blog – gregoryjoel.com

It’s January in Texas. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt two days ago. Today I’m sitting here at the desk watching snow falling with wind chills in the teens. It looks like it may stick around for the next couple of days so I’m taking advantage of the weather to enjoy the comfort of my office and get caught up on stuff at home.

I covered everything at Opal’s Farm with frost cloth and mulch in preparation for this weekend. It rained all day Friday which is was needed for the crops during this cold snap. Still, the weather folks are saying we’ll have eighty-six hours of below freezing temperatures. Now I wait. It’s always unnerving to wait for hard freezes like this to end. I join all area farmers in saying lots of prayers and hoping I don’t lose everything. Such is the nature of farming, whether urban or rural.

One cannot be a control freak and be comfortable farming. Some things are simply beyond my control – it’s too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry – I can’t control the weather. In fact, I came to the farm one day last week and my pump wouldn’t work. After checking all the possible (and solvable) mechanical problems, I walked down to the river to find that it had dropped several feet almost overnight. My pump was three feet out of the water. I have no idea how that happened. That’s a new one for me. At least it’s usually new problems to deal with. That’s one of the joys (or curses) of farming. No two days are alike. You won’t get bored!

Farming has taught me the real value of the Serenity Prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Acceptance comes easier these days. There are some things I can’t do anything about. They simply are what they are. Acceptance surrenders the results and trusts the process before me. My friend Jim always told me to chop wood and let the chips fall where they may.

There are things I can do to mitigate some of damages caused by the things beyond my control, but quite honestly, some days can be rough: drought, pest pressure, equipment problems, funding issues – they can feel overwhelming. It takes courage to face things head on despite the uncertainties of the desired outcome. Courage is also about patience and perseverance. Sometimes it’s as simple as showing up for one more hour, or one more day despite fear, frustrations, and feeling defeated. I’ve was always told that ninety-five percent of life is just showing up. Sometimes it takes great courage to just do simple things…

“Wisdom to know the difference.” I can’t (and won’t) lay claim to being wise, but I am better at seeing what’s important, what I can change. I still run into walls, just not as often. Choices have become a tad easier to make with some success – not just at the farm but at home and in the community. Progress, not perfection I’ve always been told. Letting go of perfection and desired outcomes has freed me of the shackles of always having to be right. It’s allowed me to use the most freeing words in the English language – “I don’t know”. When I don’t have the answers, I have community, with you all and with my Creator.

If I’m really honest, it’s hard to be inside for two or three days straight. I miss being at the farm. I wonder how we’ve survived yesterday knowing that the worst of the cold is yet to come, but I’m grateful for the rest and the time with my wife. I pray that you all are doing well – the power’s still om, the home fires burn brightly, and you don’t have to get out on the roads. Enjoy the break. I will too…

It was Denver two days before Christmas in 1982. The due date for the birth of our second son was the twenty-third. I was on Christmas break from classes at the university and Jennine (my first wife) had just started her maternity leave. We put Adrian, our twenty-month-old son, to bed and put the final touches on the gifts being wrapped as we watched a holiday movie together.

Jennine went to get ready for bed and I stepped out onto the front porch to check the weather. The forecast was for a couple of inches of snow. My parents had flown in from Texas the day before and I was hoping for a white Christmas together and to celebrate the birth of our second son. The air was cold and crisp, but only partly cloudy. I didn’t put much stock in accurate weather forecasts and the coming snow. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Jennine and I had married two years before and neither of us were ready for such a major step on life’s journey. She was nineteen. I was twenty-two. We had met at work and dated a short while before she was to leave for college in California. A couple of weeks before her departure she informed me that she was pregnant and not to worry, she had already scheduled an abortion with a clinic in Boulder. I reacted with what I thought was the most honorable way I could – I asked her to marry me. She didn’t say yes right away, but after a couple of days we both decided that’s what we were going to do.

To make a long story short, we were married in August of 1980 and had our first son, Adrian, in April of 1981. He was such a joy, and we were blessed as new parents to have a son with an easygoing personality and demeanor. However, we weren’t planning on a second one so quickly. We had moved to Texas before Adrian was born and back to Denver afterward. I had been laid off. Jennine hated Texas: probably because my job with the railroad kept me away so much. I went back to work for my old company in Denver. The first couple of years were rough. They’d started to smooth out when she found out we were expecting number two…

We lived in a small stucco house in the Washington Park section of Denver. While the surrounding homes were built in the twenties and thirties and far larger, ours was an old farmhouse built in 1890: well before Denver grew farther south. We sat on two lots of land and even still had the old sidewalk to what was the outhouse. I’m told indoor plumbing didn’t come until later. I always thought it gave the backyard a bit of character. It was definitely a talking point.

The first floor was our kitchen, living room, my study, bath, and what would have been the one bedroom originally. We had converted it to a playroom and had two bedrooms in the half-finished basement. The stairs were at the back of the house with a long picture window across the back wall. We had purchased the house the year before and had great remodeling plans, but that would be a lengthy process. Jennine and I both worked full-time – her at a bank and I at a Trust company – but I was finishing my degree and had little time to work on the house. I often joke that I went to college on the ten-year plan.

It had been a long day for both of us, so falling asleep quickly wasn’t a problem. The bed was warm and comfortable. I kissed Jennine good night and curled up for a long winter’s night. At least I thought so…

Now before I tell you the rest of the story, please know that I really am a caring, loving husband. However, it takes me a while to wake up and get my bearings when awakened from a deep sleep – even in extreme situations. So, when I was shaken awake, and Jennine said she thought she was in labor I grunted and rolled over to look at the alarm clock. It read 4:12 AM. I mumbled something about a false labor, told Jennine to time the contractions to be sure, and rolled back over. That probably wasn’t the smartest thing I could’ve done. Jennine shook me again and yelled “you time the contractions”. I was awake then!

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I have to go to the bathroom first”. I climbed out from under the soft warmth of our goose-down comforter and started toward the stairs. “When was your last contraction?”, I queried as I walked out of our room. I didn’t wait for the response.

I went to the restroom and started back down the steps, and I noticed it wasn’t very dark outside. The cloud cover and the falling snow reflected the city lights and I could clearly see the chain link fence around our backyard – or at least part of it. The snow had begun falling sometime after we went to bed and all I could see was the top foot of the fence. She probably is in labor, I thought to myself. The idea of shoveling snow felt like a major inconvenience at 4:30 in the morning.

I took care of my business, drank a big glass of water, and returned downstairs to the bedroom. Jennine turned away as I crawled back into bed. “I think it’s just false labor”, she grumbled as I pulled the soft comforter around my neck.

“Well, let’s time them just to be safe”. I was a tad more awake and far more empathetic than I had been just ten minutes before. Sure enough, we timed her next few contractions, and they were extremely erratic. She wasn’t in labor. She drifted off to sleep. I couldn’t now that I was fully awake, so I eased myself back out of bed so as not to wake Jennine and went back upstairs to make coffee and spend some quiet time alone.

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Christmas 1982 – The Beginning