Failure to come to a full stop.

That was the reason Saoirse failed her drivers’ test last Thursday.  I’ve never seen her fail to stop.  She’s a stickler for rules, refusing to put the car in gear until everyone’s buckled in, lecturing her Dad about his various infractions, scrupulously adhering to every speed limit, and, above all always coming to a complete stop.

And yet, as Bob stood at the site of the road test waving as she pulled away with her examiner, and as I sat in the parking lot with Ula in the passenger seat, three dogs trying to lick the hand sanitizer off my fingers, Mom and Dad in the next car, and Kate and Lark blipping in messages of good luck from back at the farm, a wave of knowing washed over me.

She’s going to fail.  

She has to fail.

It is best for her if she fails.

We were all there to offer congratulations.  Or condolences.  Saoirse passing her drivers’ test was for all of us.  We needed her able to drive, to get to Kate’s to help with Lark, to get to the cafe, to get to the farm.  

It’ll be the parallel parking, I think to myself, despite the hours we logged on all the side streets of Cobleskill.

But it wasn’t the parallel parking.  It wasn’t the K-turn.  In truth, Saoirse handled the car expertly.  And then, just as she pulled up at an empty intersection to return to the test site, she slowed the vehicle, but did.  not. stop.

I don’t like to see my children fail, but our nuclear family has a long history of failures, whether its driving tests (Bob accused his first examiner of making up the rules as they went along), Intelligence tests (It was hard for Ula to pass any visual test that she couldn’t see, we argued), standardized tests (the GRE’s ranked me at the top of the bottom percentage of potential graduate students of all time).  With that much failure experience, we were able to confidently assure her that this only served to build character and grit, and had no bearing on her future happiness in life. 

But the conviction hung over me all day.

Failure to come to a complete stop.

That afternoon, as Bob and I made lamb stew for the cafe, as the earliest cases of Covid-19 crept ever close, as  Broadway shut down, and every theater in Albany shut down, the words chorused in the back of my mind.  

Failure to come to a complete stop.

Saoirse’s test wasn’t a failure.  It was a prognostication.

We needed to come to a complete stop.  Fast.

And despite all our preparations for business-as-usual on Saturday, I go home and open my spread sheets and accounting software.  I study last year’s farm expenses, make projections for the next two months, then call a phone meeting to find out how much each of us has in our bank accounts to float ourselves and the farm for the coming weeks or months.  To protect Mom, Dad and Bob, and our ability to care for the livestock, the farm does what Dad calls closing the loop, a biosecurity practice we deploy when there is a livestock disease that threatens.  It’s basically limiting who can come into the farm production loops, and then minimizing their exposure to the outside world.  It’s a way of protecting the entire farm ecosystem.  It’s also a way of preventing the farm and inhabitants from spreading any disease.

Eight hours later, I’ve built an online website for people to buy cafe and farm food using a self-serve pick up system.  Kate and I have reviewed protocols for pulling and packing meat with gloves, disinfecting the doors to the freeezers, and getting products out to our customers.  

And still those words chorus.  Failure to come to a complete stop.

We work through ’til Saturday night, building our new digital marketplace and answering customer’s questions.  We have dinner with Mom and Dad at the farm, examine any vulnerabilities for our safety, then make brutal decisions about who will stay with us for the next weeks or months, and who will stay off the land.  Bob and I temporarily adopt Saoirse’s boyfriend, Corey.  He quits his job in Albany and commits to stay with us for the duration.  Shilo suspends working for us and returns to her other job.  She won’t step foot on the land until this is over.  Kate and Joe stay on.  

It’s all such a bundle of wierdness, yet we muddle through with humor.  But then I get home, fall back on the couch, and I start to cry.

I have no words.  I can only cry.  I cry myself to sleep, then go on my morning walk with Bob, sit beneath a tree by a pond, and the tears keep streaming down my face.  

Bob can’t stand it.  He wants to help.  But there’s nothing he can do. I’ve finally come to a complete stop.  

