by Rory Feek
Field of Dreams
This land ain’t your land . . . this land ain’t my land.
If you sing those lines to the melody of “This Land Is Your Land,” it sounds pretty much the same . . . but the meaning is completely different. Rightly so. I bought the land we live on with hard-earned money. Some of it, I paid for twice. And some I’m still making payments on. But none of it is actually mine.
The deed is probably still in my wife’s and my names, but it’s not ours. Not really. I can claim it, like the white settlers from Europe who took it piece by piece from the Indians who were here first. But it’s not mine, just like it wasn’t the Indians’ either.
It’s all His. Held in trust. He gives us the gift of using it. Living on it and returning to it when we die. Could be that we get to live on it for just a short time—maybe a year or two. Or for generations, like the farm our neighbor Danny Smith lives on. His great-granddaddy’s great-granddaddy’s place. But it’s still God’s and all we’re doing is borrowing it for a blink, in the scope of eternity.
It took me a while to learn this. Probably because I’d never really owned anything before. None of my people had. We were renters. And most of the time, we soon ran short of rent money and skipped out of town or state in the middle of the night, only to be renters to someone new, someplace different. But we never owned anything. I never owned a stick of furniture that didn’t come from a garbage truck or a thrift store until I was thirty-four years old. Till I bought the farmhouse and needed to start filling its empty rooms with something. I didn’t even bother to bring much with us when we moved since it wasn’t worth anything.
We originally bought thirty acres of land along with the farmhouse and barns. That was in the summer of ’99. But just before I met Joey two and a half years later, I sold twenty-three acres in the back to our neighbors. It was more than I could take care of. I was overwhelmed, and the truth is, I needed the money.
I almost immediately regretted selling it . . . for a few reasons. First off, I didn’t really make much money off the sale. Secondly, within a few weeks a cowgirl named Joey rode into my life, and though I was an amateur at this farm-living business, she had the experience and know-how to tackle even the toughest things that would come our way. But it was too late; the back field was someone else’s. We were gonna have to bloom on the land where we were planted. Even less of it now.
And so we dug in and made that house and the land around it a home. One that we could be proud of.
The few acres behind our house that was once a small little square where we grew a garden has increased ten-, twentyfold. Neighbors have moved and sold us their land. What was only seven acres are now nearly one hundred. But the size of the land we own doesn’t matter; what matters is what we do with it, what God wants us to do with it.
In the past we have had cows on that land and horses. And other times we have raised hay. We have even had festivals there. Music and lights and food. Great celebrations for thousands of people from ages two to ninety-two. What will it be tomorrow? I don’t know.
I do know that I want to be a great steward of what God’s blessed us with. I would like for it to pay for itself, but paying for itself does not mean that it has to be monetary. I cut hay in the back field last fall with some neighbors who came over and helped us get it in, and that evening I spent with them was priceless. The land provided that experience. It was a moment that could’ve happened fifty, seventy, or a hundred years ago. Neighbors gathered around harvesting, talking, laughing. Brought together by work that needed to be done. That was something I longed for . . . I long for still.
Did we make any money off that hay? I’m not really sure. We gave a good bit of it away, but did the land pay for itself that fall? A hundred times over. The land has also been a landing strip for the neighbor boy to take his airplane kit up in the air and back down. It has been where yard sales have taken place and cows have had babies. It is also where my wife and I walked one hundred times hand in hand, praying. And where a team of mules carried a simple wooden box that we laid her to rest in beneath a grove of trees.
I sat out there last night underneath the stars. It was a beautiful night, and I was on the bench beside my wife’s cross. It was eerily silent but not scary. I felt close to her and close to the land. The land gives itself to us . . . and we give ourselves back to the land. That is how Joey saw it and what she did.
And it isn’t just the dirt and hay and grass that make up our land. The truth is, we are the land. In the end, we are. All of us. Just like the birds and flowers and every living creature. We all are a part of the great circle of life. When the preacher says the words “ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” that’s what he means. There’s a good bit of debate about where our soul goes when we die, but there’s no debating where this shell we call a body ends up.
We are fortunate that we can live and die here on our farm. That Tennessee allows it. That my pretty bride can lay beneath the piece of ground that she loved so much and that we can hang a wooden swing in a tree nearby and the baby and I can feel close to Joey. And we are close to her. What a gift that is.
Special Eyes
We don’t see Indiana as a child with special needs . . . only special eyes.
Joey and I thought that maybe it was her family heritage that we saw in Indy’s eyes when we first laid our eyes on her, the day she was born here at home. There is a lot of American Indian in Joey’s lineage on her daddy’s side, so I guess it was possible. Indiana was just over eight pounds and twenty inches long, and her little eyes had a slight turn to them.
A few hours later in a hospital hallway, a doctor saw something different in them. “We suspect that your daughter has Down syndrome,” she said to me. I stared at her with a blank look on my face. Huh? I thought. How can that be? . . . She’s perfect. I didn’t say it to her, but it’s what I thought.
