Being small and not despising

You know, I work pretty hard on blog posts. Some weeks. If I have the energy. Some weeks I'm just too worn out, so I post something previously-written, or just kind of run my mouth a little. Last week was one of those. I was really just running my mouth.

I'm... kind of surprised how many people felt it was something worth reading, and worth sharing.

I wonder--is it maybe that we all feel like we're making applesauce in a world falling apart?

That it's so awful, and we don't know what to do, what will make a difference, and pray and we send some money, and the crisis just keeps on going and maybe our money helped a little but it was only a little and the appeals keep rolling in and it's all still awful. And we don't know what to do but do the work that's put in front of us, we don't know what to do but make applesauce.

And we also feel somewhere deep down--in our hearts? in the earth beneath our feet?--that applesauce is worth something. That putting our roots down and holding on is worth something. That in spite of it all there's a future and we need to be ready to survive and to share.

Are any of those how you feel?

I don't really know what to say, again, today. I'm tired again. I've made a lot of applesauce and a fair amount of apple butter, and Paul and I between the two of us even managed to clean the kitchen floor afterward. (Ever boiled applesauce? It goes "Splat. Splat." and spits itself at you. And the floor. Protective gear is in order.) The world is still an awful mess. It doesn't clean up so easy.

My cat killed another chipmunk yesterday. I wish she'd stop. She doesn't eat them, doesn't even try. I love her, but she is quite frankly a clueless, overbred lap cat whose entire goal in life is to get people to pet her. She's beautiful and appealing, with big eyes and big paws and incredibly soft, long gray fur, and whoever bred her for these qualities managed to get rid of almost all the common sense. If I'm forced to walk anywhere in her company I'm sure I look ridiculous; I adopt this wide-set waddle, my boots swinging far around to each side, to avoid kicking her as she continually positions herself right in front of my feet no matter which way I turn. In hopes I'll pet her. Good luck, kitty. (The Boy & I call her Love Cat. She has a theme song.)

I saved the chipmunk. Not in the sense I would have liked--it was fully dead, limp and warm in my hand. No, I hesitate to admit this, but I saved it in the fridge.

Is it strange that I didn't want it to go to waste?

There are three barn cats in what we call the Valley, where the barns are and where the farm section of the communal land begins. They're two brothers and a sister, all ginger; their mother was a wiry little feral cat and a great hunter, but they grew up under someone's porch with food available, and they've had some trouble resigning themselves to barn cat status. (My cat came from under that porch herself--just showed up one day, no clues as to where she came from, rail-thin under her long fur, like a mangy gray lion. We were catless at the time and adopted her--the owners of the porch couldn't possibly handle one more cat, and the idea of her surviving on her own is just laughable.) They're healthy but on the thin side, always thinking about where their next meal will come from--and asking that exact question, quite loudly, to any humans they see. The Boy and I always wish, when we go down to the Valley, that we had brought something for them.

So I'll be bringing them something today.

I'm raising the Boy to believe you should never kill anything unless you have to. It just seemed the best thing. I don't like to see kids stepping on bugs just because they can, and he doesn't do that. Yet I still feel a little odd sometimes at how comfortable he actually seems with the idea of death and killing--he switches back and forth, now at almost four years old, between the point of view of the hunter and the hunted, between detachment and empathy. Sometimes even in the same game. But I couldn't teach him hunting was bad. Not when I was trying to teach him the animals in our woods here, half of whom live by it; not when he opened one of my National Geographics to a picture of an Amazon tribesman, wiry and smiling, his very long bow held loosely and alertly in his hand. "Where that man lives, there isn't any store," I told him. "They can't buy food. He knows how to hunt animals with his bow to get meat for his family." We played hunting for days. We pretended to make a little fire and cook the meat. He loved feeding his "family." I think he'll fully understand giving the chipmunk to the barn cats. I think he'll approve.

I even believe, to some extent, in never killing plants you don't have to. I know, it's nuts. But I have a notion, which I've never been able to carry out, that to truly respect the woods as God's creation, maybe you should never kill a tree you can't identify--even a sapling, even a seedling. What if it's something needed, something beautiful and rare? (Yesterday I had five actual living mature American chestnuts pointed out to me, standing around an isolated farmhouse. I wouldn't have known them.) I can't identify all the saplings. Maybe someday. I'm working on it. But at least I know enough to hold off a bit. When Paul and I moved here, we decided we wanted a redbud in the backyard. We almost pulled out the scrubby little sapling that was there instead, to make room. But we waited a year. And it bloomed.

It was a redbud.

When I weeded my inherited flowerbeds after arriving here, I was careful, knowing just how much I didn't know. I took out only weeds I recognized. Everything else I waited to see bloom. One odd dark-green vine--in my herb garden of all places, which I broke ground for myself--I left for years, simply because I'd never seen its like anywhere in the woods. Last year it bloomed. It was clematis, hundreds of little white star-flowers. I've seen the same one for sale at a nursery. This year I built it a trellis for it, and it brightened my garden, in the fall when all else began to fade.

I think it's worth something, being careful with things. A lot of the time I do it simply because I have to, because I live a small life with little money, but it's become a habit partly because I've found such nourishment in it. Waiting for the gift rather than taking it, it feels more like a gift. It's been that way more and more for me, as I've grown into this life.

It's about not despising things, I guess. It's about seeing the gift, even when the gift is small. It's about being okay with being small yourself, and not despising yourself for it. We have been taught for so long, in our culture, that we are either great or worthless.

It's a lie.

The chipmunk was not worthless. I respect it by not wasting its death. The small things that grow out of the earth are not worthless. I respect them by not uprooting without need. I am small, and give small gifts, and rejoice in small gifts, and am not worthless.

Same to you.