What Is Owed

Going Slower and Loving Harder

Good morning my friends and fellow porch sitters, how are you all fairing on this day of boycotts and civil unrest? I have been out in the back cleaning up from the last freeze and working on my two big planter boxes, readying them and myself for the Season of Planting in Hope. Gardeners are some of the most hopeful people you will ever run across. No matter what happened the previous year, bug infestations, drought, unseasonable freezes or crop failures, when that first balmy breeze blows in, they lift their faces and sniff the wind and get a far away look in their eyes as they begin to dream anew, of crisp ruby radishes and the first spring peas, eaten standing in the garden. There is something to be said for that. At least with a garden you get to eat whatever you grow, even if that tomato ended up costing $20 at the end of the process. The intangibles involved, time outside, learning about the life around you and its biology and your place in it, exercise, engagement with life and the sense of purpose and self -reliance that comes from growing your own food, creating beautiful little pockets for wildlife and ecosystems, enjoying the gorgeous blooms and butterflies, none of these things lend themselves to a cost benefit analysis. The most enriching things in our lives rarely do.

As someone who has been working poor for most of my life, my days are structured around this cost analysis, who is owed what and when does it have to be paid. Today is the last day of the month which means it is payday for my husband, and so my day began with paying the bills due in the next two weeks and moving money around to squeeze in the added bill for the dental work my son needed and the fact that our escrow payment is adding $100 to our house note starting next month due to an increase in our insurance and taxes. The bills are going up but his pay is not,(or should I say, it went up about $20 a paycheck, which a raise in our health insurance premium immediately siphoned off), so I have to take it out of the grocery budget, or put off my own dentist appointment or look for a side job that I can do that doesn’t interfere with what I am already obligated to do and that my body can still perform.

Most of the work I do is unpaid labor, caring for my husband and remaining child at home and various and assorted animals, the volunteer work for the National and Public parks where I work as a Master Naturalist, caring for my grandchild, helping my friends when they are ill or need help with childcare or their homes, community building and activism, work with the homeless through the church, all the activities that keep the wheels on the wagon for us all as we navigate this increasingly rocky and broken road of modern life. This week has been particularly difficult as I have attended community meetings where plans were discussed about how to combat what is happening in our government, who to call, what actions can be taken. Most of the people at these meetings are frightened, and well they should be, and angry not only at what is happening, but at the apparent lack of care about it that they see around them. It is good that these groups are coming together, and I felt it was important to attend and to make myself available to help in what capacity I am able. This is part of that community building that is so important as we try to survive in the destructive path of this regime. I don’t know how effective it will be in the short term, but this too is planting in hope, these efforts of resistance that are immune to an easy analysis of value in the short term. I do know that soon, there will be a cost to be counted in risk, to personal safety, to people’s jobs for themselves and family members, to people’s retirements, even their homes.

It is particularly galling as my husband and I prepare to do our taxes and render unto to Caeser what is Caeser’s when they have so thoroughly broken their faith with us. Everything I paid in to Social Security and other social safety net programs for my entire life is being drained away before my eyes as those in power in Congress fight like a pack of hyenas over who gets what cut of it on behalf of their billionaire overlords. The Social Contract that we all entered into with the government as tax paying adults has been completely ripped up by those in power. They are reneging on their word, to our allies abroad and the American people and the Constitution they all swore to uphold and protect. I am expected to pay and will be punished if I do not, while they will do as their overlords tell them and fight over the scraps of power and money that fall from the table. They are leaning mighty heavily on the intangibles to take up the slack for their faithlessness. In their cost benefit analysis, we are all cattle, units of extraction, and when they have extracted all the labor/value from us, paid and unpaid, we are to be sent to the knacker yard to be melted down for glue and leather. What do I really owe in this dreadful arithmetic?

As I worked in my garden today, this question, “What is owed?” rattled around in my brain. What do I owe my young granddaughter who has just been diagnosed with autism? What do I owe my 17 year old son that has military recruiters calling the house trying to talk him into joining the military? What do I owe my loved ones who are very likely to lose their Social Security, their healthcare, their jobs? What do I owe this Land That I Inhabit that I live upon and take sustenance from? What do I owe this community of people that I live amongst and must rub shoulders and share resources with every day? What can I possibly do to protect, succor, tend, feed and care for all the beings in my life that I am connected to and dependent upon in some form or fashion as they depend upon me?

I am not sure that there is an easy answer to that question, but I feel that I have the beginnings of it. As we continue to this slide into chaos, I have to remember that I do not have to participate in my own destruction or the destruction of what I love. Today’s boycott of all shopping, online and off, was an easy first step in disengaging from the systems that seek to extract my money, my time, my personhood, and invest it in my home and my community. Perhaps it is a facet of my personality that the more an authority figure pushes me to do something I feel is wrong, the more I stubbornly dig my heels and resist. I am the very picture of the sullen peasant. The more those in power “move fast and break things” in my government and by extension in my community, the more I feel it imperative to move slow and mend things, to love harder and build back what is worth repairing. This will be the work of the rest of my life, this creation of small oases of life in the midst of destruction. It makes absolutely no sense when looked at from the angle of cost benefit, that is not how gardens, or life actually work. People in power break their promises, and we peasants still must go out and hoe the cabbages or there will be no saurkraut for the winter. I owe it to my loved ones and community to keep planting in hope. But as my Daddy would say, as far as those in power are concerned, I don’t owe them jack shit.

When you look at your own personal cost benefit analysis, it will most likely look different from mine, but there will be a few things we have in common. I can’t tell you what is truly valuable in your life, and what you should protect and invest in, but I would bet that slowing down a bit and being more deliberate in what and in whom you invest your time and resources isn’t a bad bit of advice. Count the cost, because as we move further into these times of chaos and destruction, many things will be lost that cannot be recovered, and all you will truly be able to count on are those you love and who love you, and what you have managed to salvage from the wreckage. Move slow, love hard, mend what has value and mourn what is passing away, that is the work of this time.

Now I’m going to get myself together and go back outside and plant some of those English Peas, and dream of cream peas and new potatoes like my Mom made when I was a little girl, my mouth is watering as I think about it. That is what hope tastes like for me today. Good bye and good luck till next time.