Getting lost in time.

I didn't realize I forgot to send last week's newsletter until Thursday afternoon. I had remembered it at the top of the week, and then the week happened, and it was all I could do to hold on. When I remembered again we were on the road to Wisconsin, my spouse behind the wheel and me finally unclenching in the passenger seat, only to realize the hole in my week, the box left unchecked.

Well, so it goes sometimes. I'm proud of how far I've come to be able to send as many newsletters in a row as I have. Weekly repetition like that is a skill I am having to strengthen as we get deeper into the flower farming practice, and it's nice to see the skill set translate across mediums.

We were on our way to my grandfather's funeral, which turned out to be a happy occasion despite its sad foundations. He lived a long and helpful life, and was well remembered and celebrated. His five sons were there, and a good representation of his grandchildren, and a host of other extended family and friends. My little family was quickly pulled into the swirl: a noisy funeral lunch followed by a rowdy dinner, then onward to a cheery brunch with the other side of my family, half a Packers game, a dinner with another cousin and his family, and then we we were back in the car driving through the night to land back in Greeneville early Monday morning. (The best part-- and the worst-- was the kids didn't miss a single day of school for our five-day weekend. It was canceled due to Tennessee's first big snow of the season. Wisconsin? Hardly a flake.)

When I think over the weekend whirl, the pieces don't fit in chronological order. It's less like a beaded necklace and more like a bookshelf arranged by subject. Friday night's music rehearsal sits next to Saturday's graveside singing, there's a ten volume run called "Conversations with Assorted Relatives", and all dog memories have been lumped together on the bottom shelf next to the mystery of "Did I eat at all?". The faces swirl and voices mingle and I couldn't tell you what topics we covered in all those conversations.

Layered over top of this was occasional swoops of inner triumph and nervous excitement: I had been cast in a play right before we left. I went into auditions for "Enchanted April" with low expectations, not feeling right for any part. I certainly wasn't right for one I first read for. I couldn't seem to make the words come alive. When I read Lotty, however, the part seemed to leap off the page into me, an experience I hadn't had in some time. Many people who know me as a flower person do not know I spent the majority of my teens and twenties deeply immersed in theatre, first pursuing a traditional acting degree and then wading into the weird wilds of experimental theatre at Sarah Lawrence College for my MFA. I haven't acted in a straight play in over fifteen years. I felt excited to be asked to take the lead role, and terrified I'd forgotten how to act.

We had our first blocking rehearsal last night, and I'm pleased to say the skills are still there. It's a bit like the bicycle colloquialism, my muscles reacclimating to a familiar movement. Here's hoping muscle memory also extends to the large chunk of text I'm required to memorize.

It's good to have one thing that feels that way in my life. Part of what kept me busy in the week leading up to the funeral was continued planning for the Bristol Bloom Collective. We are having to step up our game to keep pace, not in a way that feels unmanageable, but we certainly need to adjust our habits to include twice weekly harvests and a much more careful count of what we're producing. Our happy-go-lucky farmer's market approach will still work for the Friday harvests. Mondays are going to be much stricter with counting and bundling stems, plus taking inventory for the coming week's collective order. Plus we're making some behind-the-scenes changes to try to keep our admin up-to-date once the craziness of July and August hit. It's new enough to feel uncomfortable, not so new it feels impossible.

I'm in a similar place with my emotional state, and I know my spouse is too. My grandfather passed in his home, surrounded by loved ones, as did most of our eight grandparents. They all lived to be old. When they died, we celebrated their long lives. We hope our lives will be so long and celebrated, yet now that my grandpa is dead, all eight of them are gone. We are that much closer to the vanguard, our parents already there. We have friends who already occupy that space at the front of the line. The grief is familiar, this loss of a respected elder, and also it is new and uncomfortable.

A vastness opens up before us, like a wide field we must cross-- and we wish to cross it, we see the flowers, the waving grasses, the treed outline of a gentle pond in the distance promising ease and beauty alongside the travails of walking such distances. The once-crowded horizon is exposed as fewer and fewer cross before us. The hands we once held are now the breath of the wind. We know how to proceed, and we know how to admire the beauty, though sometimes we forget and travel too long before rest forces us down. It is frightening to see the distance, and yet we are compelled forward. We know what we need to do. We have the skills, and we remember.

With gentleness,

Meg