I need to quit writing.

Or at least quit writing so much.

I blame Saoirse for this. 

Or the voices in my head.

I kinda blame Dad.

I definitely blame Kate.

I get Kate’s message when Bob, the kids and I come out of the woods two weeks ago.  We spent 24 hours in sylvan bliss, enjoying our first true day off of the summer.  I should never have turned my cell phone back on when we returned.  Then none of this would’ve happened.

But I turn it on.

And Kate’s message blips in.  She needs a meeting with me —  Before our regularly scheduled Friday sit-down.  The phone practically thrums with her urgency.  I don’t ignore her message, although I wish I did.  I drive to her house and knock on her door.

She’s sobbing.  The throes of the season, the juggling of baby Lark between her and Joe’s jobs, is too much.  She wants to quit.  She wants to raise her kid.  

I get it.  But I hate it.  

I watch Lark as Kate weeps.  Kate loves our land.  She loves this farm.  She loves our family.  This is tearing her apart.  

That baby is tearing me apart.  Eighteen weeks ago I was holding that baby in my arms.  We were dancing in Kate’s living room while I called instructions out to Saoirse for cooking Kate and Joe’s dinner.  On that day, she was becoming a familiar weight against my hips.  I knew her little gestures, I knew that her smiles were hard-won.  I knew the intensity of her gaze.  That was the last time I held her before the wall of the pandemic came down.  

On that day, we were all a big family.  Saoirse was helping Kate in her home, enabling her a few hours each afternoon to work on the farm.  I was helping Saoirse learn the ropes of baby and home care.  Covid changed all that for us, forcing us into tribal corners, ripping us from Kate’s household.  And Kate, ultimately, is now tearing apart from us.

I hold myself together each time we meet to discuss the logistics of her departure.  She wants to find a farm of her own.  She wants to help finish training the A Team, Saoirse, Corey and Ula, for the remainder of this month.  

But one quiet evening, I can’t hold it together any longer.  I’m crying out on the screen porch in front of my Portal.  Mom and Dad squeeze together on her phone on their own porch at the farm, trying to console me.  

But I’m beyond consolation.  I am only deeply, deeply regretful.  So much faith has been invested in me on this farm.  And that faith has built a business with one enormous chink in the foundation.

I can’t do what Kate does.  I can’t tube a lamb, autopsy a chicken, nor castrate a pig.  I’m not even allowed to operate the tractor.  Kate does what Dad has always done.  She does what Dad simply couldn’t teach Bob and me.   Every time we tried to learn his skills, we felt like square pegs in round holes.  Things didn’t make sense for me.  I grew stressed and panicked.  I fumbled and became frustrated.  

I don’t feel comfortable handling livestock until after they’re dead.  Bob and I are at home in the kitchen.  We’re  exhilarated by the process of  building new enterprises.  We’re comfortable juggling the finances.  But we’re failures at the livestock. We’ve even given up gardening out of sympathy for the plants.

And all I can do on this summer night is apologize to my parents.  I look directly into their eyes and express the shame I’ve felt for my entire adult life. 

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t learn to be you.”

They laugh at me.  “The farm is the least profitable part of the business,” they remind me.  “Everything else you’ve built since is what keeps the cash flowing!”

“The farm is the foundation on which it’s all built,” I remind them.  “And I can’t hold the foundation together.”

“We have lots of choices,” they remind me.  “You’ve made sure of that.”  And  the bottom line is that, today, the farm is here.  Today, there are three kids who need that farm as much as that farm needs them.  Today, that farm is putting money in their bank accounts and food on their plates.  Today, they are here and they can handle the work.  Even if their mother is useless.  

Those three kids hear my whimpers and toss aside their devices to join us on the porch.  They listen respectfully to the conversation until we hang up.  

“You do so much,” Corey wants to comfort me.  “You shouldn’t feel bad about this!”

“We can handle the work,” Ula tells me.  “We’re learning a lot.”

“But I’m so reliant on Pop Pop to teach you everything,” I lament.  “ I don’t know how to do anything he does!  What if we lose him?”

