Rocky Mountain Low

I mentioned in my last post that my husband accepted a new job. I sort of glossed over the details and tried to be lighthearted, but things don't feel that way at all. It's been a summer of big change and big loss for me. I went straight from the frenetic spring full of my kids' activities, visitors, and traveling, to the news of my mother's unexpected death. I'm still reeling from that really. I haven't had time to process it properly.

I was hosting my in-laws the Sunday Mom died. (My dad had just left our house a few short days before. And my mom and sister had been with us just the previous weekend too. We even attended a family reunion together in the southern part of our state when they were here.) The final performance of my oldest daughter's most recent theatrical production had just ended that afternoon after a week of late rehearsals and performances. My husband was facilitating a fishing excursion on our lake for his parents and some of the kids, and I was with my daughter when my father's call came. It was a shock. It still is.

I traveled to my hometown with my kids as fast as I was reasonably able. As I was spending time with my family and trying to help make arrangements for Mom's funeral and burial, my husband was traveling and interviewing. He'd been forced into it by a lack of paychecks from the start-up for which he worked, and not every interview could be rescheduled. Besides, we were burning through money and he needed to accept a job as soon as possible.

After the harrowing whirlwind week, laying my mom to rest, and the return home, the interviewing continued. There was much weighing of facts and late night conversations. We didn't really like the results. The only rock-solid offer came from a place in Denver. It meant that I'd have to move over 12 hours away from my nearest blood relative... over 12 hours away from my Dad, whom I wanted to support and be near. Not only was I going to lose the homestead I'd come to love deeply (just as my son was about to launch) and the well-known comfort of living in this area of the country for 16 years, but I was going to move even farther from my family at a time that makes the move feel even heavier than it already would have.

During the time of indecision, my brother pulled off a jazz fest he organized and he had surgery for a hernia. My son spent a couple weeks at sailing camp and at a robotics workshop. A high school friend committed suicide. A homebound lady to whom I bring food had a health emergency and was diagnosed with cancer. Giant earth movers were repairing the dam. And I was trying to get a new school year rolling for my kids while preparing to sell our home and to say goodbye to my husband for a while.

Providence has been kind to us though. Our neighbors, upon hearing of our impending move, made an offer on our house before we even listed it. And another family in the area is already on the waiting list if the deal falls through. So, while separated from my husband these last weeks, things are rolling along, and it won't be too much longer before we attempt to resettle in a different part of the country.

Since the news of our impending move to Colorado, my in-laws came back for several days. My cousins visited. We took a family trip to Lake Michigan for the last time. My dad was hospitalized for a couple days (we didn't know it was minor at the time.) My sister accepted an offer for a new job and faced lots of other stress as well. And my Dad and sister visited for a couple days just this past week. I've also spent sorted the barn contents. Later I spent hours with an auctioneer loading our belongings on his trailer so as to clear out our barn. And there have been things like the visit of the appraiser yesterday, as well as the usual activities of schooling, piano lessons, horseback riding lessons, robotics team meetings, etc. There have also been late night calls and attempts to orchestrate a graceful exit- juggling the moving company, a temporary rental, and keeping an eye on the Denver housing market. And last, but not least, has been the mad scramble at the last minute to reassess my oldest boy's college choices, given our move. There have been applications, transcript requests, requests for counselor referrals, and recommendation letter requests sent out in the past week. And I'm already feeling the hole that my son will leave in our family when he goes away to school next year. This is a terrible and incomplete summary, and I'm glossing over many worrisome details. And it all felt just SO crushing tonight.

So after the littlest two were in bed, I walked down to the lake. My goal was to see how the dam was faring after the last round of rains. It's been raining so much since it was finished that it's been hard to establish grass and some erosion has set in. But the weather, which had been hovering in the 80's (along with stupid-high humidity) broke yesterday, and today it only got up to 64 degrees! It still rained, but it was suddenly fall weather, and I felt the need to get outside.

On the way to the dam, I mechanically picked up sticks from the hayfield as I walked along the board fence. I shut the cattle gate on the paddock behind the pole barn. My oldest son had left it open when mowing. Then I cut though the ravine with the waterfall, thinking that it may be the last time I do so.

I stood for a time in the dim woods. I marveled at the gnarled trees whose roots were thwarted by the stone over which the water poured. I gazed into the pools of water that burbled over into the next pool of water. I admired the lush moss, the delicate ferns, the soothing sound of rustling leaves and running water. My heart ached.

