harvest moon
squeezing full moon with the feet, planning only for miracles
The only constant is change. I seem to say it again and again. I repeat it as if I have just learnt it. I feel like I always have only just learned it.
Summer peaks and then it’s gone. It leaves everything golden and bursting. It’s my favourite time of the year, but I seem to have forgotten that again. Plants are in their prime, juicy and ripe. They explode and shed fruit and everything is as yellow as it ever gets. Everything changes and becomes. Then, we, too, are forced to become.
Sabrina’s visa expires in two weeks. We can stay in Poland and apply for her residency, but that would mean we’re staying in Poland for the next few months. Or, we leave and plan for a miracle. We lean into the change and pack our bags again. Over a phone call, my friend Christina invites us to come and stay with her in the Danish countryside.
Is it ok if we come over next week?
See you then!
Thursday
On my last day at home, instead of worrying about time I get my hands busy—I crush bags of ungiving walnut shells. I meticulously pick mirabelles with mamuś. I glance at the low sun for long, gooey moments, I grasp the crisp air into my lungs and hold onto it, counting back to zero. All my efforts go into being present. I’m planting my feet on the grass to ground myself. I see my homeland the clearest just a few eye-blinks before I leave again.
The Weekend
We decide to take the long way to Copenhagen and stop by in Berlin for a weekend. 48 hours of live music, flea markets and city strolls with Maike and Kasia. It's all-you-can-eat warm pretzels in all the imperfect shapes and all-you-can-share heart conversations. It’s always the easiest to share from the heart over a piece of good bread.
Tuesday
Then, we’re here, in Svendinge on Funen island of Denmark. It’s a new week. The quiet land embraces us as we drag our suitcases upstairs. But we’re not unpacking them. Not just yet. We’re not sure if we’re able to stay for more than a handful of days.
According to Danish Immigration laws, any EU citizen (me) can come and live and work in Denmark. Any non-EU citizen (Sabrina) can live and work in Denmark when they come to join their partners. The only thing is that as an EU citizen I should have independent grounds for staying in Denmark before Sabrina can apply to live here, too. It means I should either be working, studying or being self-employed here. In a normal case scenario, we wouldn’t have to worry about taking our time to find a job, but we have to apply for a residency on the last day of Sabrina’s legal stay in the Schengen area. And that’s Sunday. That means I have to have a job contract before Friday.
Wednesday
Early morning I call the immigration office. I could barely sleep last night, and Sabrina already bookmarked cheap flights to the UK. The only good thing that came out of Brexit—we can flee to the islands and out of Schengen. Edinburgh, Glasgow, maybe London? Wherever we can, we will fly on Saturday.
I’m hopeful, but the lady on the line serves me a reality check: You have to be legally employed in Denmark and apply for a residency before your wife’s visa expires. Or, the easiest thing would be to apply for a visa for a person with sufficient funds. You just have to prove you have €20.000 in your bank account.
Aha, as easy as that.
I hung up and start planning for a miracle.
How do you plan for a miracle?
You get clear in your vision. De-clutter the mind of all the bullshit that it wants to serve you, 24/7: It’s impossible. Now we’re screwed. Oh no, oh no...What now? How do I even breathe? Who do I blame for this? Myself, of course, the lady on the phone, and a thousand different people along the way. Probably the Pope could be the one to blame, too. I’d better just break down and give up altogether.
Ha! Not an option.
So you breathe in and out. You eat your second bar of Galle & Jessen chocolate. You might even eat the third. Then you focus on a miracle. Not on how it’s going to happen. The how part is something the mind wants to grab onto. That’s not miracle-mindedness, that’s ego controlling the process. If we focus on how—we get nowhere. So we go back to our business and focus on the what:
The what, being: We want to stay in Denmark.
That’s as simple as that. So I fought back my ego wanting to do all the worrying and controlling and continued picking plums and believing if we’re meant to stay, we will stay. Some might call it not doing enough. But if we get intentional with our what, miracles are aligning for us.
Later that day, when Christina came from work we explained our situation. We all continued to work in the garden. Pelle, our neighbour, came to help. Ula and Sabrina are looking for work.—she must have told him as they were fidgeting with the chicken coop.
What about the guy who has a vegetable stand on the side of the road? He might need people.
