Mending Corn

I awake to sunshine,  heavy dew, and crows calling.  I make myself a cup of coffee.

The last few weeks have seen the peak and passing of heat, thunderstorms, hail and double rainbows. Two days ago I found a baby raccoon curled up around a branch on the plumb tree outside of the Curious Gourds Studio.

The thunderstorms also brought wind that knocked down a portion of Erin’s Amazing Maize Maze, which is coming into its own. At first I was dismayed, but then set forth to mending the corn, mounding or hilling each fallen stalk and packing it until it was again upright. My damaged ribs got sore after a few hours, but I rested and returned to the task, and eventually all was well with the maize — even a bit improved: I really should have hilled corn earlier, tended it better.

Drinking coffee and thinking of mending corn I think of a recent email from one of our Whiteblack Correspondents, Eugenio, from San Luis, Costa Rica. I had recently restored his blog, Spider Web, and he was mentioning what next he might write about. He said:

Mi proximo articulo, pagina, o poema sera sobre ´remendando’….un zapato, una silla, una mano y una rodilla.  (he [my father] did get some wounds and bumps from hard work,  from playing soccer, etc)   Mi padre siempre estaba remendando-mending  cosas, herramientas, para dar mas utilidad y mas vida a cada cosa util. El nunca hablo de sostenibilidad, pero es lo que ha practicado toda la vida.

My next article, page, or poem will be about ‘mending’… a shoe, a chair, a hand and a knee. (he [my father] did get some wounds and bumps from hard work, playing soccer, etc) My father was always mending things, tools to add utility and life to each useful thing. He never spoke of sustainability, but that is what he practiced all his life.

Mending… I’ve always spoken of tending, tending trails, tending the garden, preferring this word to the more technical term “maintaining.” Maintenance is the engineer’s science, tending is an art each one of us practices day-to-day as we cook and clean, hoe the garden, or clean a waterbar on a trail.  It is the work of the New England Yankee, the French bricoler:  we use what is at hand.

Tending and mending are so close, but there is a difference.   The origin of tending is from Middle English and means “to be inclined to move in a certain direction.” Mend also has its roots in Middle English, and is a shortening of “amend,” which includes as one of its meanings, to “put right” something gone wrong.

So, tending is the chosen path, the way we are inclined to move in life. As we all know, it’s easy to get off track. This can happen physically, as it did with me and my broken ribs, but also in relationships, communities, our emotional selves. Sometimes things fall apart.

Of course, we all know those neighbors with the perfect lawns,  freshly painted houses and happy children with perfect grades. We look down at our own shaggy lawns and weedy flower beds, the missing shingles and places where the paint peels. We recall the recent argument with a child or spouse.  Things fall apart.

One could look at this as a kind of entropy, a gradual movement towards disorder, what requires us to sweep the house everyday, pull new weeds, feed ourselves, and restate our loves and renew our friendships. Are those perfect others with greener grass and whiter teeth free from the work of tending? Somewhere behind the shimmering lawn, bright smile, painted house and pride of achievement, is the same tending.  And for everyone, sometimes things fall apart and there is need of mending.

We are all tenders in our lives, moving in a certain direction, cleaning the waterbars and clearing the blowdowns on our trail. Sometimes we get diverted and things fall apart. Perhaps a storm comes and knocks down the corn, a bicycle accident breaks a few ribs, harsh words hurt a friend or family member.  Then its time for mending, something extra that returns us to our path.