A half hour later, when I broke the news to Joey, it is what she said, too, only different. Much different. Joey just stared into her baby’s eyes and smiled as she stroked her silky, dark-blonde hair. “She’s perfect, isn’t she?” Joey said. There were no buts. No except-fors.
My wife saw only the beauty in our baby, and she passed that view on to me in those first few hours. Gone almost immediately was the thought that Indiana was anything less than what we had hoped for. What God had intended her to be.
She’s three and a half now, and that has never changed. When I look at her, I don’t see a child with Down syndrome. I just see a child. Though she wears braces to help her walk, I don’t see special needs, only special eyes.
Those little eyes. They are the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. Maybe because they’re so different than mine. Different than her mama’s and her sisters’. Maybe it’s because they are filled with so much emotion. When she hurts, you see it. Long before you see tears. And when she’s excited, you see that too. She opens her eyes so wide, they’re almost completely round.
There are quite a few other little ones with Down syndrome at Indy’s school, and I have a soft spot for them too. Big-time. I can walk into a room and see one little pair of almond eyes in a sea of blue and green and brown, and I melt into a puddle. My body drops to the ground, and I am immediately on that child’s level, saying hello, asking their name and wanting to hold them in my arms.
Joey had a weakness for eyes like Indy’s too. In the last few months before she passed away, more than once she said, “I think women should wait until they’re older to have babies . . . that way they have a better chance of having one with Down syndrome.” And she meant it. Mostly the sentiment about how special they are. How special ours is.
I know, like typical children, Down syndrome kids come in all shapes and sizes. Some walk early, some late. Some never talk, some talk up a storm. Indy is just Indy. She’s a walker and a talker and a feeler and a lover. Much like most other kids in the world. Except she is ours and we get to decide how best to raise her. And so Joey laid down a few rules early o
n that haven’t changed. No sugar. No dairy. No gluten.
That means she’s never had candy or chocolate bars or gummy bears or all the other things that little ones love. Instead, she eats steak like it’s a Snickers bar. And green beans like they’re french fries. She loves healthy food because it’s all she’s ever known. And she doesn’t know what she’s missing.
I sometimes wish I were that way. That I didn’t know how yummy a bowl of Graeter’s black raspberry ice cream was. Or a glass of good cabernet. But I do. And so, like everyone else in the world, I have to work at it. To stay balanced. She doesn’t.
Joey hated to read unless it was about gardening or raising her baby, and then she would stay up late at night scouring Internet blogs and books for the best, right choices to give Indiana the fullest life she can lead. Indy is incredibly smart. In my mind, so far, if you’d ask me what she can be when she grows up, I’d tell you, “Anything,” and I’d mean it. She’s that sharp. And I think it’s because of the choices Joey made and the ones I’m trying my best to follow through on as she asked me to do.
I know there will come a time in the near future when all of this is challenged. The diet she’s on is probably unrealistic, long-term. But for now it helps her to be the best she can be, and that’s all we need to know.
I am human, and so is our little one, so from time to time I will let her try something. A bite of this or a drink of that. For the most part, she doesn’t like it. She’ll push it all away and say, “Bring on the okra and brussels sprouts.” A couple weeks ago I made Joey’s homemade zucchini cookies that she used to make, and Heidi and I gave one to Indy to try. At first, she said, “Lucky!” Her word for yucky. But on second bite, she changed her mind. “Num, num, nummy,” she said. And so she ate a whole cookie.
And it was fine. The world didn’t end. She loved it. As she should. And we loved watching her love it. The problem was, the rest of the batch of cookies that was sitting there late that night with only me awake in the house smelling and staring at them. I had two or three and, ultimately, threw the rest of them away. Lest I finish the plate.
Indy is going to be who Indy is going to be. We won’t make her better than God made her. That’s clear. But I believe we could make her worse, and that’s what Joey was trying not to do with the choices she put in place when she was here and what I’m trying to do with the ones I am making now. There are times we will miss the mark. Terribly. But, hopefully, it won’t be due to lack of trying.
Someone stopped me the other day and told me about another country that has claimed that they’ve eliminated Down syndrome within their borders. By abortion. The person who told me about it was clearly angry and expected me to be upset also. I wasn’t. Instead, I was brokenhearted for the families those decisions have impacted. But I wasn’t angry.
My plan to be part of changing the world is to try not to. I’m just gonna live and love our little girl in front of people. And share as much of our and her story as I can. With the hope that maybe others will see something beautiful in it. In Indiana. And maybe it will inspire them to make a different decision. A better one.
It wasn’t that long ago that kids with Down syndrome were considered useless. Taken from hospitals when they were born or from their homes not long after and put into asylums to live or die. That breaks my heart. Mostly because I know how special Indy is to us. And I know that she might look a little different than the rest of us, but inside she’s exactly the same. And I mean exactly. Her heart beats with the same blood, and her lungs fill with the same air. Her tears are as real as yours and mine, and her love is as true. Maybe truer.
