Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

A few weeks ago, Maria started musing about the color she’d like the bedroom to be – a kind of sage green she thought would be soothing. I know what it means when Maria starts musing about the color of a room.

Today, the creative volcano that is my wife erupted, and she vanished upstairs to check out the wallpaper. I went upstairs to check on her after I did the afternoon chores – I knew she doesn’t want to be bothered in this feverish creative surges – and when I went up to check on her, she had most of the wallpaper off one of the walls already.

The wallpaper in the upstairs, like the downstairs, hasn’t been changed in decades and goes back several layers. She and I will both start scraping sometime during the week or next weekend.

Once we get started, there is no stopping. Maria is happily obsessive about these projects, and the downstairs is full of scraped walls and soft and vibrant color.

We found some cowboy/rodeo wallpaper further back (must have been a kid’s room at some point) – we’re going to preserve some of it. I specialize in applying hot laundry detergent mixed with water to the paper, we both scrape. We will need to do some plastering.

Before I could quite focus on it, this project is underway. When Maria launches, there is no rest or turning back.

When we restore a room, this essentially means the two of us scrape four or five layers of wallpaper off the old farmhouse walls, and then we paint the walls a different color.

It’s going to be chaotic up there for a while, but also exciting. We love our farmhouse, and Maria’s fusion of new colors in a very old room is quite wonderful. I’ll keep you posted and share the progress. Wish us luck.

I had fish when I was young, didn’t get another tank until last year, I got Maria some fish and snails for her birthday. I started with a 10 gallon, then we upgraded to a 30 gallon tank.

We have three goldfish and seven snails. Maria has named each one of the fish – Frieda, Diego and Trotsky – and the snails are named Socrates, Junior, and Emily, and four more brown snails and tiger snails are as yet unnamed.

Maria is so into the snails I got her two snail books, they are actually quite remarkable creatures. They are keeping our tank clean and free of algae.

I’ve drifted back into aquarium care, I change the water regularly, clean the tank, organize the plants, change the filters, monitor the ammonia and other levels.

I’ve also ordered driftwood from Vietnam and moss sculptures grown out of lava rock. I am proud of the interior design, it is quite beautiful and natural. Twice a month, I use a pump to clean the gravel.

We have simple and happy fish. The tank is crystal clear. The snails are healthy and busy.

The tank has struck a pretty deep chord in both of us, to my surprise.

Maria loves the tank and the fish – she loves all living things – and sits and looks into the tank several times a day,  and  I love taking responsibility for its maintenance.

A healthy tank takes a lot of care, and all of it has come back to me. Fish were my world for some years, I have remembered almost all of it.

“Heal the sick…cast out the demons…” Matthew: 10-8.

One of the heavy lessons of life for me was in realizing that some people want to change, most people don’t. It was a therapist who told me that once I began to change, almost all of the people in my life would leave me.

This has largely turned out to be true, and I don’t mean that in a judgmental way. People have the right to make their own choices about their lives, they don’t have to pursue mine, and I don’t have to follow theirs.

I read once that the first task of a minister is to make other people aware of their predicament and trouble. But I am not a minister, my first task in life is to make me aware of my predicament and to understand who I am.

The purpose of the hero journey is to know who we are, and to set out into the unknown to find out, and then to return, healed or broken (or both) and share what we have learned with others.

The idea for me was to heal the sickness in myself – I can’t save others – and cast out my demons.

I know that my own hero journey will never be complete, but it has been and is the most exciting and meaningful trip of my life.

I am healing all the time, and casting demons out left and right, they are piled up all over the barn and the woods.

(Above. Main Street, The Holidays, Cambridge, N.Y.)

We had dinner tonight at the home of Rachel and Chris Barlow in Sandgate, Vermont. Rachel, a brilliant artist and writer and sketcher and I have known each other for six years ever since she first joined my writing class. She’s still a member.

We got off to a rocky start, we couldn’t find Rachel’s  home and were slipping and sliding down the icy and muddy hill near her home searching. We had to drive 15 miles to find cell phone service and call her so she could send her son Mac out to lead us there.

The evening was especially sweet. Rachel and her husband Chris are gracious hosts, the depth and range of Rachel’s work astounds me. Check out her art on her Etsy Shop.

The evening was lovely, but I was startled at the enthusiastic presence of her two sons, Mac and Ethan.It is rare for kids to want to talk to adults, I think, and I realized tonight just how much I miss talking to younger people, so full of enthusiasm and ideas, from computing to cards to Star Wars and the Avengers.

Mac and Ethan are both articulate and curious and fun, they are not shy or cautious about adults. I loved the way Christ and  Rachel talked to them, honestly and gently and lovingly. I loved the way they talked back.

Mac has had a rough year, he has just come home from some serious surgery a week earlier, he talked about it openly and thoughtfully.

He talked about his love for cars – he fell in love with a Camero a couple of years ago. We talked about Stan Lee and the Avengers, and the struggle to keep Star Wars fresh and original.

In my life in the country, I realized tonight I rarely get to talk to kids, I’m just not around them that often. The refugee children often don’t speak English and are shy.

It is unusual for teenagers to sit through a meal with adult company.  Ethan and Mac seemed to want to be there.

I loved every minute of it. Mac, who is 18,  and I were just beginning to get into a blog discussion – he is thinking of writing about his surgery on a blog. You won’t be surprised to know I liked the idea, we made plans to talk about it further.

Mac had to postpone school – he’s going to the University of Massachusetts in 2019 – but his surgery went very well and he looks great.

Above all, I felt grateful for Rachel and proud of her. She has written eloquently about her depression and bi-polar disorder, I know something about the horrific days of her  early life. We have known one another a long time.

Despite these challenges, she has written on her beautiful blog Picking My Battles almost every day, made mugs, written books, sketch books, and painted hundreds of very beautiful pictures.

Rachel has great drive and unlimited reserves of creativity. She has become one of the most popular artists in Vermont.

And she and Chris have also raised two great kids and reminded me of the importance of knowing children and being around them and talking to them. Their children were so at ease talking to their parents as well as us, there were plenty of disagreements but no tension or hurt or resentment.

It was just lovely to be there.

We ignore the elderly at their peril and lose out on their experience and wisdom. We  moan at the next generation’s obsessions with social media and smart phones.

But that isn’t the same as knowing them or talking to them.

Without that, life is out balance. My life was very much in balance last night.

Thanks, Rachel, for a very beautiful evening I will remember for a long time.