“You think you might want to buy the blueberry farm?” he asked. All I could do was laugh. I mean, of course I didn’t. I didn’t want anything to do with that land. I’d spent years working out there nearly every weekend that I had spent with my dad. What once was a place of sweetness and tenderness with my grandmother had turned to a place of work and sweat and lots of pro bono labor… and only in the span of fifteen years or so. I didn’t know anything about my future, but I surely knew I didn’t want it to be there.
Go ahead and insert here how “never say never” is everywhere in my story…
Fast forward several years from that conversation…
When my oldest was born, we lived in a small house in a one-road, tiny subdivision. It was in a large city, and we could be most anywhere we needed in fifteen minutes. With backroads and zero stop lights, we could basically blink and be in the center of everything. Easy.
Then along came baby. And oh how life changed (as it does). No longer did the conveniences matter. What’s twelve minutes to Sonic if baby girl didn’t have a yard to play in? Despite owning our house, nearly all of our neighbors were renters, and that meant they came and went. Often, we didn’t even have a chance to meet, and there was really no true community. Things were hopping and bopping along – the hive of the city was hiving.
All of a sudden, that wasn’t what we wanted for our growing family. We wanted community. We wanted space. We wanted privacy.
Right about that time we started to get that itch…
You know the one – the little whisper deep inside that turns into a talk, then into a yell, then a deafening scream. You can ignore it at first, then it’s absolutely impossible to do – or think – about anything else. Yep, THAT one…
In immaculate timing, as it were, the itch crept in… and we immediately started hearing gunshots outside our bedroom window. Two to be exact, on two random middle-of-the-night occasions. And let me tell you – ain’t much that’ll get me moving at lightning speed like the good ol’ fashioned adrenaline rush of a bullet.
So, we began the search. For a home, for land, for whatever felt right.
This search led us here and there, hills and streams to solid pasture lands, a touch out of the city to literal rural mountainous plots. Roadtripping day after day, tiny baby in tow. One time, we were ->this<- close to escrow on another property.
Then, one fine evening, we were having some friends over for dinner. We were all in conversation about something. Or, should I say, “they” were in conversation? I, on the other hand, was reeling. About our near-escrow, our failed search, the exhaustion of it all…
When I blurted out, “I want to buy the blueberries!” Everyone turned to stare at me, no telling what I had just interrupted. And, though the friends were thoroughly confused, Jay was not. I was looking straight in his eyes, trying to read the initial feeling as the words slapped him in the brain, most definitely expecting some apprehension. Instead, he stared back at me, eyes unwaveringly supportive, and said, “Okay.”
So… we did! I called my grandpa not two days later to see if buying it were an option. And you know what? It was like I could hear the smile on his face, like he was waiting by the phone… like he always knew we would come around. As if the farm was always meant to be ours…
(part two coming soon…)
Here’s to things falling into place as they were meant,
mindy
