Compost Urgency

Sometimes I think I am dating a teenager. Don't get me wrong--I love Stacia, and she is an amazing, wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, funny, generous, loving woman. I am lucky to have her. She can still make my heart twitter, when I see her walking toward me on the University of Minnesota campus, underneath the lilacs in full bloom, a big smile on her face, wearing her plaid button-up and recently-hemmed khaki pants that she thinks are too short, her dimple appearing just for me. Or when she comes home and greets the dog, joy gleaming from both of them as they see each other for the first time in eight hours (oh, soooo long!), and I can't help but feel all warm and gooey when I see her so happy.

I know that I love her, and that means I take her at her worst as well as her best.

The thing is, her worst isn't all that bad. In fact, if I am in the right mood, I can find it to be incredibly adorable.

Take last night, for example.

We have been working really hard on our back yard. We had planned to borrow a tiller from a friend this week, to till up the raised garden bed, where we will plant...herbs? Vegetables? I don't even know exactly what we are planning to put there, but last night it became an urgent task to get the tiller and fifteen large bags of compost.

I had gone to a meeting that lasted one hour (8:00-9:00). At 9:02 p.m., Stacia called, sounding anxious. "I just picked up the tiller from Juju," she said, "And now we need compost. Can you get it tomorrow?"

This threw me off guard, because I didn't realize that she had already picked up the tiller and was planning to do this project tomorrow, which is now today, a day which is filled to the brim for me (I am procrastinating by even writing this account). I mumbled something about it being a busy day but that I would try.

Angrily, she said, "Ugh, forget it. I'll do it myself," and hung up without saying goodbye.

Lucky for me, I had just gone to a 12-step meeting. Now, I am not a huge fan of 12-step meetings. I think they are mostly dogma-filled, heterocentric, punitive programs that work well for white men with big egos. But some meetings step away from this model and take a gentler, more empowering approach. The meeting I had gone to left me feeling strong and empowered. I knew that there was nothing I could do to make Stacia calm down, nor did I need to. I was Codependent No More. (A friend once told me this joke: What's the most common STD among lesbians? --Codependency.)

So after she hung up on me, I took a deep breath, shook my head, and went about my evening. I filled up the car with gas ($40.10 for 10 1/2 gallons), and drove home. I received another phone call from Stacia, who was livid. "They are all out of compost here," she said, referring to the Menards on University and Prior. "I have to drive to West St. Paul and I have to get there before 10:00."

"Honey," I said, trying to be a voice of reason. "It's late, come home. Do we really need compost to start this project? Can't we mix it in the topsoil later?"

She was furious. She informed me that I had no idea what I was talking about, and how did I think she planned to accomplish this project without compost? She was clearly irritated that she had to drive to West St. Paul, but she had to call me just to tell me anyway.

What my reasoning voice did not tell her was that there are plenty of garden centers in regular old St. Paul that are not Menards. She could have picked up compost at a location much closer, and perhaps even cheaper. In fact, the city of St. Paul runs a free compost site, where residents can take as much compost as they'd like, when it's available. But I didn't think it would be helpful, since my previous attempt at reasoning was so frankly shot down.

And so I waited for her to come home. She did, around 10:00 pm, with a truckload of bagged compost. (600 pounds in all, she told me today--I don't know if she was exaggerating, but it was a lot, lot, lot of compost.) I thought, I hope she had someone help her load all of this. (She said, today, of course I didn't have anyone help me. And I think, there is something really endearing about her intransigence, but she is going to hurt her stubborn self one of these days.) I helped her unload the never-ending mass of heavy, mineral-rich black dirt, as we silently piled the bags in the yard and covered them with a tarp.

We exchanged a few terse words, and then I excused myself and went upstairs to read.

I wondered if she would come upstairs and give me a big hug and tell me she was sorry. I wondered if I should go downstairs and tell her I love her. Maybe I should apologize for not helping more. Maybe I should have offered to drive to West St. Paul instead of her. Maybe I should have gone with her.

But then I thought of the anxious, angry energy she had, the urgency she instated which I didn't think was completely necessary, and I decided to just give her some space tonight. Or maybe to give both of us some space. I settled in to read, and the cats joined me, purring loudly to let me know they wanted to sit in their particular places--one on my right side, nestled in between my arm and my body, the other one on the pillow to my left, kneading relentlessly and never really finding that comfortable place.

Just as I started to relax, my phone buzzed, telling me I had a text message.

This is all it said:

can i eat some of this food

(Meaning: Can I eat this ginger/tamari kale and potatoes that you made tonight?)

I responded:

of course

And then I thought, how funny and kind of adorable that she came home in such a pout and still asked me if she could eat the food I made. How....sweet and angsty and wonderful. She still loves me, I know it.

And, if this is her worst, if stubbornness and an urgency to till the garden is the most difficult piece of her in relationship, I'll take it, hands down. And I'll even take it lovingly, because you can't believe how cute she is when she pouts. That dimple that appears when she smiles? It appears when she frowns, too, only much more expressively. And those eyes that shine clear blue when she greets Luna at the door? They can turn stormy, the color of the ocean, unpredictable and deep gray/green when she is upset.

Even at her most recalcitrant, furious moment, she can be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.