We are each other’s gods

 

I turn to Farm Town on Facebook in the way that a beaten dog crawls into a hole to lick its wounds.

My farm is small and bright with flowers, and it’s a comfort. From time to time I go to the market and ask someone to harvest my few crops. Usually I warn them that my farm is very small, and that I have only a few fields. The people who visit to harvest the fields usually complete the job, and leave very quickly. A few chat a while, which is nice, but it’s rare. This virtual world can offer comfort when the real world seems set on imploding.

I had a few fields of grapes that needed harvesting. Grapes in this virtual world are notorious for going to ruin if not harvested quickly. Yesterday, I went to the market and hired a helper, but this time was too weary to explain the small size of my farm.

I was unlucky.

‘You must be joking!’ my helper snapped when she saw my small scale operation. ‘You could have harvested them yourself.’

She has a point, and one or two more maybe, but I don’t hang around to find out. I wonder about her forthrightness and her self-confidence that allows her to make such criticisms, and I’m saddened by the encounter especially after the day I’d just had when I’d just found myself hamstrung by bureaucracy and temporarily (for two months) denied a chance to earn a living.

The grape fields needed harvesting today. Tentatively, I went to the market, this time writing a long request which warned of the small scale of my virtual farm.

Someone kindly volunteers. I apologise for my small farm that won’t do much to swell her virtual coffers, but she is quite unconcerned. She also harvests a few cherry trees and then invites me to visit her farm.

She is an American and her farm is a tribute to the military. She has designed an American flag out of the flowers such as can be planted on Farmtown. She has used poppies in part as she says they symbolised the fallen. I wonder if she has lost someone close recently in Iraq or in Afghanistan. I worry.

She hasn’t.

But she talks of joining her husband soon and I begin to worry for her anew.

She tells me her husband was a victim of Agent Orange the dreadful defoliant used in that war. She tells me he was killed on his bike.

She says he was a Native American, a Cherokee.

I am saddened by the thought of someone from that noble tribe meeting their end in such a terrible, pointless war.

He used to call her, ‘My Little Deer.’

She tells me that he’s close.

When her friend appears on her virtual farm I leave. Hoping that she will be well, and find comfort amongst both her real and virtual friends.

And I take just a little of the spirit of the wild Cherokee back with me.

To help me brave the world again.

 

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