Looking back on Fall 2020 - An Old House With Potential
Fall is coming and the colors on the farm are stunning this year. Usually, windstorms shake all the color from the trees early, but not this year. Crow's Croft Farm is awash in bright yellows from the maples, stark against the shadowy green of the cedars, fir, and pine. Dusky orange leaves punctuate the yellow tones and the reds from my highbush cranberry bushes laden with berries stand out against the withering blackberries that have taken over the raspberry patch. The rain has started and the temperatures are creeping lower and lower. Daylight savings has occurred and night falls much earlier. I have never minded the cold weather, the blustery days, or the rain, but the shorter days and the early nightfall has always been difficult for me. This year will be no different in that regard, and yet, its different in so many other ways.
In 2013, I bought this property despite its obvious issues. Vacant for five years, the house had seen better days and the property was thick with trees and snarled with blackberries. Still, there was potential here and I could see it. So could Phil, the man who I would marry three years later under a stand of cedars on a beautiful June afternoon. By that time, we had already spent three years and would spend the next four years after our marriage pulling the potential of this place to its surface. A lot has changed. New roof, new septic, new gardens, new horse paddocks, new chimney...there was supposed to be so much more, but with the change of this property came other changes and, with some of those changes, irreconcilable differences.
It's a sobering and humbling experience realizing how quickly things can change in a relationship and staggering how quickly the foundations you laid for your future plans with someone can quickly shift and topple into an unmanageable mess. For me, it started slowly and, being the stubborn person I tend to be, I ignored all the signs that things were shifting in a different direction in our relationship for as long as possible. I had put so much into this. We had been together for so long and been through many challenges together, surely we could overcome this too. These are the things I told myself. Then it got worse for both of us and we went into counseling as a last dich effort to save it, but over a year in marriage counseling turned up no results and more issues. Finances were tight, we were both miserable, and the fighting was reaching a fever pitch to the point where I was exhausted emotionally all of the time and I'm sure he was too. I had a friend recently tell me that when she met me, which was only a year or two before the divorce, she could see I was so "defeated". That word felt like a spike going into my soul. I knew she was right and that I had been living in unhappiness longer than even I had allowed myself to believe.
Over the last several years, the house and property needed so much work and witnessed so much change, it was hard not to get bogged down in the stress and turmoil of it all. There were challenges along the way and we fought our way through them. At first, for the most part, it was us fighting side by side through leaky ceilings and chimney stones, digging posts and stretching wire fence, building stone garden walls, planting an orchard, and battling a septic that would randomly backup into the basement. Somewhere along the line, we started fighting each other and when too much damage was done we fought for what we wanted. I'm not sure where or when exactly my mindset turned from "us" to "me" alone, but it happened awhile before the end of it all. I realized somewhere along the way that what we wanted had become two very different things and neither of us was fighting for "us" anymore.
A house can be constantly repaired and, if repair won't right the wrong, it can be rebuilt as long as the bones are strong and stable and the foundation is good. The same is not true of a relationship. Sometimes, the damage is so great, the only option is to walk away and start over, but even if you reach the point where you have to do that, I don't think you ever stop mourning what could have been. At no point do you ever look back and say "I always knew that outcome wasn't possible" and you never see the beauty of the alternative without comparing it to the original idea.
On the Brink of Fall 2022 - The Next Chapter
It is now 2022 and I've been writing this piece for nearly two years. Some pieces take awhile to marinate, but I finally feel I can finish this one now. It may seem strange to be telling this story now. Two years has passed since the letter arrived informing me that my marriage was officially over. Since then, there has been even more change. I think I have become more accustomed to it, or at least I have learned in all of this to weather it a bit better than I used to. Phil has since moved away and lives in Wyoming now. We occasionally exchange a text or two regarding the animals mainly. We say we hope the other is doing well, but we never ask "how are you?" It seems an odd question to pose to someone you thought would be in in your life every day. Our divorce was amicable as divorces go, but there is still anger, hurt, and resentment lingering in the darkest corners. Occasionally I send a swirl of those emotions up when working on yet another project or uncovering yet another need here at the farm.
In two years, I have transformed quite of a bit of this place and untangled quite a bit of that unmanageable mess I saw getting larger and larger as my marriage fell apart. The pieces that belong only to me I have lined up, laid out, rearranged, and studied as long as a wounded heart will allow on the arduous journey of healing. There have been days I have screamed, days I have cried, days I have laughed, and days I have felt nothing but overwhelming gratitude. It has been far from easy and it will continue to be a challenge, but in just two years, I have seen more potential come to the surface. Some of that potential was predictable and some has been a surprise.
I have rediscovered my old self buried somewhere under all the "mess" and rather than size her up and be skeptical, I find myself embracing her like an old friend I haven't seen in so long and didn't realize how much I missed. I have rediscovered the ability to surprise myself as I pull together necessary resources and bring to life visions I had always had of this farm; visions that previously seemed so far away and impossible.
I've learned to trust that things happen for reasons I may not know the answer to yet and to "wait and see" when I used to try and wrangle things out of my control into my liking. As a result, I have allowed myself the space and time to recognize just how far I have come thus far, despite how much more I see there is to go. In doing so,I have given myself permission to be a student of my surroundings and to ask for help when I need it. I have been reminded just how much love and support surrounds me in my family and friends and how lucky I am to be so blessed.
I've found a happiness and a peace with my life here on the farm that, like me, continues to be a work in progress.
And there's the biggest surprise of all - I've fallen in love again.
Looking back on what I started to write back two years ago and reading my old journal entries, none of this seemed possible. Back then, I was still living in the survival mode I had not realized had become my day to day default mode. We humans seem inherently determined to always see things ending when in fact, they're just changing and with change comes new potential and possibilities that we may never have considered before.
Summer is waning here on the farm. The blackberries I still struggle to tame are heavy with fruit and the scent of the berries is always heavy on the morning dew. It's darker in the mornings when I go out to tend to my morning chores and there is an amber glow to the light in the evening. The leaves haven't started changing yet, but the pigs have started to grow back their coats and I know soon I will need the firewood I have split and stacked to build a morning fire each day. I've made this house more and more my home and soon I will pull my focus back to the projects that await me inside the house once the weather turns to continue that journey.
I still have a lot of work to do and there are new adventures, changes, challenges, and possibilities that still lie in wait and more potential and opportunity to pursue. All of this over the last two years has manifested into three words that have more weight and meaning than they ever had before.
I am happy.
