So yesterday was my last day at my job on someone else’s farm. The season wound down. We covered this, cleared that, and put 8,000 or so cloves of garlic to bed for the winter. I may see them in the spring - if my own micro farm isn’t as busy contributory as I’d like it to be. (I’m trying to put the word “busy” on the same shelf I left “should” and “supposed to” years back. It’s an effort.)
Last night, as the kids ran about the neighborhood and the sun clung to the clear sky, he and I sat on the front stoop.
Me: So I wanted to talk to you about something.
Him: Okay.
(We both know this isn’t ever a bad thing. It no longer comes with trepidation on the receiving end. It is one of our many signals to one another. This one generally signals “I’m about to be a little vulnerable. I might not have the words right. I’m trying to speak from the heart.”)
Me: I wanted to talk about the shift we’re heading into this week. I won’t be at work anymore, but I do still need some dedicated time to work on this farm - budgeting, finding land to lease, and some other things I want to have in place soon because it lines up the dominoes for things I want to do in January and then those for February.
Him: Ok, yeah.
Me: I do not, at all, expect you to keep doing what you have been as primary parent during work time. I want to take a lot of that back. But I also know that I can get lost in there and not do my farm stuff. I don’t know what the best balance is, or what to ask for exactly, I just know that I need your help blocking out time to do it. I don’t have ideas to propose yet, but needed to say what I needed.
Him: I appreciate that said your needs. *pause* I need you to take over table time each day.
Me: Ok. Can you talk me through what you have set up with them for that? What expectations are working?
…and so he does. And we continue.
We won’t likely get times and days nailed down to “Mama works on farm business stuff Wednesdays from 2-4pm and outside farm stuff Mondays and Thursdays all day” kinda schedule. But we’ll feel our ways through it. We’ll talk many more times and tweak and adjust and speak our needs. And we will truly listen - not just to the details but to the squishy careful heart that is asking for its needs to be honored as important.
Sometimes we can meet those needs in one another exactly. Sometimes we have the ideas and the answers for one another when we don’t have them for ourselves. But sometimes neither of us do and yet it works for us - because we honor that the need exists and our beloved was brave, thoughtful, and intentional enough to voice it from one heart to another.