May 2019 into Mid-June

The first stop was the farm in Bedford.  The folks were in the process of renovating one farmhouse that they hadn't sold and trying to move out of the farmhouse they did.

To make a long story a little shorter, I spent about a month and a half variously going through every possession I owned (and good willing about half of it), helping the folks renovate the new house a bit, putting a dozen or so boxes into storage in their new attic (Thanks Mom, I'm  glad I didn't have to get rid of everything :), and in general trying not to let myself lapse into any sort of brooding uncertainty.

Everything I kept:

I also took the time to visit and say goodbye to a lot of old friends, most of whom said that, knowing me, it all seemed to make a kind of sense.

Not to be entirely glum, I also took a solid week to build my mother a stone raised-bed garden to help ease the pain of the gardens she was leaving behind:

It may be hard to make out, but some of those stones are easily hundred pounders.  I wore out two pairs of gloves and a pair of jeans, but I'm really happy with how they fit together.

We filled it up with compost before I left, but she hadn't planted anything yet so I don't have any pictures to share of that.  I should also mention, so as not to embarrass my mother, that the siding was fixed as part of the renovation.  It just hadn't been fixed yet when I took these pictures.

Now it may seem foolish for me to focus so much on a garden wall like this, but for some of us a place feels like home in equal measure to the labors of love we've put into it.  Mom was leaving behind all the gardens and paths and arbors that I, and others, had built for her over 30 years.  I had just finished hollowing out my childhood bedroom in addition to everything else that was shifting around me.  Dad was trying to figure out if he had failed as a farmer or succeeded, and couldn't quite seem to make up his mind.  And to top it off I was headed out for parts unknown, with a poorly outlined plan, and no certainty when I would be back.

Under such emotional circumstances the only real options are to bake something or build something.  So I built this wall so that it would feel more like home to mom, feel more like home to me, and as something of a physical promise that sooner or later I'd be back.  It's important.

Middle of June, the task done, I got into my HHR and left once more.