All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust out of the trailer truck into the chute. From time to time he’s clambered down to even the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust. Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.
I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff he says, while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks. I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn
no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses burst through when snow avalanches off the roof. Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his, horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.
…he says let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools. ~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”
photo by Emily Vander Haak
They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally For all its knowing will not exactly know Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone. ~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”
If just for a moment, when this world is tilting so far we just might fall off, we pause to look at where we’ve been and get our feet back under us.
The porch is a good place to start: a bridge to what is beyond without leaving the familiar.
Outside, looking square at the unknown, yet still hearing and smelling and tasting the love that dwells just inside these walls.
What could we want more than to be missed when we step away?
Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch never to be replaced, its absence a hole impossible to fill?
When we are called back inside where Love made us who we are, may the “in between” of time spent on the porch, be even more treasured, because two aging fools sat together there a spell.
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Who loves the rain And loves his home, And looks on life with quiet eyes, Him will I follow through the storm; And at his hearth-fire keep me warm; Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise, Who loves the rain, And loves his home, And looks on life with quiet eyes. ~Frances Shaw, “Who loves the rain” from Look To the Rainbow of Grace
Now more than ever you can be generous toward each day that comes, young, to disappear forever, and yet remain unaging in the mind. Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away. ~Wendell Berry from “There is no going back”
Thinking out loud on this day you were born, I thank God yet again for bringing you to earth so we could meet, raise three amazing children, and walk this journey together with pulse and breath and dreams.
The boy you were became the man you are: so blessed by God, needed by your family, church and community.
You give yourself away every day with such grace, loved by your children and grandchildren.
It was your quiet brown eyes I trusted first and just knew I’d follow you anywhere and I have.
In this journey together, we inhabit each other, however long may be the road we travel; you have become the air I breathe, refreshing, renewing, restoring~~ you are that necessary to me, and that beloved.
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(I wrote this 15 years ago on July 6 and have updated it with an addendum)
I remember childhood summers as 3 months of full-out celebration– long lazy days stretching into nights that didn’t seem to really darken until 11 PM and bright birdsong mornings starting out at 4:30 AM. Not only were there the brief family vacations at the beach or to visit cousins, but there was the Fourth of July, Daily Vacation Bible School, the county fair, family reunions, and of course and most importantly, my July birthday. Yes, there were mundane chores to be done, a garden to tend, a barn to clean, berries to pick, a lawn to mow and all that stuff, but my memories of summer are mostly about fluff and frolic.
So where are the summer parties now? Who is out there celebrating without me? Nothing seems to be spontaneous as it was when I was a child. Instead, most grown-ups have to go to work most days in the summer.
I’m finding myself in the midst of my 55th summer and I have to create celebrations if they are going to happen in my life. Without that perspective, the bird song at 4:30 AM can feel more irritant than blessing and the long days often mean I fall asleep nodding over a book at 9 PM. I want to treasure every, every minute of this precious time yet they flow through my fingers like so much water, faster and faster.
I realize there will be very few “family” summers left as I watch my children grow into adults and spread their wings. They will be on to new adventures in future summers. So each family ritual and experience together takes on special meaning and needs to be appreciated and remembered.
So….for this summer my family has crammed as much in as we can in celebration of the season:
We just spent some time in the hayfields bringing in the bales with friends–our little crew of seven–sweating and itchy and exhausted, but the sight and smell of several hundred hay bales, grown on our own land, harvested without being rained on and piled in the barn is sweet indeed. Weekly we are out on the softball field in church league, yelling encouragement and high-fiving each other, hooting at the good hits and the bad, the great catches and the near misses, and getting dirty and sprained, and as happy to lose as to win. We had a wonderful July 4 barbeque with good friends culminating in the fireworks show on our farm’s hill overlooking miles of valley around us, appreciating everyone else’s backyard displays as well as our own.
We are now able to sing hymns in church in four part harmony, and last night our children helped lead the singing last night in an evening “campfire church” for over fifty fellow worshipers on our hill. In a couple weeks, we’ll take to the beach for three days of playing in the sand, roasting hot dogs. reading good books, and playing board games. We’ll try to make the trek down to Seattle by train to spend the day watching the Mariners play (and likely lose).
One change after seventeen years of hosting a display of our horses at the Lynden Fair: due to “off the farm” work and school schedules, we can’t muster the necessary round-the-clock crew of being there for our little part of small town agricultural pursuits.
Yet the real party happens right here every day in small ways without any special planning. It doesn’t require money or special food or traveling beyond our own soil. It is the smiles and good laughs we share together, and the hugs for kids taller than I am. It’s adult conversations with the new adults in our family–no longer adolescents.
It’s finding delight in fresh cherries from our own trees, currants and berries from our own bushes, greens from the garden, flowers for the table from the yard.
It is the Haflingers in the field that come right up to us to enjoy rubs and scratches and follow us like puppies. It is babysitting for neighborhood toddlers who remind us of the old days of having small children, and who give us a glimpse of future grandparenthood. It is good friends coming from far away to ride our horses and learn farm skills.
It is an early morning walk in the woods or a late evening stroll over the hills. It is daily contact with aging parents who no longer hear well or feel well but nevertheless share of themselves in the ways they are able. It is the awesome power of an evening sunset filled with hope and the calming promise of a new day somewhere else in this world of ours.
