I'm Sleeping In the Field Tonight

It turns out there are such things as ghosts. The ghost of my twenty-year-old self for one, haunts me whenever Rich and I allow a difference between us to fester like an untreated wound. The apparition of young, autonomous (to a fault) Sam calls to mind my life before Rich and before discovering the beautiful polarity that attracts us to each other in this complimentary love. It reminds me that another case of "there is no such thing" was contradicted by kismet itself. Just when I was sure that there was 'no such' person I would meet and feel compelled to make a life with, and when I was refusing to re-enter the unkind dating pool, Providence plunked Rich right smack in the middle of my path.

And when that independent, bull-headed evolution of myself got practically slapped to her senses by what some would call destiny, my closed mind was pried back open. That enlightenment discouraged me from losing the humility of my inner child who knows that not a soul can anticipate what is to come, and who looks to the future with wonder and hope. It introduced me to a love better than I had imagined existed.

I've been discovering that Rich's steadfast character is largely to thank for my great attraction to him. While on the other hand, under the guise of stubbornness, it is the reason we butt heads. It is when I'm rubbing my head, stewing and coming down from a disagreement that a different phantom, that of my 2020 self visits me. More than a year into an autoimmune spiral, Rich had accustomed himself to spending day after day taking on the bulk of the field labor. While by evening, when I was crashed, my perpetually fatigued body seemingly eternally exhausted, I would come to and find him researching my symptoms or corresponding with leads he had in the autoimmune game to try to find a solution for me. He was applying his tireless problem-solving determination to me and my problem. My problem is his problem. It's mutual, defying my earlier doubt that I could find someone who can love and be loved to the same degree.

When our Jack toiled with his feelings and mood for over a year, I would regularly find him on his dad's lap working together to come out of an angsty haze. In the meantime, Rich's farmwork would sit on hold, where it belonged, until Jack moved on from his fit. And his nightly reading during that phase of life became one of the most empathetic testaments of his deep love for our son...reading and listening to parents and psychologists to try to understand a toddler's mindset and needs to assure himself that we were meeting them, while getting ideas for how to help Jack find comfort. For a parent of young kids and a farmer, those few hours in between the kids' bedtime and ours is the hallowed time we have for ourselves to let our guard down. But Jack's problem is Rich's problem. As evidenced, I have saddled myself with someone with a profound capacity for love.

For the love of people and for the love of his craft. And this is precisely why over a week ago he told me, "I'm sleeping in the field tonight". With massive construction underway east of us as General Motors builds a monster of a factory, a chainlink fence was installed around their expansive acreage, forcing the local deer population to reroute to get to the creek. Over the course of two nights we noticed that an inordinate amount of our produce had been eaten or damaged. Our neighbor on the west noted to Rich that in his many years living here, he had never seen such heavy deer pressure in his own garden. Being so dedicated to field crops, which have been growing better than any year before, he pitched our camping tent amidst the rows of vegetables and prepared to observe the deer's routine. The evenings started out cool, and he noticed after three nights that the deer seemed to pass through around 10 pm and return around 4:30 am, when his body would instinctively awake sensing a large animal encroaching on his camp. He would chase the deer away and actually got familiar with the individuals, noting in particular a brazen young buck who would return on his own.

By morning, Rich would reenter the house as the kids and I made breakfast, to regale us with field updates. After much research and brainstorming, he hatched a plan to enlist our little mutty beaglet sisters to take some responsibility around the farm. It turns out that there is no need to reinvent the wheel and he discovered a GPS wireless dog collar for a price that would allow us to set up a patrol perimeter for Peg and Roux. But for the adolescent girls, there would be a learning curve and training to be done for success. On the hottest week of the year, with extra work to keep the field alive and well, Rich took on training our girls to defend the field. Every day, like clockwork, Rich takes one girl at a time and patiently walks the perimeter over and over again, acclimating the dogs to the sound they hear when they approach a boundary.

And this past Friday on our tenth wedding anniversary, and also a long harvest day before our Saturday market, with a heat advisory afoot, a celebratory dinner in town and a late night recounting our memories in the living room, not to mention an early morning looming ahead, for the ninth night in a row, stalwart Rich said, " soon enough the girls will be ready and the deer will be discouraged, but tonight, I'm going to sleep in the field". And so the ever devoted Rich will see it through in keeping with his relentless spirit, and one of these sweet summer nights I'll have him back in our bed, slipping off into dreamland with me...to have and to hold.

Happy Anniversary, Rich :).

Thank you for reading :).

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