Not long ago, I was standing at the top of our hill, hollering. I could see the long stretch of hayfield, just beginning to think of greening up. I could see the stream rushing at the bottom of the hill, still flush with snowmelt. I could see our barn, and the four shaggy horses, shedding for the spring, and I could see our greenhouse, burgeoning with vegetable seedlings. I could see our house, too, and the New Hampshire hills, and the Vermont mountains beyond that, and then the blue blue sky.
I could have been hollering happily for any of those things: Spring! Fields! Horses! Seedlings! Home!
But what I was hollering for was our dear friend, SuSu, who died unexpectedly this past January.
“Hey, SuSu,” I belted out, “How are you doing?” Three times I called for her, because I wanted her; because we didn’t expect to lose her so soon; because we are all grieving, from so many losses: pandemics, wars, poverty, racism, environmental devastation, to name a few.
Up on the hill, I remembered the first time SuSu came to our farm, years ago now. She wore bright red stiletto heels, and walked around laughing, as her heels sank into the garden ground. The last time she was here, she wore a handmade, matching headscarf and pandemic mask, and she walked around laughing.
She was a great laugher, despite struggling with chronic health troubles. She was a great whooper too, because when that first ripe tomato appeared in the shed, she couldn’t help herself. She was our most avid heirloom tomato lover, the person that always wanted to have a tomato parade for us, with acrobats and music and tomato costumes.
As a friend, long-time CSA member, and auntie of our daughter’s school classmate, SuSu has been a steady presence in our lives, and we didn’t realize how much we counted on her until now. I want to wish her light and love, and also I want to hear her laugh and whoop.
But all I can do is holler, it seems like. (Well, I pray and chant for SuSu too, as she always did for us, and also we have established the Susan Gadbois Memorial CSA Garden Scholarship Fund, and we feel honored that her family has asked to have SuSu’s ashes here. Plus we really want to develop a tomato variety for her, and call it the SuSu!)
If you'd like to donate to the SuSu Farm Fund, please send a check payable to Hillside Springs Farm, with "SuSu" in the notation, to Hillside Springs Farm, PO Box 233, Westmoreland NH 03467.
Meanwhile, here is another holler, for our dear SuSu, along with a hope that all of us have a chance to holler, and laugh, and whoop.
Baby Arm
In memoriam Susan Gadbois, 1966-2022
My baby arm, you said,
stroking the tiny arm
stunted by childhood cancer.
You were a fierce mother,
working that arm,
wrenching your body to shift gears
in your race-red car.
Ten years, fifteen, we knew you,
and never heard you complain,
never knew what it cost
to coax that arm into picking beans,
peeling tomatoes, sewing clothes,
knocking on doors in the toughest
of neighborhoods, offering all you could,
nursing, teaching, floristing--
all those wedding flowers, funeral flowers,
dazzling arrangements, ahead of your time--
oh, such tending of altars,
prayer and chanting,
and the feeding of us all:
roasted red peppers, mango ice cream,
a tomato sauce so lush
it brought tears to the eyes.
From that baby arm
came an exquisite hand,
a vigorous swirling penmanship,
and from that baby arm
came your love for all the babies –
flowers, nephews, nieces, the children
trailing after you like ducklings,
following that bright energy born out in
the work of your life: felted tapestries,
green fields blooming sheep,
blue skies bouncing clouds,
gravity and levity tenderly balanced:
felted tomatoes with propellers,
felted jumping tomatoes,
felted farmers dancing, tomatoes aloft,
and the merpeople, mermothers,
fathers, merbabies in merlaps,
loving this watery and earthy world.
Then the severe and beautiful labyrinth-
those muted colors, stark, stunning,
working the maze of your life, of all our lives,
finding yourself at the periphery
over and over again,
yet returning, returning,
daunted and dauntless,
to loss, to fierce, fiery love.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, April 6-12, 2022