We have a joke in our family. Because Indy looks so much like Heidi did when she was two or three, we say that “Heidi looked just like Indy . . . before she grew out of her Down syndrome.” We laugh and think it’s silly. But a lot of other folks would have a hissy fit if they heard us say it. I’m not sure why. For me, it’s been important to try to find the humor in the toughest of situations. It makes it bearable.
As I write this, our little one is fast asleep. My eyes are getting sleepy and fingers are moving slower and slower on the keyboard. I had hoped to stay up a couple more hours writing, but I know the morning will come early, and Indy will be at my door. Pushing on the little metal gate between her room and mine, saying, “I awake, Papa.” And I will look at the clock, and it will say 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. or, from time to time, as late as 6:00 a.m. And I will pull her up into my bed, and she will cuddle into me and finish the night beside me. Sleeping on her mama’s pillow. And I will awake and listen to her breathe. Watch her sleep and think of her mama and how proud she would be of her. Of us.
Oh, how I wish she could be here for all of this.
Home School
We’re building a school. At home.
Raising Indiana is new for me. Of course it’s new because I haven’t ever raised a child with Down syndrome, but it’s also new because I have some resources and land and a beautiful home that I didn’t have when I was raising our older girls. I am also much older (and, hopefully, smarter) than I was then.
I also care about how Indiana spends her days, and I question the status quo. All things that I didn’t do when my older girls were young. I want what’s best for Indy, and I’d like to think that I am willing to make the changes required to give her the chance to get there.
She has been going to an amazing school called High Hopes for the last year or so, but I am about to pull her out of it. Not because they aren’t doing a great job, because they are. But because I am hoping for something more. More than just an education for my child. I want to be part of helping others as I try to help Indiana.
A few weeks ago Indy started going to a new school on Thursdays. It’s a nature preschool called Ferntop. Mike Wolfe, the guy most people know from watching the TV show American Pickers, told me about it. His daughter Charlie just graduated from the school, and her experience there, Mike and his wife said, was incredible.
What they do there is a little unorthodox. The kids come to school and then go outside. That’s it. Sounds ordinary, but it’s actually pretty amazing. The kids stay outside. Pretty much rain or shine or snow. They spend their days in the greenhouse or gardens, with chickens and goats, and in creeks and on hillsides, learning to love nature and work together. It sounds heavenly. But, of course, it’s still fall as I’m writing this, and the cold weather is a month or so away. Something tells me it’ll sound a little different when the cold rain or snow gets here.
But it will be unique, for sure. And closer to what my wife would want for Indiana.
If Joey were here, she wouldn’t be driving Indy the hour back and forth to school. Instead, she’d be homeschooling her. And I’m pretty sure her curriculum for Indy, even at three or four years of age, would be life. The life that God has given us. Her. She would want Indy to love nature and animals and flowers and plants and trees and bugs and on and on. She would, of course, want her to learn her ABCs and numbers, but that wouldn’t be her priority.
Learning to love God would be. And Joey would open the door of the farmhouse and let some light in so Indy could see Him. She’d have her outside every chance she got. And so Joey would love Indy’s new school, just like she would’ve loved her old one. But for different reasons. High Hopes showed our little one that she could walk. I’m trying to make decisions now that will help her learn to run. And jump. And skip. And mostly fly.
Earlier this fall we started building a schoolhouse here on our property. It looks a bit like the school on Little House on the Prairie, only bigger and white with red trim. The one we’re building here is based on a one-room schoolhouse that we came across in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, that was originally built in 1892. I saw some pictures of it online, and Indy and I drove up there to see it a few months ago and took some more pics and video. I showed those to my brother-in-law Keith, and he took them to an architect . . . and voila . . . we made a few adjustments, got a building permit from the county, and
ordered all the materials. A few weeks later we held an old-fashioned barn raising here at our farm. Only, instead of a barn . . . the walls and trusses for a one-room schoolhouse went up over the course of one weekend.
Folks from the cowboy church joined in with some of my neighbors and friends to help us put it up. A bunch of the wives and ladies from the area made lunch and dinner and it was an amazing day.
I’m sure we could have probably started building it with a regular contractor and crew and it would’ve come out just as beautiful. But I believe that how something comes to be is as important as what it comes to be. They are at times intertwined. The story of the story matters to me. It always has.
And so I’m excited about this new chapter in our farm’s story. Partly because of how the walls went up. That in itself is a memory . . . not just for us but for everyone involved. But also for the memories that will be made there. Many of them, of course, will be Indiana’s. But they will also be other children’s and other parents’ memories being made. That’s my favorite part. The chance to make our blessing a blessing to others.
Our hope is that it will be a High Hopes school. A satellite classroom that their staff can help us run and manage. Filled with nature and music and love. A place where there’ll be chickens and a garden for the kids to grow their own food and a bird-watching house to watch nature from and trails in the woods nearby for exploring and many other things we’ve yet to think of. A place that Joey would’ve loved having here at our farm. Where Indy can thrive and so can lots of other children.
In time, maybe even our concert hall will play a part in the story. Maybe kids put on plays or have music lessons there. And our horses can be part of the curriculum. The kids learning to love them. Care for them. And, ideally, ride them.