"I quit! I'm giving up farming. Sorry. I can't do it anymore." She tells me with a terrifying excitement in her eyes in from of the church at 7am on a Sunday morning.
I stand there in the place we nearly collided, me on my way to soccer practices, her on her way to prayer. She is ranting and I am standing there befuddled, with my cleats in hand.
What is she talking about?
I think to myself as I watch her frazzled and anxious, hobbling, arm-that-holds-the-purse-over-her-shoulder shaking. She glances back at me once more with a look of despair and then hurries to make it to mass.
I slow down.
My rush to make it on-time has left me forgetting to breath and see what appears before me on my walk.
This isn't Rosa* [*This is a true story. The name has been changed]
This isn't her and I know it.
Rosa loves to farm.
Something is wrong.
I let a few days pass.
So the excitement can settle down. So Rosa can relax a bit. So I can get my head on straight.
And then I call her.
Can I come by? I ask her.
She tells me there is no need to come. Her bones are aching and she cannot work on the farm. She is in pain and she cannot bear it anymore.
I tell her that we don't need to work. I just want to bring some bread from the local baker and sit with her and talk. Spend the morning together.
She agrees.
I arrive early.
She jumps up from her seat, trying to hide a little smile.
I can feel a bit of relief as she stands and comes to me.
So many mornings alone.
Now, someone.
She starts the coffee part and rummages to find food, as she almost always does when I enter.
Its only 7am and I know that she has been up since 3am or 4am.
She starts cooking.
I notice her movements are slower than usual. I can feel the pain in her elbows and knees, as if it were my own.
I tell her, "Wow. Look at all your Christmas decorations. It looks so nice."
In my mind, I'm missing the smell of Thanksgiving stuffing.
She turns to me and her eyes meet mine and she smiles.
I can tell she feels happy, proud, grateful. Just for a moment. Then her face changes subtly.
"Yea. It's not an easy time, you know? I like to decorate and all and family comes around. That's nice. It's just that whenever that song comes on, man, do you know that I cannot help but cry? You know that song? The one about the poor boy who lived in between the paper walls?"
"Why do you cry, Rosa?" I ask her. Thinking she is sentimental like me around the holidays. Thinking she misses family who have moved away far. People lost. People worth missing.
She looks back at me and gives me a once-over.
Scanning me like the machines they use at the airport to see if you are safe enough to come over to the other side.
I pass the test.
"Listen Jaime. I am going to be frank."
She starts. Just like this with these words.
"My life has not been easy. And every Christmas this song reminds me of where I came from. I was 9 and it was a Tuesday and I still don't understand."
There's too many details that I don't yet feel comfortable sharing.
And it's too hard to use much of her own words for me still.
But the story is important.
Rosa was sold by her father at the age of 9 into prostitution. Her father needed money and he drank a lot. This isn't justification. This is part of his story. And one day Rosa's father's friend was at her house and he told Rosa, while they were in the kitchen and Rosa was just 9, that "she was going to be his soon".
And Rosa walked outside to tend to the chickens and his voice and his words rang in her mind, but she didn't understand.
And then one day she was taken. To a place she didn't know and forced to live with this old man.
And she ran away and she ran away and her father found her and beat her.
And this happened repeatedly for years and years. Many men. Many escapes. Many beatings.
As her belly began to grow, she thought she was sick.
She didn't know she was pregnant. She didn't understand.
And she was by the pila when she started to give birth, and still she didn't understand.
And her baby was taken from her.
Her first baby was taken from her.
And so were many after her.
Her voice changes and she turns to me again.
She is angry now.
"He ruined my life. And do you know the bastard had the nerve to show up here the day before he died to ask me forgiveness? And I told him, 'You get out of here. You don't ask me for forgiveness. You ask my children for that. You ruined me. You ruined my life.'"
"It was Tuesday and I was 9 years old," she tells me.
She doesn't know how to leave that place.
She is sad again and she keeps cooking.
"I wanted a family. My dream was to take care of a home and a family. Now, I have children all over the place with many different men. They don't even know I am their mother, some of them. My father stole them from me."