It’s quiet for a long moment before Saoirse speaks.  Her voice is nearly at a whisper. 

“And how do you think I feel every time you write an essay and do a podcast?  Or a book?”

I furrow my brow and cock my head.  She continues.  “Every time you write a blog post I think, how am I going to do that someday?  How am I going to keep this going when she’s gone?  And then, you and dad keep starting these businesses.  And each thing you start, I’m really happy for you.  And then I think, how am I going to carry that on? And it really scares me.”

Well, shit.

The next day I go off into the woods by myself, my journal in hand.  I pass through the trees until they start to clear just above a pond.  Gazing out at the water, I pull out my pen and listen to the voices in my head, writing down anything that pops into my mind.  And these are the words that scrawl themselves across the page:

If your daughter was doing all the things you’re doing, you would worry about her.  You’d try to make her stop.  

Those thoughts scare the hell out of me.  Here I am, lamenting my own parent’s accomplishments and skills, because I cannot fully absorb them, and I am building an entirely different skill set all together.  And now the next generation is saddled with even more to keep up with. 

I need to make it all smaller.  I need to make it manageable, so that they can learn more easily.  I need to take it down so they can build it up.

And it starts with the writing.  That’s the first thing that worries Saoirse.  Frankly, my production schedule is untenable.  No one operating a farm business and a cafe should be able to write a story every week.  It’s not reasonable.  And besides, who has time to read every week anyhow?  On my way home, I decide that I’m over-taxing you, dear readers and listeners.  You’ve got enough on your plates without listening and reading so much.  And if I write less often, that clears an extra morning every other week.  Then, when you add in the production work Bob does for the podcast and the promotion work we have to do after, it clears even more time.  

I mention the idea to Bob.  He doesn’t say anything.   I mention the idea to Ron and Jeanne as I clear their breakfast dishes at the cafe.  Ron looks at me like I have four heads.  Jeanne barks at me.  “The writing keeps you SANE!!!!”

They’ll get used to it, I tell myself.  

On Sunday, our family takes the day off.  My brother and his wife and daughter come home for a visit.  It’s Mom and Dad’s 50th wedding anniversary.  We commit to a day of idle and head up to the farm pond overlooking the mountains.  Dad is late joining us.  There are a few things he wants to do with the animals before he comes.  

But he does come.  He dives in and swims across the pond, then we both get out and sit on the deck overlooking the water.  We exchange no words.  But we look out at our family as the shadows grow long on the surrounding fields.  Three generations splash, play and laugh high in these mountains.  The sheep graze peacefully on the opposite hillside, the pigs and chickens settle down in the valley.  We don’t talk because I know he’s lost in his thoughts.  He’s thinking about pasture rotations, or contemplating ruminant parasites or feed rations.  My own mind is crunching numbers, calculating lost revenue and balancing it against reduced costs, devising a marketing plan to carry the farm through our loss of USDA processing, and a financial plan to withstand a second closing of the cafe due to Covid.  We are each pondering the problems that fascinate us.

And in this moment we are separate, and we are undeniably together.  We are here for this.  We are on this farm, doing what each of us does, to be with this family, with this land, with these mountains that define us.  

And I realize that I will always live with the anxiety that I don’t have my father’s mind and skills.  And my daughter may always live with the anxiety that she is not a carbon copy of her mother.  That’s just the nature of things when we’re inspired by the elders in our lives.  Because I am not my father, I can be someone different.  And because she is not me, Saoirse, too, will be someone different.  But as I watch these mountains and these pastures, I feel warmth and kindness emanating up from them.  They’ve held our family for 40 years, accepting all the ways we’ve employed to love and steward them.  

And in this acceptance, I know that this week, I will sit down to write once more.  This is my way.  I am thankful that my daughter admires it.  I teach her what she is interested to learn. But I need not tamp down my fire to make the work I do seem easier.   Right now, it burns bright, and this is my time to stoke it.  She is simply on a quest to find her own personal fire, and when it ignites, all of Sap Bush Hollow will be warmed by it.