Pelle called someone and then someone gave him the guy’s name (Poul) and his number. In the middle of the field, Christina wrote it down on her hand with a marker. Meanwhile, I am brushing dried bean stems and the long tangled braids. Each pod a rattle in a fistful of stems, giving cues to where to find beans. I’m following the gentle sound, still unaware of this ripple already in motion, just picking the beans, breathing in the September air, dancing the dance of the harvester.
Christina called Poul and he said he can meet us the next day. There we were, getting ready for our 16:30 job interview/meeting. What does Poul do? We didn’t know that well. He has a Christmas tree farm and usually needs help at this time of the year. He’s 10 minutes on the bike down the road and wants to meet us. That’s all we have to know!
Thursday
We were just out of the door to meet Poul when we see Pelle coming over.
Do you have a driving licence? Good. It’s not the weather for biking, take my car. I just need it back at 6:15 PM
The drive to Poul’s takes three minutes. I’m nervous and cold, but Pelle showing up with his car keys is enough of a miracle I need to keep believing. Poul is not here yet, so we walk around his property. Three big trucks are standing there like a statement.
I hope I don’t have to drive these, I say to Sabrina.
You’d do amazing. You’re such a good driver.
I’m not so sure… They’re so big…I can barely manage with an SUV…—We walk towards the house slowly.
Can you drive this?—Poul emerges from nowhere and looks at us, pointing at the truck.
It didn’t take me a second to reply.
Yes. No problem!—I say with confidence. I can feel Sabrina holding back a laugh.
Poul shows us around and explains what he does and why he does it. Before the holiday season, people buy lots of pine branches for Christmas decorations. They decorate the churches, the doors, the graves and who knows what else. So on his Christmas tree farm, lots of trees are grown for the branches. We cut them, put them in bundles of 5.5 kg and sell them. My main market is Poland, says Poul.
He invites us in and puts cans of cold Pepsi in front of us. He asked us barely any questions. Nothing about it feels like a job interview. I rarely hire women—he says and then: If you bring me your passports, driving licences and marriage certificate I can have your job contracts ready by Monday.
If we could have it earlier... We don’t have to explain ourselves too much, it seems like Poul gets it. Bring it over later today and I can have it ready tomorrow.
Thanks to Pelle we can get it done in no time. We rush back home, get all of our documents and drive back. Poul takes copies of our documents. We say goodbyes and schedule to meet back tomorrow at 1 PM.
Friday
Poul reminds me of a character from Fantastic Mr Fox. We walk around his sheds and look at tractors and weed whackers. I think he will make a good boss, but I’m still intimidated and feel like a fraud amongst all of the machinery. I almost want to ask him why did he hire us. As if he reads my mind, Poul says:
When you ask a woman to do a 100, she will tell you she can only do 80, but end up doing 110. Most men, when you ask them to do a 100 they tell you they can do 110, but in fact, will do only 80.
I understand that I’m not here by mistake and Poul didn’t have to ask us a whole lot of questions to see us. I don’t have to know much about the string trimmers, tree pruners and branch cutters to be able to show up and give my 110. Do you like apples? These are called Discovery, they make a great pie—Poul gives us one of his smirks and fills our bag full of apples before we bike away.
Saturday
It’s no doubt it’s a Harvest Moon. Everything is in its prime. We harvest tomatoes that lie heavily on the ground, the peaches that let go of their branches as we gently shake the tree, and the evenings pass on a meditation of deshelling the dried beans. We reached the time of the harvest, and soon we’ll be able to sit back and look at the fruit of our season. We’re still bathing in the September sun, taking in all the generous rays. We’re still barefoot, running around the grass, finding wild blackberries, watching the yellow fields.
So we take our time. We dance: mirabelles, those little full moons of September, squeezing between our toes. We don’t have it all figured out yet, but, it doesn’t have to matter on this Harvest Moon.
We’ve past summer. With all its energetic, blowing, extroverted fanfares, it’s Harvest Moon and we can settle. We can stay where we are, make that apple pie with Poul’s apples, or make nothing at all. There’s a cat, he comes around sometimes and lets us pet him. We named it Sven, for Svendinge, and he didn’t mind.
It’s just for a moment when everything is still alive, but doesn’t need us to come and tend it. It just hangs, for a day or two, giving us time, to come in the golden sun and pick it when we want to.
My favourite so far! Enjoy beautiful ! :) xx Melissa