Someone Once Did Me a Kindness

Someone Once Did Me a Kindness
Dad and Rich and the Hoop. Safety second?

I remember watching Pay It Forward in class during the Catholic schoolgirl chapter of my life.  We digested the movie as a group, hearkening back to Matthew chapter 7...the home of  the Golden Rule in the bible: In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.  The Analects of Confucious from the early BC years also includes its own rendition of the golden rule.  In fact nearly all world religions have built their foundation on this principle.  A memorably whimsical example of this unifying fundamental is from the Yoruba scripture: One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts. This golden, common ground authenticates that we are all indeed one species, which flourishes by taking care of each other.

The DIY philosophy has the potential to fracture that strong foundation.  Is it the boot-strapping American spirit that has encouraged the idea of making a life for yourself BY yourself?  Is it the maverick misconception that a wheel CAN be recreated?  I'll admit that in the beginning, Rich and I were so determined not to ask for or hire help...not wanting to trouble anyone or to assume a financial burden...we nearly burned ourselves out.  Best example that comes to mind is saving the $1500 it would have cost us to bring in a crew to build our 72-foot hoop house.  Instead, Rich spent untold hours during the height of the busy growing season to slowly but surely raise it himself.  And you know what?  Despite our best efforts to stick to the plan of DIO(urselves), help found its way to us...because that's how the world goes 'round.  In those steamy summer evenings I'd hear my dad's car coming down the gravel drive.  He and Rich would put in work in the remaining daylight hours, steadily progressing toward our deadline.  And just like in any healthy village, word traveled around that a project was underway.  Friends, family, and even my folks' next door neighbors...a family who operates a very well-respected home construction company in town...they were all reaching out with offers to help get this thing done.  It took a couple days of work parties with 10 or 12 of these volunteers, in contrast to the weeks on our own, for the hoop to be standing in all its glory.  There was something very natural about those few days working together as a community...it felt like the way we were all intended to live.  I pretty firmly believe that no matter how you fight the natural course of life, it'll ultimately restore itself.  And in that way our plan of painstakingly getting the hoop up on our own resulted in team effort completion.

Have you ever transplanted to a new town?  I've done it a handful of times, feeling like a character plopped down in a plot line that has nothing to do with me.  There is such uneasiness when you don't have a soul in town who could help you out if you got into some sort of trouble.  It felt particularly precarious when we lived in the winterlands of heavy snowfalls and frigid temperatures both in upstate New York and in Michigan...hours from our closest lifeline.  And in both of those places we had experiences that reinforced my understanding of humanity and how we depend on each other.  A perfect stranger IS 'one of us' though we don't have the same blood coursing through our veins.  And there are plenty of people who we eventually met in those towns and who unbeknownst to us originally, would have served as our lifelines if we had gotten our car caught in a snowdrift on the side of the road.  A stranger becomes an extension of family before you know it.

Let's bring the story back to the near-present.  When landing in Brookville, a town I had never even driven through, I felt that familiar sense of isolation.  This time we were moving boxes and beds and baby gear into a house where we hoped to settle indefinitely.  With hope accumulated from our history of moves, I looked forward to settling into the neighborhood and meeting friends who would make great characters in the storybook of our kids' memories. Boy, do they come out of left field.  

One of the first orders of business when we moved here in the early spring was to order an outrageous amount of compost for our new fields.  And after looking high and low on the internet, I found a local farm who raises grass-fed cattle AND with their black gold, produces rich, certified organic compost.  That's how we met Dan/Farmer Dan/'Uncle Dan'.  The best of friendships in my life have totally snuck up on me.  And this was no exception.  By the time that we needed our second batch of his compost, I found that we were swapping stories of our summer labors in the field...laughing, commiserating, allowing time to slow down for a minute.  And at this fast and furious day in age, I think taking that time is an indication of something special.  

Dan has 20+ years of farming on us.  He has stayed put on one piece of land to watch seasons of calves born and winters come early.  Unbeknownst to him, our conversations that we share over cups of tea and the kids hanging off of him, or via text messages from one field to the other...he has enriched our lives with his friendship.  It's a relationship between a practiced farmer and a family of greenhorns: kismet at its finest.  Really it's another instance of that feeling in my bones that we are not meant to do it alone.  That two kids with generations between ourselves and the last farmers in our family, our stars would align with Dan's.  

And in one of the best illustrations of paying it forward, Dan sat with us this winter and told us he wanted to fix the farm driveway for us.  To put this in perspective for you...a 500-foot stretch of gravel drive connects the farmhouse to the road.  Pot holes have been gouged into the gravel gaping enough for Jack to learn to swim in them.  Estimates of thousands of dollars later, we found ourselves patching the drive when we could, a short-lived and laborious effort.  Dan proposed that he would bring his grader, a load of excess gravel and come when the time was right to mend the driveway.  I felt sheepish and undeserving of this offer and deferred to Rich's gracious response.  But once he was gone and I shed my pride, I reeled with appreciation, love, gratitude and relief...a lot of feelings and some misty eyes.  

Dan and Rich spent a morning in February working on the driveway.  May, Jack and I made spelt chocolate chip cookies and lunch.  Having never had access to a grader, I looked out of the window to see Rich working the machine while Dan worked alongside.  This is the way it is meant to be.  Successions of generations lending to each other what they can in the effort to prosper.  I like to think that we give Dan something too...maybe some laughs and definitely cookies.  And when I stumbled over myself in thanks at the end of that lunch, Dan told me...someone once did him 'a kindness'.  It came at a time when Dan was a younger farmer and when he had less under his belt and to his name.  With no strings attached and no expectations, this gift was laid on Dan's table purely to better his life.

Between our families, our Dayton community, and these left fielders, we've found a home in a village.  Everyone needs a village, because that's what it takes to navigate and enjoy life.  Some people say that we are paying it forward by raising our two babes.  But as we graduate into the more mature chapters of life, I anticipate the chance to pay this kindness forward to a greenhorn or two who stumble into our village.