In 2007 Anne Dambrowski, a member of the Dirt Divas, a group of creative and committed gardeners, started coming to the first Bedlam Farm to help restore and maintain the old gardens there. I have never gardened, know nothing about gardening and there was almost no chance the beautiful old gardens – I added some new ones – would have survived in my care.
I never spoke with Anne, she was quiet and serious-looking. The following year I got divorced, and was instantly overwhelmed by money issues, bills, payments and record-keeping The toughest and loneliest days of my life were underway, I am still grappling to understand how I survived it.
One night got a e-mail from one of the divas, she said she was Anne Dambrowski and was a bookkeeper, she thought I looked as if I needed help, I said I desperately needed help.
Anne has a very grim, even somber demeanor, famous in our town. She has frightened more than one person. When you get to know Anne, there is a permanent gleam in her eye and a dry sense of humor. She is a hippie, a flower lover, an excellent bookkeeper, the sweetest person, and she took my finances in hand and helped me survive those years, she still does. We cannot imagine our lives without Anne.
She looks so serious at times that people are afraid of her – I was. Actually, she has a demonic sense of humor.
When I came home from the hospital after the open heart surgery, I fell asleep in a chair in the living room, and I was only dimly aware of the door opening and a shadow flitting into the room.
Anne had come in to see me, she saw I was resting and leaned over and kissed me gently on the forehead. Then slipped out. I think there is no other bookkeeper on the earth who would have done that, and the kindness and love in her just revealed itself. Maria and I are both very close to Anne, she has helped in the most profound way to survive these very turbulent years financially. She is also a wonderful friend.
She loves to fence, and cares nothing about winning or losing, she battles kids half-her age and usually loses, she has great fun. I am eager to put her in the portrait show, which will run in September at the Round House Cafe. I actually got her to smile by making one stupid remark after another, I have only seen Anne smile a half-dozen times or so, this was worth it. The portrait captures her true sole, I think, she is out of character here, but very much in it.
She is a great Cambridge person, with a great Cambridge face, and I think I caught her real self.