Friend,
I was the only one of my sisters who cared to keep a garden - my Mom kindly lending me one of hers to plant and tend to. I went on to work in a European garden house, tending to plants and flowers for over a decade. At 18, I left home to study Animal Science and began cooking en mass for hungry groups of cowboys and friends. After college, I began to work at a feedlot for beef cattle, only to leave for a backpacking trip to Europe later that year.
I rarely (if ever) felt like I truly belonged anywhere.
I left home for university in 2004. Sitting across from my advisor in college during orientation, he intently listened to my goals and ambitions of beginning a cow-calf operation, nodding his head in understanding. When I finally stopped speaking, he asked me if I’d been born into a cattle-ranching family. I had not. Did my family have land, he questioned. We did not.
Likely, he explained, that meant after graduation I’d been seeking a job in the broader beef industry and he encouraged me to focus my efforts on feedlot production or agriculture related pharmaceutical sales. Not what I had to mind.
My chest became heavy - dreams killed before they could even sprout - and my eyes filled with tears. “To be honest with you, Dr. Gaskins, I really just want to tend a home in the country with some animals and have lots of babies…” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could think about their weight.
He smiled, deep wrinkles forming over his aged face, and his eyes lifted. That’s good too, he said boldly.
I walked under his advisement for my years at university, our interactions always laced with the secret we both kept. I wanted to be a wife and mother.
Dr. Gaskins was never one to mince words, his slight southern accent punctuated further by his slow drawl, but he was always gentle in his advisement - until our last meeting. He spoke very intentionally and directly to me: break up with your boyfriend, find a proper husband, and do exactly what God has intended you to do all along.
the beginnings of time in the kitchen and time on the farm
I spent my years in college feeling less than. Many of my peers came from families with land, means, and opportunity. They were sitting on decades of experience in the cattle industry, while I was sitting on the small experiences I’d gathered growing out steers for the county fair. My peers had muscle memory for working cattle and eyes trained to condition. They worked so confidently, so quickly with the animals. Though I was diligent in my efforts and studies, I struggled to keep up with the innate gene they all seemed to carry for the work. I feverishly watched them, listening to their verbiage and collecting scraps of knowledge.
I felt like an absolute poser.
During these years, I kept a sweet little apartment that I delighted in. I’d clean it every Thursday. Laundry was done Friday, folded and tucked away. Grocery shopping was for Saturday mornings. I picked up a few new house plants at the store, put them in some thrifted pots, and bought a linen spray to spritz the apartment with after cleaning.
For the first time, I visited a little health food store and began to connect food and health. I learned how to bake casserole dishes of homemade macaroni and cheese, big pots of chili, scalloped potatoes, chocolate cake, and a damn good steak. (I was, after all, surrounded by beef producers… we ate a lot of beef.) I may have felt like a poser in class, but in my little apartment, I was learning exactly who I was to be.
I was floundering in my early twenties, as many do post-graduation, but I did eventually do exactly what Dr. Gaskins had encouraged me to do. Even though he would have secured a future in the cow-calf industry I so longed to be a part of, my boyfriend and I parted ways. I worked at a feedlot, then turned to the flower-shop, eventually leaving to explore Europe.
And I met Stuart.
Twenty years later, I still find comfort in Dr. Gaskin’s advice to me. Though I saw myself as an outsider, he seemed to see me as something else. He seemed to give me permission to be exactly as I was.
And so began the long process of breaking up with other’s ideals and expectations. I didn’t have the heritage to keep pace with my peers, nor would I choose to re-arrange my past… my family.
The ground for insecurity is fertile. Writer. Business owner. Getaway guide. Farmer. Christian. Mother. Homeschooler. There’s a lot in my life it can prey on. Take your pick, insecurity.
This past year, as I strolled through the streets of my beloved Italy, I felt its presence. You don’t belong here, it groaned. You’re not (insert words here) enough for this place. After all, I’m not genetically Italian, my second language is a brutal work-in-progress, I have no family history here, must be nice to be American.
And yet.
My greatest insecurities the Lord has rewritten to be secure points of connection with others, with the world around me, even with myself.
My over-zealous-drive and turned into this business.
My displaced love for Italy turned into Che Vita Getaways.
My non-farming-heritage turned into our small homestead.
My standard-American-diet ultimately became our Cooking Community.
My past relationships turned into Stuart, my husband of sixteen years.
My uterine condition that was supposed to make me infertile became our four children. (Should we talk more about this?)
Point is: the bits I would’ve wished away were made into something beautiful.
Time and sanctification have a wonderful way of taking a seemingly invaluable mound of clay and turning it into a valuable vessel. I know this now, but it takes time to form. Realities that kept me feeling like an outsider have become my greatest sources of joy.
I wanted wherever I came from, whoever I was, however I found myself there, to be enough. I wanted to be a wife, a mother, a tender of the home. I wanted to love places both here and far. I wanted to have gardens and animals and create beauty with my hands.
I work on being secure in where I am, knowing I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I know because this is where I am.
Love,
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