She keeps going with the story. It is long and it goes back a lot to when she was 9 and then it skips forward. There are details that are hard for me to hear, but I still there sideways in my chair listening and watching her pace around the kitchen. I am mostly silent. I try not to look like I am in the pain that I am in. I want to be strong for her. I want to be patient and loving and understanding. I want to be whatever she needs me to be in that moment.
So I just sit and watch. Occasionally nodding in a way that she knows it is okay to tell me. That I can listen and not judge.
When she is ready, she slows down.
I say something, understanding that she needs a relief.
She wanted to get it all out and now she did and now she needs a break.
So I say something, nothing of importance, just to clear the space.
And she sits down with me with two place and I smile genuinely.
I'm hungry.
We eat slowly and not talking much except about little things like the weather today and how much local chickens cost.
I understand more now why her joints hurt.
I understand more now why she told me that, "the animals and the plants are her babies."
I understand more now why it is Christmas time and she says she wants to quit farming.
She doesn't want to quit farming.
She wants to move on from her past.
After we finished eating and Rosa was washing the dishes, she said to me, "Do you know I only really get hungry when someone is here with me? It's so nice to share this meal with someone."
Why am I sharing this story?
I asked myself this, as the story churned inside of me for days.
We live in a world of disconnect.
No, let me correct. We have created a world of disconnect.
We are very much connected. To our roots, our histories: ranging from our own Grandparents to our distance indigenous relatives. We are even connected to the Earth. We all love to feel things with our hand and experience exhilaration and freedom- these are part of the natural order of the natural world.
We have just forgotten and have become distracted from the world we have created.
An artificial one that is build out of inanimate objects and cold materials.
We are also very much connected to each other.
We are compelled to help those in need. The smile of someone else is contagious. And we all know that life is better when shared.
We are just so damn distracted.
I love Farmer's Markets because I get to interact with people in a way that makes me feel real. Not all farmers create or live organically. And not all of them treat me the way I want to be treated. This is not reflective of farmers or markets...this is reflective of the human race and the world we have created. The difference between the farmers markets and the not-so-super-markets is that you have the opportunity to remember your connection...to your food and to your food producers and to each other. You also have choice. You have part of your freedoms and rights back. You don't have those in society. Corporate greed and false advertising tells you what you need and tricks you into buying something that is really something else. At the farmers market, you can ask questions. You can determine if you believe the producer or not. You can learn again, about trust. About real people.
Honestly, I wonder if this frightens some of us. We have gotten so used to force-feeding: literally and figuratively. Information is shoved down our throats from the media, marketers, education system, bosses, friends, parents...we haven't stopped to think for ourselves in a long awhile.
It's hard. I know. I'm not blaming you. Or them.
This is the world we have created!
We have access to everything and anything we want and because of this we have become confused over what exactly it is that we need and want.
And so, to come back to Rosa, I share her story because it is real.
She loves to farm. Her plants and her animals are her babies.
And when we finished breakfast that day and walked out to the garden, I noticed how the pigment in her face changed. I noticed how she walked with more ease as we neared the oregano and basil plants.
And she saw it too. Because when we came back inside she said, "You know, I don't feel the pain when I'm out there in the garden?"
Would you buy from her?
Would you buy her veggies?
Not because you pity her or feel bad for her. No. That is not the reason I am sharing this story.
I buy my stuff from Rosa because she is a real person. Who cares about what she does.
She loves to farm. She loves to take care of things.
She needs to make money, too, but she would do it anyway even if she didn't need money.
And I like to have the choice to support this if I want to.
I like to choose to support people.
People who care about what they do.
Wouldn't it be awesome if we had more of that? People caring about what they do?
With all of their heart.
Wouldn't you like to support them in their passion?
Maybe it's just me. I don't know sometimes.
If I am crazy or not. I don't know!
But, I've stopped caring about the answer to that question.
And I've stopped caring about what others may think about me and how I choose to live.
And I've started living by what feels right to me in my heart.
Please don't feel bad about Rosa's story.
Don't support her out of pity or grief.
She doesn't need that.
That won't help her.
She has had a hard life, like most of us.
What she needs, what we all need, is trust and faith in real people. Real people doing the real things that make their heart sing. This is what we need to invest our time and money and souls into.
This is the real world.
Connecting.
To and with the realness that is the joy and passion and meaning in our hearts.
No comments:
Post a Comment