Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead.  Joanne Harris’ Broken Light.

Both books are on my mind non-stop.  They are masterful:  Fabulous character arcs, great story lines, gorgeous writing.  Both examine major social issues of our time…And both do it while pulling me into stories so enthralling, I lose hours of sleep each night, reading to the crooning of the crickets, unable to put them down..

I want to be able to do that with my work.  

At 49, I’m not where they are in their story telling.  I’m not that prolific.  I’m not that wise.  I’m not that skilled. 

There was a time when I told myself I was going to do it better.

I think there were a lot of areas in my life where I was going to do it better.

I was going to parent better than my parents.

I was going to run the business better than them.

I was going to have a better work-life balance.  

I was going to figure out how to have a family business that my kids truly loved and wanted to continue being a part of.  

I was also going to be a professional chef and jazz sax player. 

I remember summer nights, when the moon was high, casting shadows of the maples across the lawn at the farm, long after Mom and Dad went to bed, putting on Benny Carter, listening to his blues licks and the crickets, dancing around the maples, alive with the excitement of a life where I was going to not just do it it all….I was going to do it all better.

I’m reminded of this the other night.  Bob has joined another community theater production and has gone out to play practice, leaving the girls and me with an evening to ourselves.

We eat supper out on the screen porch as the sun drops below the horizon, and Ula starts telling me what she’s been learning in a female reproduction class she’s taking online.

“There’s no way I’m having kids,” she tells me.

I nod.  That’s a pretty normal conclusion to make at sixteen.  

Saoirse joins her.  “I’m not having kids, and I’m not have a partner, either,” she reports.  “I’m selfish, and I’m not letting my life get stolen from me.”

“So will you be joining me in my dotage?”  I ask her. 

“I just want a cat,” she tells me.

Their conversation drifts to how they’re going to travel, design, create, sing, ..and live….better.

And I hear that cricket band once more, backing up the dreams of young women as they sing out into the night air…pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, the rhythm pounding into all of us…That we are allowed to imagine the impossible.

“I think getting married to your dad and having you kids were the two greatest things I’ve done with my life,” I say softly, my own improv solo over the crickets.  

“And why is it that a woman has to say that?”  Saoirse asks.  She’s taking the solo now.  “You come into this world for a life, and you define it by the husband and the children?  I’m not falling for that.”  

“Would you have this life if I hadn’t given you one?  And would I have this joy if you hadn’t come?”  

I think of my own dreams sung out over crickets from so many summer nights…. of wanting to write better than Barbara Kingsolver.  Of wanting to conceive deeply imaginative stories better than Joanne Harris.  Of wanting to play sax better than Benny Carter.  Of wanting to sing better than Ella Fitzgerald.  Of wanting to be better at farming and parenting than my mom and dad.

I juxtapose them against my life achievements: some books, a lot of essays, a cafe, a small family farm, local jazz band practice on Tuesday nights during the school year.  And then.  My family.  My husband, the love of my life.  My mom and dad, two of my best friends in the world.  These kids, who keep me up late on this summer night as the stars slowly emerge to cast light upon the ideas they share — Whether or not they’ll have kids or take partners, how they’ll run the business differently, how they’ll travel more, create more, do more.  

And those dreams and ideas have one resounding theme, beating loud like the song of the crickets:  They’re going to do it better.  

It isn’t my place to say “someday you’ll change your mind…..Someday your biological clock will start ticking and you’ll long for the things I longed for….Someday you might regret never having a family.  Someday you’ll realize it’s the best part of your life.”

Because I honestly have no idea where this sixteen-year-old and nineteen-year-old will land on any of these matters.  There is nothing I dislike more than a person who sees themselves as an authority telling me that I don’t know my own mind.  It’s out of harmony with the music of possibility that rings through on a summer night.  I know only my own mind.  I can imagine what might be going through their heads, but I can’t pretend to know theirs. 

What matters is that they have the space to let their minds go.  To let them imagine not how they could follow in my footsteps, but how they could do it better. 

I still can’t write like Barbara Kingsolver and Joanne Harris.  But every time I read their work, I try a little harder, and understand a little more about the craft.

I still can’t play like Benny Carter.  But every day I sit down with my saxophone and practice simple blues scales and little jazz riffs, I’m improving my musical memory, my dexterity, my lung capacity, and growing as a musician. 

We still rarely achieve the sales goals I set for the farm.  But boy is it fun to sit with Bob and Mom and Dad over cocktails after boxing up chickens on a Sunday night, imagining creative ways to improve our marketing and do things better.

I’m still not the best chef.  But every day I flip through recipes, then experiment with new dishes or techniques to try in the cafe.

And where am I on the scale of things?  Well, I do some things better than others, but nothing as well as I wish.  

But it’s not being better than that makes a person happy.  It’s really about the quest —   The effort we extend to achieve something that makes us grow, or that let’s us dream out across the crickets on a summer night.  That’s where I’ve found my happiness. 

The best part, however, really has been my family.  

Yes, they interrupt me when I write.  Yes, they distract me from practicing my sax with their health needs, their emotional needs, their noise and their mess.

But they’ve been with me on the quest.  They’ve been part of the journey to build a business that honors family, community and planet above dollars and cents and prestige.  They’ve joined me in the concerts, read the books, tasted the recipes, challenged my ideas around the kitchen table.  And all of that made the quest to be “better than” fulfilling….Even if the quest never gets fulfilled. 

So on this summer night, as bugs ping against the screens to get to our lights, as the crickets once again call upon the music of our imaginations, we pull our knees up to our chests and keep talking.  I see the next chapter in all these delights.  Their ideas. Their dreams.  They’re going to do it better, too. 

And I get to watch, listen, and learn.

Then I slip away to my bedroom, pull out another Joanne Harris novel, crack the window so that the crickets can sing me to sleep, and keep dreaming about how I might do it better, too. 

Did you enjoy this? 

Please share this podcast with friends & family.  This really helps to get the ideas to spread.  Better still, you can help make the magic happen for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.  Or, if it’s easier, you can also donate to support the podcast by sending a check to Shannon Hayes, ℅ Sap Bush Hollow Farm, 832 W. Fulton Rd, West Fulton, NY  12194.

And that’s a really important thing to do, because all of this— the podcast, the blog, the novels and books and the creative recharging that happens over fall and winter—   are a result of the support of my patrons on Patreon.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons Jen Flanders Dadek & Amy Renaud.  Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you! 

In case you were wondering, this podcast was produced & edited by the sexiest man alive, my husband Bob Hooper, and the great music we’re listening to comes to us from Emorie.  Thanks for listening and have a great week!