Motherly Love
Greetings Neighbors and Strangers,
The fallow, half-feral garden beside my house is full of surprises. Basswood, felled to reduce unwanted shade, sends a volley of stump-sprouts skyward. The first leaves, tender and sweet, delight the winter-weary palate. Dandelion greens and wild winter cress have been steady companions for weeks now—blessed bitter tonics. Violets entered the garden scene a few years back; they adorn the joint of their own accord. Who doesn’t like a salad topped with cheerful purple and yellow flowers? Chervil self-seeded, offering a mild licorice green for the filling bowl. Perennial scallions, lovage and tender tips of winter savory add a bit of bite. At a time of year that could seem short on fresh food, a close look around reveals a landscape grinning with greenery. Nettles have taken over the whole west side of the garden, lending their deep spring green to soups and teas. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have them as neighbors.
Yesterday we hosted the first public Farm Frolic of the season. After a morning of steady showers, afternoon Sun brought a grinning group to the Farm, including a couple of courageous kids. While Colleen and I filled the feral salad bowl and slid skillets of bubbling cornbread batter into the oven, the big group pushed and pulled in the corn patch where next week we’ll press those yellow-red-orange gems into the freshly-forked rows. Growing food without machines is shockingly joyful. If you squinted your eyes yesterday, you might have seen a group of Mexican peasants out there. The dinner table was a songful affair.
Best of all for me was our special guest project leader. My mother spent Mother’s Day at the Farm with us. She requested her buddy Brandon as her Frolic sidekick. Together, they leaned into the task of weeding the perennial flower beds she’s created over the past three years. At eighty-three, she is a motherly marvel. If I’ve done anything noteworthy in my forty-six years, she’s the one who prepared the ground, planted the seeds and then showered this seedling with relentless applications of love. I don’t think I would dare to write and speak about belonging unless I’d been on the receiving end of that strong medicine.
Forming a book team over the past month has meant crafting intimate and consequential relations with strangers—the folks I listed in last week’s newsletter:
I’ve asked each member of the team to pen a few words of introduction. That roll-out will begin next week with the remarkable Eleanor Robins of How to Go Home. Ellie has signed on as the manuscript’s primary editor. In the meantime, you might be deepened by a look at her careful word-craft:
I tend to drop the L-bomb fairly early in new relationships, and the kind folks on the book team have graciously received my emails signed “With love, Adam.” But I’m not employing the L-word to describe a warm, fuzzy feeling. I use it as a statement of relational rigor. As in, “When I say I love you, what I really mean is that there’s nothing you could do to make you unlovable to me.” My friend and collaborator Sam surprised me last winter by rolling out a singalong version of that line, which, apparently, he’s been carrying around since I said to him some years back. He fit the words to the tune of Old Smokey, which I’ll sing for you on the recording of this newsletter.
When I say “I love you,” I am not describing a fantasy land in which your behavior won’t disappoint or befuddle me. I’m not turning my back on the essential signpost we call anger. I am saying that I’m here to learn, which might include creating boundaries or even asking for distance between us when things get rough. But I’ve seen the heart-constricting condition called “unlovable.” I’ve seen the way it’s a lot easier to turn you into a monster than allow myself to be changed by the absolutely unpalatable medicine you are placing before me. I’ve seen the way resentment can hollow out a human being. I’ve seen the ease with which I self-apply a story of victimhood, pull it over my shoulders like a coat of armor.
About eight years ago, at just such a moment, a remarkable book landed in my hands. I recommend Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse to everyone involved in any sort of collaborative work, a category overlapping strongly with another one called ‘learning how to become a human being.’ Here’s one of Schulman’s gems for you, which appears as a quote in my manuscript chapter titled: From Victimhood to Reparations:
Nothing disrupts dehumanization more quickly than inviting someone over, looking into their eyes, hearing their voice, and listening. Confusing being mortal with being threatened can occur in any realm. The fact that something could go wrong does not mean that we are in danger. It means we are alive.
I love those final two sentences. In fact, they morphed into a sort of mantra in the book manuscript as a way of describing the work I’ve been involved with over the past eight years. The fact that I could die at any moment doesn’t mean that I am in danger. It means that I am alive. Lest I forget how utterly unlikely and insanely precious this is. This moment in which we get to learn alongside loves.
To all of the mothers out there, I bend my head. By your labors you have renewed this Life.
With abiding gratitude and a committed sort of love,
Adam