Every inch of the big farmhouse kitchen table is covered in books, pencils, and papers. There is a saucer with a dusting of crumbs on it from breakfast and a chipped mug with a Chagall painting printed on it half filled with black tea. The watercolor boxes and water jar and brushes are piled and pushed to a far edge waiting to be used again and the basket of embroidery floss and needles and a balled up bit of cloth waiting to be stitched are hanging on the arm of the heavy wooden chair, partially obscured by two or three sweaters draped over the back of the chair. The kettle is hissing and starting to whistle in that wobbly way it does before it really let’s her rip and howls that the water is hot and the dog with the short stubby nose is snorting as she presses her face into her belly to scratch an itch or catch a flea. The long pointy faces black dog is leaning against my hip, eyes half closed. He wants to lie down floor and nap but he’s worried I’ll get up and leave. I slide the worn toe of my Birkenstock mule under his haunches and he takes the hint and melts into the floor and rests his head on my foot. He’ll stay there all morning.

Two decades ago, there would have been fresh blueberry or dewberry or mulberry muffins baking at this hour of the morning. Someone would have been boiling eggs we’d just gathered from our hens and carving fat slices of homemade bread for the sandwiches we’d pack up for lunch when we headed out into the wilds our acres for a day of homeschooling. The kids would have been squealing and laughing and dogs would have been galloping around underfoot and barking and roughhousing as I cooked. There would have been music or maybe NPR playing on the radio and a cat squeezed in between the potted plants on the window sill where it liked to hide from the dogs and watch the birds at the feeder in the garden. Our kitchen was a noisy, messy, happy place back then.

Mornings are quieter here now and the messes on the kitchen table are all mine. I still have dogs tumbling around underfoot making sure my house is never completely quiet or clean and there is one old cat left that likes to hide behind the curtain and sleep in the sun on the windowsill. I didn’t pick many berries this year. I let the birds have all of the mulberries and the weather was weird and my blueberry bushes barely produced any fruit. I did pick some blackberries and dewberries this year but I ate them all out of a bowl right after I picked and washed them. I didn’t make muffins or pancakes or my sweet fat clafoutis, the one recipe I really used to love to make in the summer with fresh eggs and berries, because my hens are long dead and there are no more eggs to gather and I keep letting the ones I buy at the grocery store go bad–or I boil them for the dogs.

I’ve become a tea and toast woman. I eat my toast with honey or jam or sliced fruit in the morning. Some days I eat apples, other days figs or avocados or tomatoes–whatever is in season. I mostly graze during the day. I nibble nuts and seeds, granola and crackers, maybe a carrot and hummus. I like a cookie now and then. I drink gallons of tea all day. I start with black and then switch to lemon ginger in the afternoons and then echinacea or maybe even hot chocolate at night, if I am really cold or get a wild hair and a sweet tooth. My dinner is usually something simple like a bowl of soup or rice and beans or maybe a baked sweet potato with something green alongside and another piece of toasted bread. I’ll splurge and eat cheese and pickles now and then. I love pickled beets and nuts in a leafy green salad. I’m trying to make myself cook more and better. Some days I think I make better meals for my dogs than I do for myself. I don’t go hungry though. I am just not inspired to cook much with no one around but me to cook for–but I make do.

After my husband died I really wanted to move out of this place. I wanted to move to a smaller house, not quite off the grid but away from the noise of the city and certainly not nestled in suburbia. Everyone told me it was a bad idea to move–and I do mean everyone. I did what everyone said I should do and I stayed put but I know now I was a fool to listen. I have way too much house, too much land, too much worry. I even have way too much kitchen table. I’m trying to figure out how to live simply in a overstuffed complicated place. It’s a challenge.

I don’t honestly know where I’d go if I did leave. This country has become a scary place. I’m probably better off staying where things are familiar. I stay home most days and walk the woods with my dogs and visit the creek and make art and eat and sleep when I feel like it. The space is definitely too big and my life is getting smaller and there are days when I just can’t stand it anymore and I imagine packing up the car with my dogs and the old cat and just a few boxes of the bare essentials and heading for the proverbial hills but I never do more than imagine. Most days I am just really grateful that I have a home in these weird wild acres that I have grown to love and a studio where I can make and write. It’s not perfect but it’s mine and a lot of the ghosts are friendly so I reckon this is where I’ll be until I no longer am. If I am lucky, I will sup here on toast and tea at the messy farm table ’til my final days.