Trees Tall as Mountains (The Journey Mama Writings: Book 1)

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  Sometimes you fail even when you mean the best. There is tearing down, and there is hurting, and then from the ash heap comes a light as brilliant and inexplicable as the sun at midnight. This is the story of the whole bible, it is the story of the true Christian faith, it is so important that God couldn't leave me following all my rules, thinking that if I did the tomato cans would all stay on the store shelf. My rules have left me gasping for air, and the tomato cans are all around me on the floor.

  One time my Superstar Husband and I were driving with our friend Amelia. "I have to show you something," she said, and she brought us through a deep and dark forest grove. The trees stretched for miles above our heads, and we followed her to a small tree that had needles that were absolutely white. It was an albino Redwood, leaning on a larger green tree, it was a magical snowy fairy tree in the midst of a dark green forest. It was forced to depend entirely on the tree that it was leaning on for its sustenance. It was beautiful and sad and unique, and I've never found it again. But I saw it that day, and I felt its weakness like I feel my own now, when I become offended by the words behind words, or when I hash out old conversations again and again. I am weak now, I am leaning, I have no sustenance other than what I receive from God.

  This is how He is, broken things are made new.

  November 27, 2006

  I remember that when I was first stepping into mommishness, and I had my one wee baby, my friend Carol would tell me that the biggest change in her life since becoming a mom was her lack of a thought life. She had three children, the oldest nine, and the youngest three at the time. Since I only had a baby, I couldn't really relate yet. Most of my struggles were with being tied to a young creature, night and day, with having really tight cycles of sleep and food and wake time, which are big struggles in the beginning, don't get me wrong, but I didn't really understand what she meant by that lack of a thought life thing.

  Until now. Now I understand. It has something to do with waking first thing to requests for juice that grow ever shriller and then sitting at the table sticking to my guns about the fact that everyone is eating their breakfasts and juice can wait until I've finished my own breakfast, for pity's sake. And then on into the day, racing away, breaking up fights, telling stories, of course the ever-present and heroic bum-wiping, and just generally, the living consistently with other talking people who do it all the time. Talk. And talk. And talk.

  I like to think. It fills up my writer self with stories and ideas and memories. So I was glad to drive down to the City yesterday to work, a job I do about once a month, although I half froze in my heatless car. It was good to think.

  I passed three dead deer, not all together, as I drove. Once, a while ago, I started a poem about the carnage on the highway first thing in the morning, here in the woods. Something about the flocks of carrion birds. It was storming so hard yesterday that even the crows were staying away. It was storming so hard that I stopped to eat to try to wait it out a little. I could barely see, and when I ran from my car to the store it was as though I had stepped into my bathtub and turned on the shower.

  I thought a lot. Before I left for the City this morning I ran into our communal kitchen to get something. The kitchen looked as though seven young bulls with dirt on their hooves had wreaked havoc for hours. Somehow in the aftermath of Thanksgiving the kitchen was neglected, partly because a lot of people caught a flu bug going around and were feeling yucky and under the weather, and probably because it got to the point where it was overwhelming. I felt upset. First I thought, how did this happen? And then I thought, why didn't I plan better? I should have thought to set up a clean up crew for the after Thanksgiving earthquake.

  But it's like G.K. Chesterton wrote, after a local paper asked writers for essays on what they thought the biggest problems of the world were. His was brief. "I am," he wrote.

  It's all part of a theme that I've been mulling over, in those rare moments when I can mull, about perspective. For instance, I could have continued to stew over the wreckage of the kitchen as I drove. I realized that I was doing it, and understood that it was stealing my joy over what an amazing Thanksgiving we had. I mean, it really was amazing. I had the most fun that I've had in a long time. Friends came from far away, we ate, we sang the Thanksgiving song, we played music, we played games like Mafia and Grand Pooba, Chinua did card tricks, and the guys made a sweat lodge.

  Yesterday I stopped along the way to visit with my friend who got really hurt in a motorcycle accident. He's in the hospital, and it's so, so sad to see him there and in pain. He looked gray, like people in the hospital often do, and his eyes were shadowed and pain-filled. He's going to get better. That's the amazing thing. He could have died.

  It's crazy, how crumbly we are. There are so many casualties, all the time, like those deer who stepped onto a dark road, like people who fly off their motorcycles because some other person in a car made a bad choice. Something like seeing someone in so much pain really makes you think about casualties. Sometimes we are even casualties of our friendships, of careless words and the sediment of hurts. For me, seeing my friend in pain and his family working through it made me want to say, I'll be a better friend, I really will, to everyone I know. There are small things and there are big things, and I want to focus on the big things.

  Don't get me wrong, the kitchen needs to be cleaned, but sometimes I need to look past the dishes. That's all.

  December

  December 8, 2006

  When our community first moved to this Land, nine years ago, the large house that we call the Big House, which serves as our gathering place and office, was decorated entirely in pink. Over the years the pink has been replaced, and the last surviving pink things were the bathroom tiles that the previous owner used to tile the entire kitchen; floors, counter tops, windowsill, everything. As of this past weekend, they are there no more. The kitchen hasn't been used for years, but we're renovating it to make a working kitchen.

