Knights and Dragons

This post is personal. Maybe a little too personal for only our second post. But it’s a risk we’re willing to take. After all, we’ve seen pretty much everyone’s dad bust a move on TikTok. And if that doesn’t raise the bar on oversharing really high, then what, if anything, can?

This is our first flower story and also a plea to keep leaning in and building community with each other.

Our flower story

The very first time we put together an arrangement of flowers was in the spring of 2015.

Our daughter Rosemary had been born a few days before.

We’d been waiting for her for years. In fact, all of her older brothers would have been “Rosemary” if any of them had been girls.

But, when she arrived, our little girl was sick. This beautiful event in our lives was intertwined with a heart-wrenching tragedy.

We took it for granted that all of our children were born healthy. In our minds, this would be no different. We even made plans to have her baptized the following weekend at our church, the same day her big brother was going to make his First Communion. It was a very neat and tidy plan.

And none of it was going to happen now.

Within the span of a few hours, everything in our lives had dramatically changed: Our baby was in the NICU in Syracuse, we were staying at the nearby Ronald McDonald House, and Dana’s mother was valiantly taking care of the rest of our tribe.

We felt scattered. Sound familiar?

There be dragons here.

Today, we (the human family) feel scattered.

An extraordinary tragedy is unfolding before our very eyes in so many ways: many have lost their lives and perhaps all of us will be changed forever.

One of my favorite childhood authors, Tomie dePaola, passed away last week.

He didn’t die from COVID-19. But because of the pandemic, he died alone, in isolation, with no family or friends by his side.

How tragic for a man whose life’s work made so many feel like they were never alone.

As a kid, some of my favorite stories by Tomie were the Bill and Pete books, because I loved animals and Egypt. And because I loved eating spaghetti and growing plants, I’d often get Strega Nona and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush from my school’s library, too.

But one of his best books that I never knew until I was an adult is called The Knight and the Dragon.

Now, in the West anyway, dragons traditionally give form to our fear, greed, capacity to do evil, or some other dark facet of the human psyche. As such, they’ve been depicted as monstrous villains in literature from the Roman poet Virgil, to Beowulf, and all the way up to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smaug in The Hobbit.

And a hero symbolizing our courage, selflessness, and capacity to do good always goes out to confront and slay the monster.

But what I love about Tomie dePaola’s take on knights and dragons for kids is that neither character really knows what they’re supposed to be. And once they do, neither is very good at it. The dragon, for example, has to read a how-book on tail swishing.

Tomie’s dragon was silly, but the dragons we face today are much more dangerous.

They threaten to do severe and long-lasting damage if prudent measures to prevent transmission lead us to really fear one another, or if maintaining a little extra physical space becomes true “social distancing.”

Because, while we may scatter seeds to grow beautiful gardens, we human beings are meant to live together in community.

Slaying dragons.

Back in 2015, during that extraordinary time in our lives, we met some knights.

Each of them slew a dragon: the fear, doubt, loneliness, and yes, anger, that we were feeling.

The first knight was the hospital chaplain where Rosemary was born.

When we were afraid we were going to lose our little girl, we asked him to baptize her. Father Kszyzstof did his work as the nurses did theirs.

He seemed to float around them, bobbing in and out of their midst as he whispered the words and sprinkled her with water.

Then he said a prayer with us. But, to be honest, I don’t think either of us was even listening.

We were looking through a straw at all those dragons.

That is, until he said, “…and I pray that they will not be afraid.”

In that moment, something changed.

I’d be lying if I said we still didn’t feel anxious, but we no longer felt that sense of paralyzing fear about what might lay ahead.

The second knight we met was the surgeon who healed our daughter.

The first thing Dr. Ahmed said after reading Rosie’s chart when we met was, “Wow six kids! I have four. I love kids, too!”

Everything else in all the time we spent with him asking questions and listening to the answers and asking more questions radiated from the point that we were entrusting our daughter not just to a skilled surgeon (and he very much was), but to another parent who loves kids.

And, poof, the irrational doubt we were holding onto that this somehow couldn’t ever be OK vanished.

The third and fourth knights were friends from Charles’ lab group at Cornell who lived in Syracuse. Dennis visited us in the NICU and invited us, our kids, and Dana’s mother to their home so we could be with our children again. He and Karin fed us, listened to our kids’ crazy stories so intently, and showed them their collection of eels (we’re scientists, after all). Later, our children met their baby sister through the glass door of the NICU.

We didn’t feel alone again.

The fifth knight was a friend of our priest who had a church in Syracuse. The kids at Father Robert’s church were going to make their First Communion the day our son, Chas, was supposed to have made his. And he offered to let Chas join them.

Chas had worked incredibly hard preparing for this day. We really wanted it to happen for him. So, we arranged for Dana’s mom to bring our kids back to Syracuse.

Then, Charles called a florist and designed our first arrangement — boutonnieres for the men and corsages for the ladies, and a little one for Rosemary.

They were very simple: a small, red Peruvian lily for our son, with a miniature rose, rosemary sprigs, and baby’s breath for our little girl.

They were beautiful.

And we stopped being angry.

The final knight was really a whole group of people, many of them faceless who we’ll never meet. About 5 weeks after she’d been born we finally brought Rosemary home. A few days later we went to our church. When our priest saw Rosemary, the first thing he said before beginning — with a big smile, was, “Rosemary’s here!” And several hundred people started clapping.

And we wept again. Because we knew there’d been no reason to be afraid. There was nothing to doubt. Nothing to be angry about. And we were never alone.

So, this isn’t really a flower story. It’s a story about people caring for people during difficult times.

They held us together.

They helped us to remember that what was going on right at that moment in our lives wasn’t the way things would always be — that this tragedy was extraordinary and that we would return to the ordinary beauty of our life together.

They’re the reason for our first flower arrangement.

Today, there are so many things are out of our control. So many people are alone, angry, afraid, doubting this pandemic will end or that life will be good again when it does.

We need to hold each other together right now.

We need to build deeper relationships with each other.

Around here, we’ve been on the Zoom train with parents and grandparents, extended family, coworkers, and friends.

We’re still cooking and baking with our kids. But we’re cooking new things or in new ways, since you can’t just run out for fresh thyme. And we’re all out in the garden together, but we’re planting new things, too.

The other day, our kids wanted to learn about viruses. So Dana did a little homework and taught them all about viruses for science that day.

You probably have a lot to teach your children, too.

Charles and the kids have started a routine of working out together in the morning.

We can all read more to our kids, play board games and cards, bust out those mad (but latent) Mario Kart skills we developed in the early 90s, or toss the Frisbee in the yard.

And if in our busy lives, we’ve gotten away from it, we can even get back to eating (and cooking) meals together as a family.

However, this looks for you: We must hold each other together now.

Thanks so much for reading this!

Since we bought our farm in 2014, we’ve on a mission to “live at the source” — to reconnect our lives to nature, to live beautifully and eat well, and to share what we’re learning with you.

So, if you like what you read, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

In it, we’ll share tips for your growing your best garden, and helpful lessons from our journey in beekeeping, raising our birds and sheep, growing heirloom veggies, our favorite recipes, and lots more!

Stay healthy and lean into each other,

Dana and Charles