Signs

Don't Believe What You're Told, Believe What You See

Over the holiday weekend something new happened at Cold Antler Farm. For the first time ever, a friend came to stay with me in the dead of winter.

I’ve hosted many folks over the years, but they’ve always wanted to visit in spring when there’s baby animals to coo over, or for the splendor of summer, or the fireworks of fall foliage- but never winter.

This is not entirely their decision. I wouldn’t even allow a winter guest here for years, always suggesting they come during a season I am certain they could be comfortable in. I felt no one would want to visit a farm without modern heating during a blast of arctic cold—yet beyond all sense and reason—my friend Becca drove from the Massachusetts coast to spend her three days off to tuck in here.

It was so healing for me. She just can’t know.

We spent three days mostly near the wood stove. We watched spooky movies and read books. We cooked meals, baked, entertained cats, and talked. There was no leaving to “do stuff” which to most people means spending money, but not Becca. She was thrilled to spend three days on a farm with no other responsibilities besides making a chocolate cake during a snowstorm. She happily read short stories, pet critters, took pictures of the snow, and went for mountain runs; a 10/10 weekend.

Becca and I have a lot in common but she’s a been a way bigger reader than I. My free time (since I write for work) is spent away from words. She recommends me books and I recommend her movies. She talked up the new Barbara Kingsolver (I will soon have it reserved from the library) and I requested we watch some Woginrich Classics for reasons of comfort and nostalgia during the cold snap. She entertained my choices and we watched Stephen King’s Best TV Miniseries, Storm of the Century and a favorite movie of mine, Signs. She had never seen either!!!

Storm of the Century is winter-spooky perfection. I adore it, at least the first two acts. The third is kind of silly, but that perfect opening act of a small island town preparing for a blizzard is teleplay perfection. (By the way, that link up in the paragraph above is for a remastered 4K version, free on YouTube, in case any of you are cool.)

Then we watched Signs. One of my top three movies of all time. I will explain:

Signs came out in 2002. It’s got aliens in it, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about a widower who’s wife was recently lost in a freak accident, and how that trauma made him lose his faith. It’s so well crafted, so intentional, so many hidden meanings and layers… Every time I watch it I notice something new that makes it even better.

I love Signs because it is about choosing hope over despair during your weakest moments, and how important forgiveness and community is to achieve it. It’s funny, kind, and remarkably understated compared to most alien-invasion movies.

Now, there are people, very boring people, who will call Signs a dumb movie. But that’s because they get lost in Sci-Fi pedantics and don’t realize the aliens are just a plot device for a man to find meaning in a life he’d come to resent. I have never watched this movie and not felt better about the world afterwards. I can’t even say that about Mary Oliver poems.

Point being, you can not give me a bigger gift that visiting me in the dead of winter and letting me show you Signs for the first time. Re-watching that with someone who has never seen it is a goddamn gift, and while we were watching it, something fantastic and surprising occurred to me...

I was really enjoying myself.
{Hold that thought}

Here at the bottom of winter, in a house so primitive I need to tend fires to not die, I couldn’t have been more comfortable and content. A snowstorm was howling outside and we couldn’t leave if we wanted to. I heard the slamming wind chimes in the King Maple, even through all the closed doors and the movie’s volume. When I looked out the front window at the lamppost, I could see swirling snow shooting through the dome of light in the beginning of a cold front that would have this house working 24/7 for days to keep it safe from bursting pipes and hypothermia. I should be miserable. I should feel poor. I should feel ashamed. That’s what I have been told.

For years family, “friends”, and lovers alike saw my winter situation as destitute; a lack of resources and mobility. They conveyed that with varying levels of tact, but the general consensus was my life was unreasonably difficult and often uncomfortable, and in winter, intolerable.

And I believed them.
I believed them all and felt alone and ashamed.

I listened to a mother who told me my home was a shithole and strangers who thought my life was a joke. I listened to an ex, who after one winter here said the hardship was a main factor in leaving me, adding another layer of shame I didn’t even think possible. I listened to relatives that thought sleeping beside a wood stove is basically one foot on homelessness and the other on a banana peel.

All these miserable people dealing with choices they disdain, making sure they felt better by turning me into someone to pity. I guess because I can’t leave in winter. Because I need to be here as a human thermostat, animal caregiver, and compulsive memoirist. I mean, do you want that kind of person in the streets? It’s good I’m here splitting kindling and watching alien movies with lesbians.

I kid, but I am being honest when I say I felt shame for something I didn’t mind at all because it made people uncomfortable that didn’t want to be here in the first place.

But then I looked around my living room as the movie played. Everything was beautiful. The soft light and waft of wood smoke. The feeling of reclining back in an easy chair with a heating pad and a drink on ice. I saw my border collie asleep in the corner, happy in her bean bag the size of a small pony. My best friend on a couch with a fat cat loafing beside her. The house was nearly 70° and my belly was full. I knew the farm animals were tucked in and ready for the cold. I knew the house was, too. Despite the work and hardship ahead, right now all the day’s efforts had resulted in a close friend by a fire watching a beloved film, safe and warm while the wider world rolled in chaos.

I felt proud and happy. This was not something I was expecting to ever feel in winter, and never with someone else here. I was told this life I loved made being with me impossible, the reason I would always be alone. There was no evidence for that, but I still accepted the opinions of others because why, why on earth, would someone say that to me if it wasn’t true?

Turns out most people are refracted light and sounds about how they feel about themselves. A life like mine will always seem like a failure to people clinging to conformity, money, and approval as the doorway to happiness, even though every single one of them will be wrong.

Happiness isn’t about keeping people around you comfortable, darling. Its not about your parents, or money, or a stock portfolio* (← *which is going to matter in 10 years anyway). It’s about spending your short time here living a life worth fighting for, loving it with your whole heart, and helping others find the same. I wasted so much time trying to convince the wrong people I was good instead of believing what was actually amazing all around me.

My life is unbelievably good. Even in winter.

Everything about life here is hard, but that hardship forged a human constantly becoming healthier, kinder, and more patient and understanding of others. This whole time, everywhere, there were so many signs beating me over the head with proof positive my small life was huge inside my own heart. I couldn’t see them because I was told not to believe by people that never could.

Please, if you take one thing from this farm, may it be that what your were told by terrified people about your choices may not be a lie, but that doesn’t mean it is true. Other people’s limitations (hell, hesitations!) are not a yardstick to measure anything by but their own lack of imagination and hope.

There’s always hope.

You can live whatever life you want, kid. You just need to see the signs.