Photo by Zosia Szopka on Unsplash
Dear Aunt Martha,
I’ve been trying to keep a daily journal but writing to you is much easier. I used to tell my students in composition classes that they had to write to an audience, so you are mine now.
Keeping myself clean and fed has proved to be more of a job than I thought it would be. I didn’t realize how spoiled I am. Friends once paid big money to spend time at retreats doing what I have to do every day now.
I once had a dishwasher, now I wash everything by hand. I have to drive an hour and a half to a decent grocery store now and it’s too late in the year to put in a garden. Fresh vegetables are expensive and I am grateful for the overflow from Caleb and Ann’s garden, but what am I going to do with all of this squash and zucchini? Ann is teaching me to can. There isn’t much room in the freezer to store more than weekly groceries.
Samu practice at retreats was fun and exciting, largely because for many of us it was not things we had to perform every day and there was an “odor of sanctity” about it that made it feel special, as if we were earning spiritual brownie points for doing menial work. I had a housekeeper and reliable appliances at home and am reminded of Marie Antoinette playing at being a shepherdess. I wonder what my former retreat companions would do if they had to evict a 6-foot black snake from a chicken coop.
Speaking of chickens, they are not your original flock. They were dispersed by the hurricane. I stuck my head into Tractor Supply looking for cat food when they had chicks and fell for the cute little balls of peeping fluff. David, Caleb’s youngest, helped repair the coop and has taught me about caring for them as a 4-H project.
I never knew domesticated fowl could be so funny. There is no way I could sacrifice one for dinner, even if the preacher came to visit. I remember watching you do it and how you showed me the eggs inside the butchered hen. These are pets and are more entertainment than a television could ever be. The fresh eggs are a bonus and they lay enough that I can return Caleb and Ann’s generosity.
Caring for the flock and the lack of automation in the kitchen caused me to realize that I have romanticized rural life based on trialing after you and Uncle Bud as a child. You were always a safe place for a troubled kid and I never knew how much hard work it took for you to keep body and soul intact. Watching Uncle Bud do the milking twice a day was an adventure for a child, as an adult it would be part of the daily grind of responsibilities with no relief.
I think it’s human nature to romanticize our pasts as we search for parental figures to replace the ones we lost or never had. There are jokes among professors about student crushes and tales told at cocktail parties after a few drinks. I was privy to more than one student-teacher affair that went sour.
I had an embarrassing crush on my first Buddhist teacher and spent hours staring at his crotch during dharma talks. I will always appreciate his kindness and patience as he gracefully ignored my puppy eyes. Reality hit especially hard many years later when I tracked him down and he did not remember me. I shed too many tears over him during our association, but healed a great deal from the experience.
Roshi talks about having no preferences. That’s a tough one to swallow, especially as basic survival depends on our atavistic brains picking and choosing. We gravitate towards the pleasurable and reject the uncomfortable while Roshi instructs us to embrace both. We talk about the Sandokai, the Harmony of Sameness and Differences, and try to apply it to our lives. Meanwhile the Four Noble truths remind us that suffering arises when we want things to be different from what they are.
We put people, places, things, experiences, on pedestals and imbue them the qualities that we want for ourselves or are repelled by them. The flock of chickens are hilarious entertainment. Each has a name and a distinct personality. Perhaps somewhere in my psyche I see them as the toddlers I was never able to mother or grant them mental processes that they don’t really have as I compare their behavior to people I know. I wonder if that is what Roshi means when they talk about life as a mirror. Projection.
Maybe my next book will be about the chickens.
Love,
Geneva