justin
When Jenn met Justin for the first time, the first thing she noticed was his smile. Jenn and Justin were 15 and 17 years old respectively. She invited him over for dinner at her house and they became friends. They stayed in touch via telephone and letters until eventually, years later, they became more than friends. Justin wasn’t really all too keen on having his picture taken at first. Jenn convinced him to: “You need a good picture for your obituary.” The limelight isn’t something Justin seeks out and yet people are drawn to him. He’s easy going, like Jenn he’s incredibly hard working, and he’s very funny. Justin is a builder, mechanic, electrician, plumber, and so much more. “I built this house because I had to.” Since things have gotten so busy at the farm he decided to bring one of the cars to the local mechanic. Doing so was difficult for Justin – as he told me this the weight of surrender saturated his gaze for just a moment before his eyes snapped back to mine and the conversation moved on. Like with the rest of the family, the diversity of skills that Justin has is impressive by anyone’s standard and so is his humility surrounding his talents. For personal enjoyment Justin likes to ride his BMW motorcycle down roads less traveled.
When Simone and I arrived at the farm for the second day in a row, Justin was baking bread in an oven he had built himself. After the shoot he reheated a colorful pizza he had set aside for us – each topping from the farm except for some red pepper. Simone and I left pondering once again: many of us work so hard so that we can hire someone to build a house for us, fix our cars, and take time off to spend in nature whereas Justin cuts out the person in the middle and does it himself. Justin had left before we did to deliver some flowers. On the drive home we ran into Justin and we stopped and told him about the conversation we were just having. “I don’t know man, we’re all so different and all of us are just trying to figure out how we fit into the puzzle.”
[79] July 30, 2021