"I had a farm in Africa."

            Remember the beginning of the film Out of Africa?  Meryl Streep with that affected Danish accent in voice-over: “I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”  Cue the swelling brass of John Barry's stirring soundtrack.  The sweeping overhead shot of a train slicing through the African veldt along the Great Rift Valley.  Oh, this one will make you cry—the music, the cinematography, it all promises tragedy in store.

            “I had a farm in Africa.”  What poignant memory is in these six words.  What loss. Meryl Streep's character (real-life memoirist Karen von Blixen) spent seventeen years in Kenya, from 1914-1931 struggling to run a coffee plantation.  During that time, she married, divorced, started a school for native children, and ultimately, found freedom from the repression of Victorian Denmark.

            Maybe I'm overdoing it to hear the soundtrack in my ears when I think of the past, but I had my own farm in Africa.  It was a handful of summers spent in Bedford for extended family reunions.  It was the last days of childhood running wild in the woods on the Chestnut Ridge.  Two years on a tropical island in the Philippine Sea.  A tour of the Lake Erie/Chautauqua Wine trail with a new friend.  Two weeks in Nova Scotia with a group of strangers who became friends.           

There is almost no single moment of my life during which I stop and think, “This will be a moment I’ll want to relive.  This is a moment that will make me ache with longing.  This moment will be so glorious in remembering that I won’t be able to think on it without pain.”  We never think that, do we? 

Nathaniel Hawthorne said “Our first youth is of no value: for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone.”  It's true of so much of our lives.  Is it a punishment to be so oblivious?  Or just a natural outcome of the overwhelming weight of the present? 

I cannot see the forest for the trees, but once, I had a farm in Africa. 



Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Bad Hair



Worrywort

                I'm worried about my garden plants.  I think about them when I wake up in the morning.  I think about them when I close my eyes at night.  I think about them when I see commercials showing intimate (and slightly uncomfortable) close-ups of fresh vegetables.  When I stand, overwhelmed, in the Giant Eagle produce section.  When I order the veggie blend with my thirty-seconds-rare steak at the Outback.  I dream about the pale, bell-like blossoms on my Gypsy pepper plant, the softly furred blooms of my Oxheart tomato plant.  

                At first, I fretted over the little plants, worried that their growth was slow, that every imagined deficiency proved my fault.  I water them too little.  I water them too much.  They get too little sun.  They get too much sun.  Do they lack for attention?  Should I not fondle the leaves?  Is that a yellow spot?!

                I'm failing.  I'm failing.

                Weeks ago, the first pepper blossom fell and in its place a tiny green swelling appeared.  It grew.  I relaxed.  And turned my focus to the towering, but fruitless tomato plant.  Then the hint of a tomato appeared, like a droplet of rainwater trapped amidst the green.  I thought I would be satisfied.  I thought I would find relief once the first fruits made an appearance.  But the worry is worse.  Now every morning and evening, I check the baby peppers and tomatoes, turn them gently to inspect the skin, test the weight and firmness.

                I'm understanding just how much worry is involved in taking care of something alive.  How did my parents survive all these years with the constant concern about my physical well-being?  I know they worry still.   Am I growing well?  Am I bearing fruit?  Can I weather the coming winter? 

                I've never been neurotic about taking care of an infant or child.  Even though I'm not a mother, I can hear the difference between the angry howl of a hungry baby and the high wail of a frightened baby.  I know how to lull little ones to sleep with heartbeat pats and low-throated humming.  I know how to feed them, bathe them, clothe them, entertain them with silly songs and simple games.  Babies make sense. 

                But these plants.  Oh, these plants.

                I love them.     



Reason I Didn't Write Yesterday: Didn't Wanna