And there, with no community cafe, I allow myself to feel the intense pain:  I am stripped of my neighbors.  I am stripped of my identity.  I am stripped of my calling.  My job is to feed people.  I can cook for my family, but I’m supposed to do more than that.  I’m supposed to put nourishing food in front of my neighbors.  I’m supposed to give them a space to come together and care for each other.  And doing that now could kill many them. 

I am utterly bereft.

And some tiny voice in me tells me that there is only one thing I can do in this moment.

Stop and feel it.

I can’t make it through this without mourning all of it.  I mourn that Ron and Jeanne aren’t screaming from table six for me to change the music, that Jim isn’t at table four with his New York Times, that Pat isn’t joining table four with table five to make room for Nick and Chris.  I mourn that Chris isn’t ordering her off-menu Cafe Vienna, that Justin isn’t sitting with his laptop at Bar 7 trying to work on his novel, that Tom Edmunds isn’t sitting with Yvaine and his son Clay at Bar one, two and three, doing Donald Trump impersonations.  I mourn that Corbie isn’t at Bar five, talking to Saoirse as she works the espresso bar, throwing down tarot cards with the flick of her wrist whenever any of us is feeling a deep life question.  

And through my tears, I am reminded of a snip of Mother Teresa’s Anyway poem:

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.

And I try to console myself that it was worth it, to have done it.  That we will find a way back after all this. 

But for now, I need that full stop.

For two days, I cry.  

And then the toilet paper comes.  

Three cases of it.

Some of the cases have been slashed and taped back together.  

But the majority of our standard paper products order for the cafe has shown up, despite the fact that the world has come to a complete stop.

And this is the first thing that makes me laugh.

It makes me laugh hard.  

We’ve lost 60 percent of our business.  I’ve lost my most important work.  But I have my family.

And 144 rolls of friggen toilet paper.

And there’s something about the toilet paper for me; a reminder that my wealth has never been conventional, and here, with the promise of an eternally glowing tush, lies another sign of that wealth.  

Bottoms up!  I think to myself.  We send out a campaign, offering a free roll of toilet paper to any customer who spends $100 in our new online farm market.  We title it

Save our butts and we’ll wipe yours.

We don’t expect much.  But we’re certain it will get a laugh. 

And the laughs come.  Readers from around the world send me little laughing emojis.  I draw strength from every one of those silly faces.  And I start to think.

I think about the people in this community who are vulnerable.  I examine the isolation I feel being blocked from my cafe, even though I still have my family.  Their isolation will soon be unfathomable.  Via texts, I team up with some of my neighboring women friends, and we organize a Neighbor Reach Out, employing our stuck-at-home kids with the task of calling our vulnerable neighbors to have daily chats and check-ins.  I call Barbers and arrange for a vegetable donation.  We make plans to convert Panther Creek Arts and Sap Bush Cafe into a soup kitchen, getting nourishing homemade bone broth soups out to the people who can’t go out, and down to the food pantry.  

We get the kids to help us do a YouTube video on how to roast a chicken at home (It’s pretty funny.  You can see it here.), and we make plans for other home-cooking demonstrations.  The work we do is back.

But that doesn’t stop the tears.  I’m supposed to close out the chicken roasting video telling people to stay well.  I can’t say the words.  I just cry.  Bob assures me he can smooth it over with an earlier take.  He lets me have my tears these days.  They release my anxieties, they give voice to my sadness.  

And then, in between those bouts of crying, I feel glimmers of hope.  For once, the world has one common enemy.  And we battle it by working together and protecting each other.  And I feel driven to apply my body and soul to use this period as a turning point.  To help bring about greater connection, greater generosity, greater kindness.

The airplanes are out of the sky.

The cars are not commuting.

It is time to really change this world.

Because we have come to a full stop.  

I want social distancing to bring us closer.  I want our neighbors to feel the love of their community.  I want the humans who drive the conventional economy to know what it feels like to be blessed with the basics: health, rest, family, home-cooked food, and time to go outdoors.  

And I pray to God, and to the moon, and to Mother Earth and to the fairies that we can take this full stop and make it count.

Please, everyone, for everyone’s benefit, stay well.  We’re all counting on each other now.