Sheep tipping has become a thing here on the farm. Every spring, Gwen the shearer travels to Sap Bush as part of her annual circuit through the northeast. Like her dad before her, she sets up in the barn and invests long days working through the flock, removing their fleeces so that I can have them made into blankets and yarn.
For a few years now, Saoirse and Ula have worked with her, helping to pack fleeces and catch sheep, watching her strong, lithe body gently take each ewe, turn her over in what seems to be one effortless maneuver, then peel the fleece away with a few mesmerizing strokes of her blades.
“I want to learn,” Ula announced one evening last spring.
“I want to learn,” Saoirse told me the next morning.
And so now, as summer wanes, both girls prepare for a shearing school in Vermont this coming weekend. They’ve been getting lessons to complete in advance so that the class can move as efficiently as possible when they gather this Saturday and Sunday.
Before they can even hold a set of shears in their hands, they must learn to dress properly, to stretch their bodies and warm up carefully, and they must learn to tip a sheep and move through the shearing sequences.
Which looks easy.
But it’s not easy.
They’ve pulled Riccardo (a wether who has become something of a pet) and two other ewes off pasture and moved them into the barn. Daily, as part of their afternoon chores, each girl climbs in, practices quietly catching each sheep and turning them over, then moving their hands over their bodies as though they held the electric shears.
The sheep kick away. And bolt. And won’t hold still.
Saoirse and Ula are convinced they’ve got it wrong, and they want to quit.
So I launch back into homeschooling mom mode.
“Show up each day, and try again. Don’t worry about getting it wrong. Tomorrow you’ll understand a little more because of what you got wrong today.”
“But then I’ll still be doing it wrong in class,” Ula laments.
“But you’ll have enough familiarity with the movements that you’ll understand what you’re doing wrong when they explain it,” I tell her. “Keep your sessions short, quit before you’re frustrated, and just keep going back. You’ll never be good at it unless you’re willing to be bad at it first.”
But it’s hard for them. They want to be naturally talented. They want to be good at this. They want shearing to be as easy as Gwen makes it look.
I feel their pain.
That’s how I used to feel about music.
When I was sixteen, I saw my first big band jazz concert. I had been a half-hearted flute player in the high school band, and I’d never seen or heard a saxophone in a jazz band.
My life changed in that moment. I marched into the band room the next day and informed my teacher I needed to start playing jazz saxophone. I begged and borrowed used instruments and practiced non-stop until I was able to convince the director of the local jazz ensemble to let me join. He agreed, but only on the condition that I played the baritone sax. They needed a player, and SUNY Cobleskill had an old one that I could borrow. It couldn’t play below a low C, and I had to hold some of the keys together with duct tape, but I was able to get a sound out of it.
I soon learned that the baritone sax was everything I was not: long, low, and rich in tone. Where I’d only ever learned melodies, the bari let me fill in the bass, adding deep roasty notes to temper the brightness of the other horns. I fell even more deeply in love. I got one of my best friends from high school, Luigi, to join the jazz band with me. He started with his trombone. Then he began playing the upright bass. This was our shared love.
And I wanted to be good at it.
No. I wanted to be the best at it.
I took jobs tutoring math so I’d have the money to pay for private lessons.
I chose a college for their jazz program.
And I practiced and I practiced.
And I was never as good as I wanted to be.
Recognizing that I’d never be the best, I skipped out on my audition. I gave the baritone sax back to the SUNY Cobleskill, walked away from dreams of big band jazz, and moved forward with my life. Thankfully, I had many other loves to turn to: writing, farming, singing, theater, food. I could afford to let one of the dreams go.
But Luigi couldn’t let it go.
He couldn’t bring himself to do anything else.
He played jazz through school, graduated, and then took any odd job he could find that would give him the flexibility to play jazz at night.
And like me, he loved upstate New York better than any place in the world. He never became famous. But he always held on to his love.
He moved back home, and brought his jazz with him. His wife, Kristina, a jazz sax player, took over the local jazz ensemble. Tom Edmunds, who used to sit at my espresso bar each Saturday morning until he passed earlier this spring, would sing with them. While Luigi and Kristina lived for the night so they could play music, I lived for the pre-dawn hours for writing and making croissants. We never saw each other, except for Christmas Eve each year, when we could meet at midnight. For the other 364 days, we relied on Tom Edmunds to carry our friendship back and forth. And then Tom was gone too soon.
Without him, Luigi and I needed to find a way back into each other’s lives.
So, on the day Bob and I had to go get his cancer diagnosis, Luigi and Kristina pulled into our driveway. They opened the trunk of their car and pulled out the college’s old baritone sax.
The A flat key only works occasionally.
And it can’t play anything below a low C.
They plunked the bari on one side of the kitchen table, then sat with us on the other until it was time to go meet with the doctor and get the bad news.
And then it felt like life couldn’t get any worse.
“Just blow some deep low notes,” Kristina would text me in the early days after we got Bob’s diagnosis. “Let yourself breathe.”
And oh, my goodness, I don’t know how I had the breath when I was young. I seemed to have lost it in the intervening thirty years.
But between doctors appointments and cafe work, I bought myself a horn stand. I set it up in the corner of the kitchen, and every now and then I’d find a few minutes to just blow.
Good Lord, was I terrible.
Nevertheless, Luigi and Kristina gave me a date. The first rehearsal of the year for the jazz ensemble would be August 30th.
But I missed a lot in the last 30 years. I’ve fallen behind. I’m not good. I’m not even halfway good. I’m terrible. I need a stronger eyeglass prescription to be able to hold the bari properly and see the music on the stand. The muscles in my face are weak. I’ve lost my embouchure.
As I’m trying to make up for lost time, I hear my own words coaching the girls as they prepare for shearing school.
“Show up each day, and try again. Don’t worry about getting it wrong. Tomorrow you’ll understand a little more because of what you got wrong today.”
“Keep your sessions short, quit before you’re frustrated, and just keep going back.”
“You’ll never be good at it unless you’re willing to be bad at it first.”
Slowly, bit by bit, Bob works on his cancer recovery, and I’m making progress. And with each new lick I learn, a few more of the struggles, sadnesses and fears we’ve faced down this growing season fall out of my mind to make room for new key signatures, new fingerings, new melodies.
And so, fall comes, and just like my daughters, I’m back to school, back to opening my mind and my heart to see what more this life can teach me. Thirty years after mistakenly walking away from one of my first loves, I finally understand that the greatest lessons don’t come easily. But as long as I’m willing to show up and try again each day, life will keep nourishing me with something new and beautiful.
May you and your family have a restful, healing fall and winter. Best wishes with Bob’s treatment. And thank you for the reminder about needing to be bad at something before you can be good at it. It is so true!
Enjoy your fall and winter, Shana! Thanks for reading/listening!
Thoughts and prayers for you and your family——making a trip back east tonight——-hope to visit Sap Bush Farm while there——stay safe and strong.