Who Is Dee?

Though my life around me crashed and burned slightly over a year ago, I refused to crash with it. Like the now famous Chesley Sullenberger (Captain Sully), I managed to make an emergency landing, and have subsequently clawed my way out from the depths of sadness to find happiness again. 

This is where my trip down to SoCal comes into play: I went down to Huntington Beach to visit Denise, a friend of mine in high school, and someone with whom I have recently grown close. Our story is not your garden-variety love story, first because we hooked up during a world pandemic and second, because it was a case of City Girl being attracted to Country Boy on social media, and being intrigued. 

Denise was as stunned as the rest of my universe when I posted about Annie slipping away from us, a year ago in January. She wrote me a long letter at that time, expressing sorrow and revealing some things about herself, that let me know we shared some commonalities. 

As 2020 inched its way along, we barreled head-on into a world pandemic. 

I went 134 consecutive days without leaving the mountain early on, before I went down to the Eel River of a Sunday afternoon in August. It was not long before this when I had received what could only be described as a thunderbolt-out-of-the-blue letter from Denise, with an amazing message. 

At last, something that is orange and good...

Like most, she hated being confined to quarters, and she practiced appropriate social distancing meticulously. No hugs for grandkids from Masked Nana when meeting outdoors in the spacious backyard, and curbside pickup for groceries in a setting where Californians actually protested [against] the wearing of masks. Yes, Virginia, Orange County is indeed, orange. 

None of that need have had an impact on Denise, who built a career on being able to handle adversity in the workplace. Functioning as a supervisor for much of her career, Denise was no stranger to filing sex discrimination suits and sexual harassment suits, successfully. In her own words she has “always been 

about fairness ad employee empowerment. 

I do NOT owe my soul to the company store.” 

Dee wrote that she made reservations in Laytonville for six days in early September, for the purpose of coming up to visit on-farm each day. Specifically, she wanted to walk in nature, observe me as the chef of HappyDayFarms and she wanted to check out any harvesting going on while she was visiting. 

Now, Denise and I had been exchanging pleasantries on social media for a couple of years already, renewing a friendship that began in high school. We were chums, with Denise having attended St. Christopher’s elementary school, while I went to St. Martha’s. I mention this because we had many friends in common from Bishop Amat High School, with whom Denise had also attended grade school. Denise and I walked across the same stage in May of 1970, the only class in Amat history to have done so in May. 

Between the time in late July of last year, when I received the letter announcing her road trip, and the time Denise arrived on September 8th, we had exchanged many emails. Among the first ones I sent to her was an invitation to forego the exotic nature of Laytonville’s motels, and stay on the mountain in the recently refurbished Big House. 

Just the logistics of having to make the drive from Laytonville to the farm, including five miles of dirt road, seemed overwhelming. Add to that staying in Laytonville? Does the fun never end? 

On top of it all, as Dee was driving from SoCal halfway on September 7th, all hell broke loose all over our neck of the woods. Local wildfires running amuck shut down The 101 and forced Denise to head over to Highway One, where she maneuvered up to Branscomb Road, and then inland to The ‘Ville. 

Through skies darkened as though at night, Denise made her way up to the farm, arriving twelve hours before the decision was made that we needed to evacuate. I will say that had Denise not been there, I would never have left that mountain, but I now had new responsibilities. We headed up to Eureka, staying from Wednesday afternoon until Sunday morning. 

Consider it your basic baptism by fire. 

Next: The Union of the North and the South