When I think about yesterday’s Open House, I think of Gifts Beyond Measure, gifts I received all day long, gifts that raced through my head and spun around all night. I woke up at 3 a.m. and the gifts were still rushing past like a slide show.

The Open House was itself a gift, many hundreds of people poured into the farm all afternoon from all over the country.

I received a beautiful vase of flowers from the members of the talented and mythic Open Group At Bedlam Farm, a creative arts group, a virtual community.  Jackie Campbell, who became my friend on the phone from Battenkill Books, where she and I talk about the books we love many Saturdays, brought me a Homer Simpson statue from Minnesota. This shy and private person came so far to see the farm, she came early to chop up carrots and help collect donations for the Hubbard Hall Scholarship Fund (more than $200 and the online raffle of a signed “Second Chance” dog galley will begin tomorrow online.)

Between 25 and 30 members of the Open Group gave me a wonderful gift, they traveled to the farm to meet me and Maria and to meet one another face to face at the farm. Their delight and affection at seeing one another nearly brought me to tears, for years I have written about and dreamed of the virtual community, one that comes together online and also evolves into a real and physical connection. Online relationships can be powerful and enduring, but they truly become real when we know one another as human beings. The Open Group at Bedlam Farm is one of the best things I have ever conceived of or been associated with. It is no longer my group, it has a distinctive and beautifully creative life of it’s own, as should be.

There were other gifts – Jeff Anderson’s slide show of the Open Group’s work, his tomatoes, the cell phone photos of dogs and cats, the hugs and appreciation for my blog, my books, my work.

One especially powerful gift for me was watching Maria’s continuing coming to life, her ascent to the creative, confident, articulate and loving human being I was watching all day Sunday. So many people came to see her and appreciate her and her work, she was swamped all day with people wanting to meet her and see her work. This Open House, along with my life, would be empty and bland without her, she has brought me and so many others to love and life.
I remember that one woman grabbed her in the Schoolhouse Studio and said “I’ve been trying to buy one of your pillows for so long, I just can’t move quickly enough. Can you help me?” This please was so touching and heartfelt. Just give me your e-mail, said Maria, smiling. We’ll work something out. I thought of those long hard years for Maria before I met her, those cold winter days when she was getting up before dawn to care for the emotionally disturbed at a remote home near Fort Edward N.Y., then coming home to work in her freezing studio barn to make her first potholders. Nobody would ever want them, she told me. They will, I said, they will.

Did we dream of such a thing as yesterday? She didn’t dare, I knew it would come.

And so many good people came to see me, hug me, thank me for this thing or that, for this blog or that book, for this photo or that poem. They were all gifts of affirmation for me, what else would any creative person dream of or want?

Gifts and gifts. How gratifying to see Simon up on his feet, preening, wolfing down carrots and cookies and applies, cuddling with children and his deepening list of admirers. Many people came to farm to see this wonderfully loving reborn animal. While Red and I were herding sheep, Simon was braying loudly in complaint, demanding everybody return to pet and scratch him, talk to him. Simon touches me so deeply, he suffered so much, was so near death, he is reborn, he has risen.

And how can I ever repay a gift like Red, who draws gasps and declarations of wonderment and admiration at his focus and work and responsiveness? He is so loving, he is so much loved. Red was a star all day, he herded sheep, greeted visitors, did a therapy dog training demo with me, kept the donkeys away from the sheep. So many people came to see him, one of the greatest gifts I will ever received.

I suppose I should forget me either, for most of my life I never dreamed of such a day, never would have dared to open myself up to it. My creative spark is my greatest gift and it has survived so many challenges and twists and turns, it is my Mother, my faith. It provides for me and for my life.

I am surrounded by treasure, overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciation, I have gifts beyond measure, there is treasure all around me, the heart is like that, blessed and ruined, once it has known gifts beyond measure.