Arriving
This piece is dedicated to Tim and Cree ~ for being a part of this season of my life.
***
I reach under the leaves and branches of the fig tree to find the damaged fruits - the ones pecked at by Australian Ringneck parrots and the ones split at their bottom from the skins’ inability to contain the sweetness. Chickens gather at my feet, hopeful for an afternoon fig. I pull a pecked fruit off and tear it into pieces, throwing them one by one in different directions. The chickens chase the noise of the fallen figs and devour their afternoon snack.
I turn to see my partner watering the kitchen garden: the crawling Queensland Blue Pumpkin, the multi-coloured flint corn and the summer blessed tomatoes. He wears blue-grey hiking shorts with black suspenders and no shirt. I stare at him with my favourite kind of smile - the one I can feel all the way into my stomach, the one that carries truth and hope and the one I know will always spread across my face when I see him in hiking shorts held up by suspenders.
As I walk across the grounds back toward our home, the sounds of life quieten around us with the sun setting west in the distance. I pause in the middle of my walk somewhere between the orchard rows and breathe in deep. I send my exhale down to the soles of my feet. It’s this confirmation exhale, one filled with a knowing that I have arrived, not physically but psychologically, to a place in my life where I’m no longer aching to arrive anywhere else. Deep in the marrow of my bones I feel certain that there is nowhere else to arrive - not because there is nowhere to go or nothing else to do - but because all that is required of me is to be here. Right here. With my head in the same place as my feet. I continue my walk back to the house and begin typing about the fig tree.
***
From the end of December to the beginning of April my partner and I lived at One Table Farm in Cowaramup, Western Australia with owners Tim, Cree and their three children. We lived on their farm as wwoofers, tending to their land and animals each day. We spent time with our hands in the soil and amongst the plants where we came to know that homegrown tomatoes are a special kind of love. I spent days with my hands in flour learning about the art of sourdough from Tim. We spent sunrises and sunsets with Spotty, a new mother to her eight piglets, who inspired me to embrace the changing shapes of my body as I shift from athlete to one day motherhood. And in these hours well spent, I came to think about arriving. For twenty-seven years, I’ve been aching to arrive at some sort of finish line where I could finally feel complete by that shining beacon of hope that waited with a dangerous bait called happiness on the other side of that misleading line. But as time passed and those three months came to a bittersweet close, I noticed my ache to arrive had settled like the animals at sun fall.
Everything just sort of - moved - out there, with patience. Day by day, never in a rush to arrive at the next phase. Plants rose from soil, shifted with the sun, wilted in the heat and renewed in the rain. Animals gave birth, laid eggs, had fights and dropped dead. The sun rose when the moon fell and it all just continued in a timing that only nature knows. Country welcomed me into its cycles and soon the want to arrive anywhere felt unnatural.
And Tim and Cree’s life, well it mimicked nature in a way. They took their time, even in how they spoke. Slow. Never in a rush to arrive. They spent seven years regenerating a barren hillside into a valley full of life, love and care. Day after day they carved out a life on country with an expansive kitchen-garden and orchard, tending to animals with ethics and kindness, baking sourdough for their community and sharing their knowledge through a paddock-to-plate cooking school on their grounds. Their story, their home, their land, their love, their food, their way - that they so generously invited me and my partner into - taught me day after day that there is nowhere else to arrive other than where my feet are, that there is no glorious finish line that will complete me, and that even when you get to a place that looks like the end game, everything just keeps moving in cycles. Rising, shifting, wilting and renewing - continuing in a timing that only nature knows.
Tim and Cree, thank you for gifting me three months on your land where day after day I could feel and see nature slowly shifting. Thank you for sharing your life with me and my partner and unknowingly giving me the permission to stop departing from life and start arriving just where my feet are.
Lily x
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