  No one is sad to see those pink tiles go. No one is even the least bit nostalgic. I tend to be a pretty nostalgic girl, certain smells can make me collapse into bits of memory- unlikely things, too, like the smell of sewage when you are walking by a sewer opening in the city and it wafts out at you, because of how it reminds me of Bangkok, or the smell of smoke from fires because of how it reminds me of the burning cow dung in India— but even I do not feel as though I will ever miss those pink tiles.

  We are fighting a battle here, at the Land. Sometimes it feels as though it is a gigantic burden: What will break next? we wonder, with trepidation. For example, in one of the cabins the electricity recently went out. Just disappeared. We don't know why. And the wiring around here was all done a long time ago, perhaps before I was born. Electricians often refuse to come somewhere that is so remote. It's a quandary with no apparent solution. And this is just one example. Don't even get me started on the plumbing. Or our largest building, which appears to be listing to one side, has a leaking roof, and has one wall that is folding in. Forced to evacuate, we'll most likely end up tearing it down, making something new.

  But still I feel that we will do this. One step at a time we will fix this Land up, we will have our garden going, we will make our buildings warm. We will get rid of the broken pink tiles and this will symbolize a new way of doing things. It's just slow, that's all. We've inherited a bit of a beast in the form of a gorgeous, tree-filled, river-bordering, green fairyland.

  We're here to be a family to those who need a family. One guy who is living with us right now told me that this feels like the first home he's ever had. Surely it's worth the work to be that. Every family has maintenance, everybody has their stuff, everybody chooses to put effort into something. For us right now it's this sprawling piece of paradise, this broken down resort that is an unlikely place to find a family. Yet people still find a family here. I do.

  December 11, 2006

  On Saturday I woke up sick. It was a strange sickness, with no symptoms, really, other than the
loss of the will to live, a sore throat, swollen glands, aches, and extra sensitive skin. I'm sure that other people must have extra sensitive skin when they get sick. Chinua thinks that I have some sort of strange neurosis about my skin, but I'm sure I don't.

  On Sunday I woke up feeling a lot better, but still under the weather. We had plans to be out for the whole day, leaving at 9:30 in the morning and getting back at around 10:00 at night. One thing that I don't really like about my mind is that my rational self never quite catches up to my emotional self. So my emotional self is lying on the floor throwing a tantrum and my rational self is sitting on her sofa, scratching her head and mildly saying, "I don't feel very well. I believe I'm overwhelmed and could really use a day off." I can't hear my rational self, through, because the tantrum-thrower is drowning her out. She's really loud. And crazy, she's crazy.

  By now I know that this is what Superstar Husbands are for. While I was stomping around complaining about how sick I felt, mine asked me gently if I would rather stay home with the baby while he took the older kids with him. I couldn't decide whether I felt sad or happy about not going (probably because my emotional self was shouting in my ear that he was abandoning me and I couldn't hear my rational self stretching on the sofa and smiling while she said, "That's great, that'll be just the ticket,") but I decided to stay. And then they left.

  It was perfect. For me, solitude is a way of getting out from under the microscope. One of the things that marriage and parenting has brought into my life is a magnified view of my flaws, a view that I just cannot get away from. As a perfectionist, I am sucker-punched in the gut with this view, though it is possibly the best thing for me. My life lesson is that it is not my effort that makes a difference. God through me can do something lovely, but my own tightly held breath and careful apologies won't even be able to begin. Every day that I am with my children, my impatience is held before me like a new magazine. Every day my interactions with my Superstar Husband illuminate my anger and my deep insecurity. It's the best thing for me. I'm not sure that I would ever have known the depth of my need without these mirrors, short and tall, all around me. We have our own private funhouse over here.

  But it is exhausting. And yesterday I was able to get out from under the microscope and drink some coffee, read a little, watch a movie, wash my floors. I played with my Leaf Baby, listened to a great talk on cultivating a healthy marriage (which was very inspiring and just what I needed) and sat, and thought, and got better.

  Today I'm back where I need to be careful of my words, need to keep my attitudes in check, need to be kind and gentle and take care. I will try not to be self-conscious, though, try to look around at the other things swimming around in here, notice that lovely light, that cell, the pattern that the little hairs on the paramecium are making on the walls. And the amoebas! The amoebas are lovely under here.

  December 12, 2006

  Last night we were all up in the building that we currently cook and eat in, getting ready for dinner. I had walked up with the kids (I believe that it is about one and a half city blocks from my house to this building, if you could measure it in city blocks) and my Superstar Husband had stopped along the way to do something or other.

  On his way into the building, he stopped at the window to make a scary roaring face at our kids, which they started to laugh at... except that at precisely the same moment, we lost power and were smothered by complete and total darkness. After that, there was almost nothing we could do to convince them that Daddy hadn't made the power go out by scaring them. My kids hate complete darkness, and they started screaming almost immediately, while I tried to get over to them to hold them.

