Keeping the Code

Check her out. A beauty, ain’t she?

Though we don’t crank that handle nearly often enough, our living room has been a more beautiful place thanks to the presence of this death-defying time machine. Oh? Just looks like a no-tech antique to you? Well, turn the handle and set a needle in the grooves of one of these babies, and you’ve got yourself a room full of people from the past, their voices and talent captured in one magical moment, for which they practiced all their lives. Their bodies are soil but their love, their passion, is ours forever.

Except, we are not forever. We are soil-bound too.

The more I live through that reality, and face what it means, the more my mind’s eye is drawn to those things about us that remain with others, which are passed on, and reverberate after our exit from this mortal stage.

A good friend died yesterday. This is where I am supposed to talk about her in the past tense. She was this, she was that, but some people live with a force that outlasts them in my mind. She still is more brilliant, beautiful, unique, and fun than any words can describe. She brought those things to every interaction with such force, they could never vanish as easily as a human body succumbs to aggressive cancer.

Death makes me stubborn, it turns out. I feel determined not to let go, to crank the handle and listen to the breath and lightning fast fingers of ghosts, and delight in the fact that their song got another printing, in my head and heart.

There is something, for our intents and purposes, that is permanent. A code. We pass it along, for better or worse, to everyone around us, some of whom will outlive us. Like an analog data storage spiral of notches and grooves pressed into fresh vinyl. The code lives on and on and on.

When someone I love dies, my thoughts search for their influence on the code of my life. The parts of them that live on in me, and which I hope to leave with the impressionable around me.

With Julie, I don’t have to look far. The Backyard University ethos comes from basic tenets I learned in the same years I became friends with her. Notions like being adventurous, driven, inclusive, kind to animals and people, willing to embrace the edges that come with looking at all of life’s jagged sparkly beauty and ugliness: these have been important to me over the same period of time I have been friends with her.  Either I learned it from her, or felt reinforced by how well she embodied those values. One way or the other, that is her code in me. It’s what she made that I can carry and pass on.

If you get to live many years, you will say many good-byes, some of which will leave your heart a little broken forever. Here’s what is unexpected: you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You wouldn’t trade that rough lace for a smooth uninterrupted heart that was never impressed upon; not in a million years. You find a needle to play those rifts and crags left behind by the love and loss, a way to sing to the beautiful pattern dug into you.

You might find it is your favorite song.  

Food of the Future: Part II: Lettuce Be Inspired

This is how it went each day: Juan, Marcela, and I would clean and prepare our space for class.

To fill the air and up the energy, Juan would play a CD he selected from our combined collection.

I'd make my way to the living room, where I would wait to hear that friendly little beep of the Fundación Niños de los Andes van, full of kids, some of whom got out and waited on the sidewalk for whatever was next.

Little eyes were uncertain.

Where am I?

Who are these people?

What is happening here?

We offered the warmest greetings, and welcomed all inside, to have a little chat at this table.

 Here is where we said,

Welcome! Thank you for coming and participating in The Food of the Future!

Why is it called that? Because you are the future, and whatever you eat will be the food of the future. In a way, the future starts now, because what you do tomorrow will be a result of what you learn today.

Today, we will learn about the life cycle of a lettuce plant, as well as how to sow and transplant lettuce.

We will also make bread!


And create delicious works of art, which we will then photograph!

If there is time (and there is always time) we will paint display art for our table presentation later this month.

We did those things until the van returned, and beeped, at which point we would hug good-bye and they would be on their way.

For us, providing this workshop was an experience full of discovery. Through conversation and finished sentences, we found out which children had experience with plants and making their own food.

Little impulsive hands showed great control when trusted with sharp tools.

Big strong boys were as gentle as little lettuce seedlings needed them to be. All were spoken to with respect, and all took full advantage of the chance to learn and do for themselves. At the end of each day we heard, “When am I coming back?”

We longed to spend more time together, but had to bid farewell each afternoon, and clean our space for the next day.

Five days, twenty five kids, fifty hands and eyes, a million shy smiles and proud greetings over the next few weeks. “Teacher! He doesn’t believe me! Tell him I made bread at your house!”

“Mami! Did you bring more lettuce seeds yet? I have permission to plant them!”

“Look, how much my plant grew in just two weeks!”

It is not some space age nonsense to say that those moments felt like all points in time were happening at once. That, in a way, it feels like people live forever in the people around them.

Choices to harm or help create an impact that far outlasts one human lifespan.

These moments we call past, present, and future flow into each other as a series of causes and effects, from one of us to another.

A familiar peace and elation, seeing the accomplished smile of a child who has surprised himself, is presently as close as I can get to hanging out with a friend who taught me how to grow little food eaters. The light in those young eyes makes me think of Shelly Bowe.

ALS ended her life, but couldn’t touch the beauty of the way she chose to live it.

She grew a community around the basic human need to feed ourselves and each other, co-founded Food Roots and made everyone feel like that kid, discovering new capabilities.

The passion she cultivated will only grow, as she made sure to sow it in the hearts of people around her.

To teach the children from the Fundación Niños de los Andes with my friends, who have also been inspired by Shelly’s work, felt like sneaking out a sly message in a bottle, that we never wrote. We just found it, memorized it, and threw it back into the water, hoping it will float through time to some day when all that’s left of us is information, hopefully well-conveyed. Lessons taught, lived, and maybe even learned.