After climbing out of the ravine, I walked past the riding ring. I closed that gate too. It was left open a few weeks ago when the last harvest of hay was cut. Soon, I was standing on the dam. The water level had risen substantially. Already the pond looked healthier. There was still about half a foot left for it to fill before it would reach the new drain pipe. Grass in some areas was lush, but some areas were still bare. Some of the washouts were becoming alarming, and I made a mental note to get on filling them and seeding them again right away if we didn't close on the house soon.

I wandered across the dam, thinking how my children would have loved to sled down the back of it this winter now that it is cleared, relatively smooth, and the creek at the bottom has been redirected, thinking that our neighbors will be able to fish right off the dam soon and launch themselves on ice skates from there this winter. Frogs jumped in the water all along the dam as I walked. Further out, fish jumped, making rippling circles that disturbed the reflection of the trees on the opposite bank.

Once across the dam, I stepped just inside one of the back doors of the hay barn that lies on the other side. I stood in the dim sweetness and breathed deeply, letting the fragrance of hay, the smell of summer, fill my lungs. I thought to myself that I might not ever put up hay again, let alone stand in my own hay barn reveling in the wholesome scent. I nearly cried.

Outside again, I sat on the bench next to the barn and watched the sun set through the trees on the other side of the lake. My mind wandered. I tried to pray. I keep thinking that I should be praying for my mother more, that I should be asking for her intercession more, that I should be thinking about her more than I am, but the tasks and worries are so thick and I'm so tired that I haven't been doing justice to her memory. So I sat with my scattered thoughts as my heart raced and my throat tightened. I felt like a failure. Not only could I not pray, I couldn't just sit and enjoy what may be the last night down at the lake either.

The falling darkness drove me back across the dam, back through the upper hay field, and back to the pole barn. With some difficulty I extricated the log cart from the stall full of the outside stuff we set aside to move (and to keep separate from the auction items) and began loading it with wood from the first face cord in our wood stash. I flicked off the lights and wheeled the heavy load to the house, contemplating whether or not to light the wood stove tonight or to wait until the morning, thinking that it may be hard to get good fire wood in Colorado.

Everything around me was green. The twilight was lovely. The crickets sang. My heart hurt. And for some reason it struck me that this blog, named for this homestead, and however sparse and lacking in coherence, would be ending when I left this place.

I've been trying to put on a happy face and not worsen the kids' already trepidatious attitudes toward this move. One of the ways in which I've attempted to keep their spirits up these days is to play songs with a Colorado theme. It started with The Samples song entitled, "Indiana." I played it for my husband while I cooked breakfast on the morning he set out on his drive cross-country to his new job. There's a verse in that song that made me think of it...

"I remember the first time I drove through Indiana
Watching semis hauling grain to the west.
They're gonna make it all the way to Colorado
Where the mountains touch the sky and rivers bend."

When my dad visited last week, he reminded me of John Denver's song, "Rocky Mountain High." It was doubly appropriate because the job is in Denver and "Colorado" is part of each refrain. The kids like it okay. I even caught my oldest girl singing it the other day. But I must admit, for me it's not a "rocky mountain high." It's been a rocky mountain low. And I'm hoping that it's only going to be up from here for a while, because I'm not sure how much more I can take.

For example, this morning, as I sorted the mail, my three year old pointed to some cookies in a grocery store advertisement and said, "Look, Mom, funeral home cookies." And this afternoon, as I tried to correct my oldest's test on Beowulf while my middle boy harassed his siblings and vied for my attention, and apropos of nothing, my three year old asked me why his sister's rabbit died. (It died a few weeks before my mom's death in the middle of June, if I remember correctly. My youngest daughter made a grave marker and laid flowers at the grave of her beloved pet daily for a long time after I buried it for her.) I explained to him, gently, that every living thing dies eventually. He looked puzzled and then said, "But then there won't be anybody left!" So I explained that although there is always someone dying, there is always someone being born. He looked satisfied and wandered off, but it hurt my heart to know that he is still thinking about loss, about death, and about his grandma. And now we'll be adding the loss of his home and everything he knows to what he is already trying to process. I guess if nothing else we're moving to the "mile high city," so even if things aren't looking up for me figuratively, it'll be going up literally, if nothing else.