They don’t know I’ve been crying. I give them credit for persistence. They’d shown up the first time right after we’d closed and I uncharacteristically turned them away.

“Sorry, we’re closed,” I’d called out as soon as they’d walked in the door. They shrugged their shoulders, settled for a pint of ice cream as their lunch, and took it outside to eat it.

I might as well have shouted “WE’RE CLOSED” all Saturday long. But I guess I didn’t need words. My distress cast a pall over the entire place, soundlessly warning everyone but my most intrepid regulars to drive on by, find someone else to cook your damn breakfast. There was no dancing in the kitchen. No slipping out front for a visit with customers. Just flipping eggs and pancakes, then ducking out back to listen to crickets and stare at the Boneset, Joe-Pye Weed and mountains surrounding the creek bed.

Ron and Jeanne aren’t there. This is the second Saturday in a row they’ve missed. Kandy came by the farm to tell us they’d taken him to the emergency room when he was having trouble breathing last week, fearing Covid. But it isn’t Covid. It’s an atypical leukemia. And at his age and with his complications, the latest word was the doctors weren’t giving him a fighting chance. Before we left for our camping trip, Bob and I had agreed to take on their golden retriever, Journey, because Jeanne couldn’t care for her and keep up with the hospital demands. Our household dog pack has increased by 25%, with this two-year-old golden whose favorite pastimes so far are wallowing in mud puddles and chasing cars. But I cling to her company as my only chance to fill what I’m fearing will be a gaping hole in my life.

Ron and Jeanne have been part of my world since I befriended one of their daughters in fifth grade. They pulled me into community theater with her, cracking at my introverted shell, pushing me to share my voice and spirit with the audience. As the farm and the written word consumed more and more of my focus, they stayed with me. Ron created a file on his computer to save every one of my essays. When my words turned into books and the books turned into lectures, he’d show up and sit in the front row, laughing at every one of my jokes. When Bob and I announced our cockamamie plan to put a cafe in the middle of West Fulton, he and Jeanne bought two of the commemorative mugs that we sold off as fundraisers. And from the first week we were open, they’ve been regular customers.

From their seats at table five, they dragged Saoirse out of her introversion and pushed her up on stage. Then they pulled on Ula, and eventually even Bob. Table five has always been full and rowdy, either with guests they’ve brought, or with new folks they befriend while sitting over breakfast. It has also been known to burst into song, pulling the other customers from their cloistered isolation into a raucous chorus.

Change has been the only constant since March. I’ve rolled with it and adapted repeatedly: changing our sales, changing our marketing, changing our services, changing our dining area, changing our processing, changing our jobs, finding money, spending money, losing money, losing employees, gaining a third kid, gaining a fourth dog. I’ve listened with patience and compassion as my customers have confronted change in their own lives. I’ve repeatedly reminded everyone I know that life will go easier if we can just roll with the changes — Stop expecting someone else to fix the problems; learn to adapt.

But the news about Ron breaks me. This is one change I’m not willing to adapt to. I can’t cope with being in this space that we share while he’s hooked up to tubes and probes and strapped down to a bed on the third floor of a hospital an hour away, weak, with doctors studying him as though he’s a statistical math and biology problem, and not the source of vibrance that makes a room hum with life and song when he enters it. I’ve hit a wall, and suddenly, it all just seems like too much. I want to quit everything. I don’t care there are no customers today. I don’t want any anyway.

And hence, my tears as we open for dinner. Bob and I don’t even hang the OPEN flag. We just sit at one of the patio tables and stare at the road. And that’s when those two customers who bought the ice cream come back. I dry my eyes before they reach the patio, and we muster some welcoming smiles, but we don’t get up. They sit down.

We keep our chairs six feet away but point them at them and ask for their story. Maybe they are expecting to pay me to cook their dinner. But with the day I’m having, I still need someone to sing for their supper.

Their story is that they were meandering through Schoharie County, looking at houses for sale when they realized they were near Sap Bush Cafe the first time. It turns out they are here just as much for us as for the food. They have the small farm dream. They decided to come and meet us in person.

We hear about the obstacles they face: the lack of land, the lack of family support, the lack of money, the lack of experience. No farm comes to fruition easily. Mom and Dad come down for a beer and join in the conversation. Listening to these newcomers at the start of the journey, it all just seems so impossible.

Except it isn’t. It can be done, it’s been done by thousands, and it should be done by thousands more. But the struggles and barriers are part of the worthiness. If a farm came to fruition with ease, the harshness of the life and business would drive people out. I think it’s the process of working through the barriers and the hardships that are the genesis of commitment. And commitment is what keeps a farmer on the land, even when the going gets tough.

I know this, because I’ve been in this life for 46 years now. I also know that paying too much attention to obstacles and facts can ruin a perfectly good dream. I’ve had professors tell me with authority that I’d never make it as a writer; we started Sap Bush Hollow after the state had labeled it as non-viable farmland; I’ve had experts tell me my visually-impaired kid may never learn to read, ride a bike or operate a motor vehicle, much less farm equipment. The bank eschewed our plan to build a cafe in a backwater hill town. Yet all of these things succeeded.

With these two people sitting here on the patio, I have left the realm of the impossibilities bandied about regarding Ron and Jeanne and entered familiar territory: the theoretical impossibilities of farming and nearly every aspect of our lives . I know, by virtue of decades of experience, that nothing is impossible, especially if an expert deems it so. I eventually cook everyone some supper, then leave them to talk and slip back inside to start cleaning the kitchen and breaking down the espresso machine. And that momentary departure from my woes sheds new light on them.

Someday, I will lose Ron from my life. But it doesn’t have to be today. It doesn’t have to be this year. A prognosis is merely one more statistical probability generated by experts, with no accounting for the power of the human spirit. Ron’s survival is not my choice. But I do get to decide whether to lament the prognosis or dwell in the the possibility that there’s still more to his life: more growth, more joy, more laughter and song.

An email blips in from Ron. “Not to sound morbid,” he writes, “but this crap that has invaded my body has ended existence for a lot of folks. My plan, of course, is to NOT be one of them.” As Saturday melts into darkness and I wipe down empty tables, I let that possibility enter my heart. Only at this day’s end do I feel the need to allow celebration into it. Bob and I go home to the kids and make sundaes, then sit out on the screen porch with them and our pack of dogs, listening to crickets and getting to know Journey.