farm before the first snowfall. We’re waiting for Mercury retrograde to end. We’re waiting for the sun to go down every night so we can walk in the forest behind our house without the heat trailing us. We’re waiting for the full moon — waiting to see if this baby calf will be a Leo or a Virgo. Waiting to see if my dreams will be accurate. (If my dreams are anywhere near realistic, Rose will give birth with great ease and her baby will slide right out of her in one push. She will also give birth lying on her belly if my dreams have anything to say about it.) We’re waiting for the right time to tell our beloved neighbor that we’re moving.

We are waiting.

I know better than to make big plans while I am waiting. I am trying to plan a trip to Oregon at the end of the month with a writing group, trying to plan my 40th birthday, trying to plan an outing to a vineyard with some friends but all of those things are contingent. All of those events hang delicately like small, ripe cherry tomatoes hanging on in a strong wind. If Rose calves, if our dog suddenly and drastically goes downhill, if we get a buyer for our home, my life will be shuffled and rearranged like a neat deck of playing cards. I will become the Ace of spades, the Jack of diamonds. I am ready to transmute, to change form. I am always ready.

My impulse is to nest, to get everything in order for what is coming. I want to empty my email inbox, get rid of unread text messages, return all my phone calls, wash my sheets, fold all the clothes, put all the empty boxes in the garage, get the dahlia tubers safely stored in the cold pantry. I want to have everything ready for there will be a lot asked of me in the coming weeks. I will be asked to kneel down beside my dog as she passes and watch my wife grieve one of the great loves of her life. I will be asked to remove the mucous membrane from a small cow’s mouth and nose so she can take her first breath. I will be asked to pack boxes and load cows in trailers. I will be asked to get to know a new home with new walls that need painted. I will be asked to try and keep warm in a winter. I will be asked to show up. To walk forward. To be present. There is a lot of life coming and I imagine my heart, diaphragm and my throat opening up to receive it all. Will I be big enough? Will I manage to hold it all?

I’ve been dreaming about Rose birthing her calf, but I’ve also been dreaming about water. Water pouring down through the roof, ocean water, huge waves of water. I know, something is coming — something like the bigness of life crashing into my chest. Sometimes life asks us to be such a grand and silent listener. And so we have to sit back on our heels and watch, look, observe, let life come at us. We have to open. That’s what I mean by the storm. Opening will be a requirement for me in the near future. Like standing out in the rain and opening up my arms to the sky. Come at me you bastard. Wait, no. I’m trying to be more positive. Let me try that again. Come at me you crazed and beautiful life, I want all of you. I am headed into moments and events that are going to puncture and hurt and moments that are going to be momentous celebrations. There is going to be so much to feel. This is what the leaking roof is trying to tell me: get ready to feel it all.

I know how to handle a house full of of water once it’s happened. I know how to wade around in muck boots. I know how to swim into the kitchen and grab a sandwich. It’s the waiting for life to fully burst forward that makes me feel on edge.

If I’m being really honest, the bigness of life is hard for me to take in. Or let me say it like this — our onions are ready to harvest in our garden and I don’t want to pick any of them. They are too beautiful. I want them to stay in the ground forever. I want their stiff, green stems forever pointing up toward the sun. I let our flowers go to seed because I don’t want to lose them. I can’t bear to part with their colors, their fleeting beauty. It’s all too much. I haven’t quite learned yet how to gather the harvest, enjoy the abundance and know that there is always more where it came from even if I don’t see it in tangible form until the next summer.

It’s more comfortable to keep the onions in the ground — I’ll continue to pretend that they’re not ready yet, we can keep waiting. In some ways, I understand waiting better than anything else. I understand the quiet and seemingly controlled empty space.

And in other ways, I would rather get it over with already. Birth the calf. Mourn the dog. Move to the new farm. Get to the part where everything has been felt and I can look back and see the places where I’ve repaired the roof. The rain can’t get down into that pesky spot above the kitchen sink anymore. The feeling portion of this adventure is over and I can go back to letting life in at a tolerable pace.

I would rather have pivotal moments sprung upon me like a surprise birthday party, the look of shock quickly fading from my face as I make peace with what has happened.

We visited a friend on Sunday, a woman who runs a large orchard by herself in Dixon. Over a thousand trees. When we pulled into her driveway, she had just gotten out of the river. Her boots, her pants, her purple shirt, all soaked with the water from the Rio Grande. She was sitting in the shade, enjoying the way the water was steaming off her skin, looking heavy with wet. We shared apples together, of course, and some ripe peaches that made it though the late, spring frost. We admired her ristras hanging from the rafters. We cooed over her patch of hollyhocks and her mother’s yellow roses that grow in the front of her house. And for a moment, I felt the waiting lift. I felt that I was released from the reminder that something was coming for me and that something would ask me to feel great and big waves of emotion. I forgot myself in the orchard. We went out and tied buckets around our waists and picked ready apples, admiring the spots where they had been hit with hail but survived. We broke the heads off of dried hollyhocks and took their seeds, hoping for red blooms next summer. For a moment, I entered another story — the story of an ancient orchard and how the people who know how to tend to an ancient orchard are dying out. For a moment, I thought only of water aquifers and weed whackers. For a moment, I thought only of heavy clothes coming out of the river. For a moment, I thought only of ripe peaches and the warm, mascarpone cheese my wife would mix with honey later and heap on top of the peaches with great silver tablespoons. For a moment, I wasn’t waiting at all. I was just eating apples, in a very old orchard with some good friends.

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