I’m searching for some serenity in all this chaos. Luckily, we have had a pleasant autumn so far, and we take evening walks to shake off the dread and anxiety.
Now daylight savings has changed the light, and we wake up in the sunshine. It’s good, and much-needed, because the sun won’t be around much from now until spring. I’m trying to capture it as much as possible before the darkness comes.
School has shut down in-person learning until after Thanksgiving. COVID-19 is spreading as usual. The election is over and yet not over.
There’s too much death in our world right now. Here in my own country, 150,000 unexcusable, mostly preventable deaths.
Here in our yard, we’ve noticed a lot of life this summer: we have two new skunks roaming our bush edge, a couple of aggressive squirrels that eat our bird seed, and now a gangbuster garden.
My garden memories go as far back as my memory goes: digging potatoes with my grandpa as a toddler, eating fresh green beans my grandma would cook southern-style. As soon as I had a home of my own, I planted a small garden in the back lot.
When we moved, this house had three years of not-great gardens. For one, the neighbors’ mulberry tree shaded the plot too much. And for two, maybe the weather? It’s hard to say.
But this year, it’s the biggest, healthiest garden I’ve ever had. It’s so big, it’s creeping into the neighbors’ yard. I told them whatever grows on their side of the fence, they can keep.
So I grabbed the macro lens and captured the texture and tendrils of this banner-year garden – the fuzzy stems, the searching vines, and the green and light-thirsty leaves.
Growing a garden has its benefits, of course. It’s good to get your hands dirty. It’s great to eat healthily. And the convenience factor – it’s so great to pick fresh lettuce and make a salad for lunch.
Along with cider, the garden has been my escape from the pandemic. Growing a garden is mostly a passive activity. You just let the water and sunshine do their thing. But I do wander out back to check on its progress, make sure the bugs aren’t eating all the greens, and picking whatever is ripe and ready.
My other hope is that, someday, the kids will remember eating fresh veggies from the garden – much like I did as a kid – and then want to grow their own.
It’s not much, but as the plague and politics and craziness gets worse, it’s good to grow something for a change.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit Michigan in March, it threw our situation – like everyone else’s – into chaos: no more office commute for me, no more in-person schooling for the kids, significant changes to my wife’s music therapy practice.
Those early days were a whirlwind. We had to develop new routines just as spring was warming up. We had to adapt to this new reality.
Along the way, I photographed our home and our lives as we lived it, and I have a selection of those photographs on display at Ella Sharp Museum’s new Adaptexhibition, exploring artistic responses to the pandemic. My series, “A Change of Seasons,” looks at our changing home life, changing routines, and changing light as March turned to April and winter turned to spring.
The exhibition is online for now and features great local artists with exciting work. Next week, starting July 21, I’ll have three photos on display at the physical museum when they open back up.
I always thought one of my community portrait projects would be my first chance to appear at Ella Sharp Museum, but the pandemic threw everything into the air, including my expectations. Still, I’m proud to be on display in the Adapt exhibition with so many other talented local artists.
So we went back to the spot we loved two years ago: Door County, Wisconsin. Same cabin property, same bay on Lake Michigan, same rustic charm and isolation that we needed so badly then and now.
And socially isolate we did. We rarely left the property, opting instead to hang out by the lake, eat Wisconsin cheese, drink Wisconsin cider and beer, and let the kids play in the water. The few times we did go out to explore the peninsula, we stuck to state parks and little shops. We ate out twice. We played it safe.
It was nice to not think about what was happening elsewhere in the country, or work, or anything else. We made new family memories, enjoyed our solitude, and drove back rested and refreshed.
The weather was perfect: lovely Great Lakes sunsets, never getting hotter than 80 degrees during the day, no rain. We stayed in a new cabin (next door to the one we stayed in last time) so I could explore the summer light.
It’s easy: grab three bottles of Simply Apple, a bit of yeast, mix them together, and then wait a while. A week or two is enough.
After that, add something else. This spring, I’ve tried blueberries, grapefruit, mixed berries, and now honey. A few reusable bottles, a bit more time to mature in the bottle, and you have yourself a nice summertime drink.
It keeps me busy. I have the process down pretty pat by now. And with all this time on my hands, I’m experimenting with more fruits. Maybe a pineapple, maybe a peach when they come into season, or some tart cherries if the crop survived our late spring snowstorms.
These days, it’s easy to appreciate whoever came up with, “Children should be seen and not heard.”
It’s barbaric, of course, especially now that we recognize children are miniature people. They have thoughts and feelings. They’re more than field workers or inconveniences.
Still, with every minute of every day spent with the kids, it’s an adjustment. Before, we worked all day, and we spent time with the kids in the evenings or on the weekends. Now it’s all day, every day.
Soon there will be no school work, no Zoom class meetings, no nothing. Just unstructured summertime. Luckily we’re in a nice time of year when staying outside and playing is a possibility.
Outside also means avoiding social media and the news. The kids don’t have any idea what’s going on in the world today. If they did, it’d be difficult to answer their questions. The virus? They know about that. They know its name. Everything else? Blissfully unaware.
Working as I do, each day at the kitchen table, I can watch them play in the backyard and live out their own adventures. They are little people, and as much as that old English saying makes me laugh, I don’t believe it. I didn’t get to hear it so much before. It’s good to hear them out there, playing and laughing and crying.
Inside, I can barely work because of my anxiety at the state of the world. Better for them to be outside.
