Fall

Seventh Street

The hat store across the street never gets any new hats. There is a man with one leg who waits outside of the pizza shop. He's tired of pizza, he says. I wonder if my feet make imprints in the sidewalk, if the tattoo parlors and Ukrainian restaurants are peaceful neighbors, if it's possible to snow in October. I would chalk my name in the street but the cars never stop coming. And the traffic light. It' running through the motions as my fig tree watches from the window. I sit next to it and do the same.

The Invitation

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Garden

"How simple

the garden, in its lucid confusion, the mind

in the plummet of sleep: no need

to remember, no need to forget-

just the hum and buzz of the world,

begetting."

-Suzanne Buffam

For Will, almost 96

I want to paint pictures in the air and bring them to you wrapped in cinnamon and bows, but I worry you won't remember them if they blow away. Instead I bring you the weather on my cheek. Every week. And we spill over pages like pomegranate wine in goblets from the Crusades, where we only go on days when we aren't in courthouses or photographs or early November. Really it's just tea on the table, ginger peach, and I'm afraid that if I leave for too long you'll disappear. So I ask you questions I know you can't answer. Tell me the color of her eyes. It's fine, I say, if you just make it up (that's what I do when you ask me how I'm going to change the world one day). And we talk about dreams we never had or what it would be like to trade places with the stars. We sit in silence while sirens pass below us and pretend they are only taxicabs to the sky.

Good news!

There will be strawberries in March! Well, not here- it's only 34 degrees, strawberries would never make it so soon. But I hear in California the weather's much warmer. I'll let you know, because I just booked my flight to San Diego next month to go to farm school! Farm school is a week-long alternative spring break trip to an organic farm to learn about sustainable agriculture- a much needed break from the snowy street corners of the city (sorry New York, you know I still love you). The trip also emphasizes the importance of social justice and mindfulness in food production. I can taste the strawberries already!

Harvest Day

To me harvest days will always be Mondays and Thursdays, torrential rains or excessive heat, six a.m. and the sun just showing up over the fields. It will always remind me of wide brimmed hats and bare feet in the mud and bin after bin full of cucumbers and carrots and kale. Back in New York, I never got to see the pumpkins or the potatoes that we planted in early summer. I fill in the gaps with the farmers market and the fig tree I am desperately trying to keep alive in my apartment, and I thrive in the city knowing that the farm still holds a special place inside me.

This year, the word harvest has new meaning; baking a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin (even though it took four hours and my family hates pumpkin pie), a new appreciation for things that grow. But mostly this year I’m thinking not of what I’ve grown but of how I’ve grown and how I don’t try to define home anymore because I know it can exist in more than one place. It’s the city and the farm and it’s also right here, sitting by the fireplace with my family on Thanksgiving. I like to believe that I’ll somehow end up in the places I’m meant to be, and for now that is enough to feel content. Happy harvest, with many thanks.