The Mothering At Work
It’s Easter Sunday here in Ojo Sarco, New Mexico. Maybe it’s Easter where you are too. I know some people may not resonate with the term Easter, but I’m using it now and if it feels offensive to you, use another word that you love and deeply enjoy or don’t use it at all. (I definitely taste small, yellow peeps in the distant recesses of my memory today.) We woke up to the sound of dogs barking and children laughing, children that are definitely in our village visiting their grandparents and running around the sage brush searching for hidden Easter eggs. The sun was out today, as it felt like it should be on Easter and for me, that’s what Easter really feels like. It feels like sun and warmth and sitting outside with my shirt off. I also did belt out some old Christian lyrics from an Easter song I grew up singing: “Hear the bells ringing, they’re singing Christ is risen from the dead.” The verses to this song still live in my body and my vocal chords. Even though I walked away from Christianity many years ago, singing this anthem on Easter feels like home to me. I love Easter. Not because I am fond of the Christian and Catholic renditions of the day, but because it feels like a day in the Northern hemisphere when the tides are turning. Winter is leaving and the warm, high sun is finally back. When I am away from the sun, I feel so deeply alone and isolated. With the sun in my life, everything makes sense again and I feel like I belong. I love Easter because it also involves special kinds of foods and I always love to partake in eating. Holidays work for me because I love to eat. I love to eat all kinds of food. I did not, however, grow up eating Easter ham — I grew up eating Easter guacamole and chimichangas which was fine by me. We always ate Mexican food on Easter but thus is the life of one growing up in the American Southwest.
Today, we started a new Easter tradition — we put together our very first beehive. I identify as whatever comes before being a novice bee keeper. I am completely inexperienced and yet, our bees are arriving on Saturday. I think this is what Heathar and I like to do — we create a very imminent deadline that involves live animals and then run like wild dogs at the last minute to get everything prepared. It is very motivating. I think this is also what they call procrastination. But yes, we are creating our beehives.
We inherited a large set of beehive material and equipment from a local neighbor back in March and today, took inventory of everything we acquired. There are bee brooder boxes and bee honey starter boxes. Together, Heathar and I strung the rows of food grade plastic lined with beeswax into the bee honey starter boxes and scrubbed all the bee brooder boxes from years of left over propolis and honey. I learned that bees love to sting you on the face because they sense carbon dioxide and so fly toward the nose and mouth on all living and breathing things. I also learned that bees can see color and love to be in very sunny places. Me too bees, me too.
I have never been surrounded by so much life in one place. The bees are coming, our chicks are nearly one month old and our pig pen is ready for the piglets we will receive at the end of May. There are things growing and breathing and living all around us. There are hungry mouths to feed before we feed ourselves. Perhaps this is what it is like to be a mother. On these days, the days where I do not see any clients and sit at my computer, my body is sore from crouching and moving and bending. I am so ready to fall into bed at 8pm but I am grateful that I have been tending to life all day. I can feel myself wrapping my arms around this great big project of Mothering. I am curling myself around these five acres and vowing to feed them, to protect them, to nourish them. I realize that perhaps this will be our family — these animals and these gardens, these three houses and the more to come. I realize that we are actually entering into a kind of parenthood and that is also part of this alchemical process that is happening inside of me.
Today, as I waited for Heathar to drive around the cinder blocks we used to stack our beehive on, I walked down to a very small arroyo that exists on our property — I had never noticed it before. It is beautifully shaded by Cedar trees and has a rounded and curved, sandy bottom. I stood in the bottom of the arroyo that was covered in shade and felt New Mexico. I felt the dry desert and I felt the familiar way I know the sun to come in through the Juniper and Cedar trees. I felt the ravens cough and the dead wood that collects on the sides of the arroyo where the snakes love to lay. I could imagine others coming to our property and walking through this arroyo and marveling at the uniqueness of New Mexico. I see life all around — I see the Mothering at work.
