Thank you to my sister, Ruthie!
With the impending release of Quest for Eternal Sunshine, I want to shower gratitude on my sister, Ruthie. Ruthie believes this book is our dad’s dream come true, and I want to be sure everyone knows that it could never have happened without her.
As an adult, Ruthie lived with our parents for two years while struggling with an illness, so she had the unique opportunity to really get to know our father when he was in his mid 60s—both from watching the way he lived his life day by day, and through their wonderful conversations.
During that time, our dad asked her to review various writing projects, and she told me how happy he was with all of her edits. While I was grappling with how to best complete our father’s book, Ruthie often encouraged me by insisting that he would love everything I was doing and to keep following my instincts. Her constant reassurance gave me much needed confidence, especially in the beginning.
About half of Quest for Eternal Sunshine came from my father’s original manuscript; the other half was created by me using information I collected from dozens of different sources. The richest resource for my dad’s philosophy and revelations were the audio recordings Ruthie had the foresight to make of her evening chats with our father. He would visit her to say goodnight at the end of the day before heading to bed, and she would pepper him with great questions, as if she was a journalist conducting an interview. The gems she captured!
Almost the entire chapter, “Finding Forgiveness,” came from one such recording. Here is an example of the wisdom he shared one night:
“When I meet a German person now, I try not to let my vision be colored by my baggage from the past. My intention is to meet him in the present moment. In this moment, he is just a person. Instead of automatically associating him with my worst memories, I deliberately make myself look at him with fresh eyes…. It’s a conscious act. I do it because it’s what I’ve decided I want to do. I don’t do it for him. I do it for me. When I look at the world through the eyes of the past, I am miserable. But when I live in the now, unhappiness doesn’t exist, because I’m not keeping it alive inside of me. It’s not that I deny the past. I just don’t live in it.”
Ruthie also inspired the “Presence” chapter by insisting that I include a description of the way Mendek lived his life. She wrote a draft of how she believed our father would have described his day, which turned into this:
“I pay attention from the moment I open my eyes in the morning and gaze out my window at the beautiful mountains. I stay present as I get up, put on my clothes, and walk downstairs to the kitchen to make hot cereal for breakfast. I put water in the pot, add oatmeal when it begins to boil, and stir it every so often as it cooks. When my breakfast is ready, I sit in a chair and eat slowly, right from the pot—and in that moment, I don’t do anything but eat. I look at my food and enjoy the smell, texture, and taste of it.”
Ruthie enlisted her husband, Steve Harmer, to help her videotape interviews with our parents as soon as our dad began to show signs of dementia. They captured four hours of conversations that provided important stories and details that I was able to further research and expand upon. Ruthie also contributed her own memories, essential edits, great ideas, and many photos to the book.
In the mid-1980s, back when videos were made with large, heavy camcorders that used VHS tapes and took all day to charge, Ruthie was the only person inspired to capture the early days on the farm on film. Thanks to her, we have this treasure to share—Mendek explaining to Ruthie and me how the prototype of his latest invention (a composter and compost sifter) worked. This was before Drew and I started to sell pre-washed salads, so Mendek hadn’t yet turned his attention to inventing the initial washing and bagging equipment we used to launch “Earthbound Farm Salad Bags.”
I hope you enjoy getting to know Mendek in this very short (less than two minute) video.
With boundless thanks to my wonderful and wise big sister, Ruthie!