  We scrounged around and found a couple of candles, then a big sack of tea-lights left over from a party. Renee had made lasagna and apple turnovers for dinner, and we ate happily, illuminated by dozens of tea-lights. It was dark, but pretty.

  The silly thing is, I almost never went anywhere in the dark last year without my head lamp. Head lamps are an absolute necessity with us. There are patches of the Land that are very dark at night, and at a Rainbow Gathering you can't possibly get along without one. I LOVED my head lamp. But at the last gathering I loaned it to someone when I left, and when it was returned to me my poor head lamp looked like a horror film for gadgets, wires popping out, pieces missing. Someone did a bad thing to my light.

  Silly me, I haven't replaced it. And Chinua didn't have his, either. So, the two of us were in the tight spot of trying to make it down to our house in fairly heavy rain, in complete darkness, with only three tea-lights to help us. We had two little kids and a baby in a stroller. It was not at all easy. We felt like we'd made it into some awkward slow motion movie. Why is it so hard for us to get to our house right now?

  Crazy thing, sight. Without it, you keep veering into the bushes, heading for the pond rather than down the path. You step into an ankle-deep puddle that you'd normally avoid. Have you ever tried to walk by candlelight? It's not easy. The rain kept putting the candles out, so we'd quickly relight another one before they all went out and we were left there without any light.

  We got home safely, got the fire blazing, and lit a bunch of candles. About an hour later, the power came back on. Kai saw some lights go on in my room, and said, "What? It's not possible!" as he ran to investigate. He was so serious about it, he had Chinua and I laughing ourselves into a fit.

  Tomorrow, I'm going to buy a head lamp.

  December 18, 2006

  When I was nine or ten, I ran into a tree. I was running under its branches, chasing a kitten, but I didn't see the thick, broken off branch in front of my face. It slapped me and knocked me onto the ground, where I rolled around holding my swollen nose. The branch had come dangerously close to my eye, but I thought that I had escaped the incident relatively damage-free. However, it has always seemed that there is something... missing.

  I've figured out what was damaged, that summer day. My shopping nerve.

  I'm lacking, seriously lacking. I don't have the muscle, or nerve, or gene, or something, that other people seem to have when it comes to the ability to shop. This always plagues me, and I mean always, but it comes out most seriously at Christmas. I go into a store with the best of intentions, even a detailed list, and within a few moments of entering, my mind goes completely blank and I start to panic. I begin gibbering to whomever is with me about being afraid, and then the stress begins. Grocery shopping is not quite as terrible as shopping for clothes or presents, because it is more straightforward, but lately even grocery stores have me curled up on the floor, right beside the cucumbers.

  Some people appear to enjoy shopping. I don't understand this. I really do think that my problems began with that one maple tree that had it out for me.

  December 20, 2006

  It's like a candy-making house of horrors around here. I made an ugly batch of fudge two days ago, then yesterday my second try turned into something that can only be used as hot fudge. And it's true, it still tastes good, but failing once is bad enough for me, failing twice is pretty much the end of the world. It has me wondering whether I'm just not good at this. This whole Christmas thing. I mean, I love Jesus, and I can identify with Mary, (about the having a baby part) and I am all about celebration, but I can't see how to pull the rest of it together. And then that has me wondering about whether I'm just not good at this whole mom thing. Do all moms do well at Christmas? From my standpoint (which may be warped, it's true) it seems as though they've all got it under control. But maybe that's the beauty of childhood. All you see are the pretty lights, not the crying in the bathroom over the ruined fudge.

  I think I have PMS. Or something.

  But back to the fudge. I learned to make it in an old-fashioned girl-to-girl recipe way. My dear friend Amelia taught me to make it, with phrases like this:

  "Wash the chocolate with the milk, to get it to melt into it smoothly. Wash it."

  "Add the sugar and then a glop of Karo. No, not a glop like this, a glop lik
e that. Just a glop."

  "Cook until it's at soft ball stage."

  "Place a stick of butter in it, and a splash of vanilla, and then cool it until you can stick your finger in and there is no impinging heat." (This is usually the point when we start dipping the pecans in it and eating them.)

  "Stir the pecans in and keep stirring until it begins to lose the gloss. This is when you put it in the tins, when it will stack up."

  Amelia is also famous for giving directions like, "Shake hands with the turkey. Can you shake hands with the turkey? Good. Then it's done," and "add just enough cream to my coffee to see it bounce back from the bottom.

  Last year we made fudge together at her house in San Francisco, drank tea, went out for sushi while it was cooling, and then watched Project Runway after. I'm beginning to think that it's a good idea to plan on doing that, if I'm going to make fudge.

  Yesterday I called her, distraught. "I'm sure there was no impinging heat, Amy! I'm positive."

  "How firm was your soft ball?"

  "Weeeelllll... it was a little melty."

  "I don't think your ball was enough of a ball. You probably didn't cook it long enough. It's like chemistry, Rae."