Some days may not look or feel like there’s a summer party happening, but that is only because I haven’t searched hard enough. The party is here, sparklers and all, even if only in my own mind.
Addendum: Fifteen years have passed since this was written and I’m glad I can look back and be reminded how full of life those family summers were. We seldom have the full-meal-deal of everyone together at one time, and since our parents have passed on to eternal summers in heaven, we have now the blessings of six grandchildren. Freckles abound!
We still can make a party happen, if only in our own minds.
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And the seasons they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We’re captive on the carousel of time We can’t return, we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game… ~Joni Mitchell “The Circle Game”
those lovely horses, that galloped me, moving the world, piston push and pull, into the past—dream to where? there, when the clouds swayed by then trees, as a tire swing swung me under—rope groan. now, the brass beam, holds my bent face, calliope cadence—O where have I been? ~Rick Maxson “Carousel at Seventy”
On thin golden poles gliding up, sliding down, a kingdom of horses goes spinning around.
Jumper, Brown Beauty, Dark Thunder, Sir Snow, a medley of ponies parade in a row.
Settled in saddles, their riders hold on to reins of soft leather while circling along
on chestnut or charcoal, on sleek Arctic white, on silver they gallop in place day and night.
Such spinning is magic, (to dream as you sail) with lavender saddle and ebony tail,
whirling to music in moonlight, spellbound, galloping, galloping, merrily go round. ~Rebecca Kai Dotlich “Carousel”
Under its canopy, in the shade it casts, turns a world with painted horses, all from a land that lingers a while before it disappears. Some, it’s true, are harnessed to a wagon, but all have valor in their eyes. A fierce red lion leaps among them, and here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.
Even a stag appears, straight from the forest, except for the saddle he wears, and, buckled on it, a small boy in blue.
And a boy in white rides the lion, gripping it with small clenched hands, while the lion flashes teeth and tongue.
And here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.
And riding past on charging horses come girls, bright-eyed, almost too old now for this children’s play. With the horses rising under them, they are looking up and off to what awaits. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Jardin de Luxembourg”
A fewJuly memories:
Sixty-five years ago, I was a five year old having her first ride on the historic carousel at Woodland Park Zoo before we moved from Stanwood to Olympia. Fifty-four years ago — a teenager working in a nursing home as a nurses’ aide after three days of training. Forty-nine years ago – returned home early from my studies in Tanzania after four chimpanzee researcher friends were held hostage for ransom and eventually released Forty-three years ago — deep in the guts of a hospital working forty hour long shifts, thinking about the man I was soon to marry Thirty-four years ago — my husband and I picking up bales of hay in our own farm field, two young children in tow after accepting a new position doctoring at the local university Twenty-seven years ago — raising three children and completed farm house remodel, supporting three parents with health issues, raising Haflinger horses, helping design a new clinic building at work, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church Twenty-whatever years ago – life spinning faster, blurring with work at home, on the farm, at clinic, at church. I begin writing to grab and hang on to what I can. Sixteen years ago — one son about to move to Japan to teach and the other son to teach at Pine Ridge in South Dakota, daughter at home with a new driver’s license working with migrant children, a mother slowly bidding goodbye to life at a local care center, farming less about horse raising and more about gardening, maintaining and preserving. Ten years ago — two sons married, daughter working as a camp counselor so our first summer without children at home. Perfect time to raise a new puppy! Five years ago – A two year old granddaughter and two new grandsons! Daughter teaching, engaged to be married. Two years ago – completed forty-two years of non-stop doctoring so I bid it goodbye. Now – Three more grandsons! Two retired grandparents! Big garden on the farm but we’re slowing down.
The puppy’s face and our hair are turning white…
O where have I been? We can only look behind from where we came and await what is ahead.
The decades pass, round and round – there is comfort knowing that through the ups and downs of daily life, we still hang on. If we slip and fall, there is Someone ready to catch us.
Looking behind you, where have you been? What awaits you where you are heading?
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On the green hill with the river beyond it long ago and my father there and my grandmother standing in her faded clothes wrinkled high-laced black shoes in the spring grass among the few gravestones inside their low fence by the small white wooden church the clear panes of its windows letting the scene through from the windows on the other side of the empty room and a view of the trees over there my grandmother hardly turned her head staring like a cloud at the empty air not looking at the green glass gravestone with the name on it of the man to whom she had been married and who had been my father’s father she went on saying nothing her eyes wandering above the trees that hid the river from where we were a place where she had stood with him one time when they were young and the bell kept ringing ~W. S. Merwin “Widnoon” from The Moon Before Morning
I remember my grandfather as a somber quiet man who used to slowly rock in a wooden chair that now happens to sit empty here in our home.
For most of his life, my Grandpa drank heavily but he wasn’t just any drunk. He was a mean drunk. Surly, cursing, prone to throwing things and people, especially at home.
Grandma used to say he learned to drink in the logging camps and I suspect that is true. He started working as a logger before he was fully grown, dropping out of school, leaving home around age sixteen and heading up to the hills where real money could be made. He learned more than how to cut down huge old growth Douglas Fir trees, skid them down the hills using a team of horses, and then roll them onto waiting wagons to be hauled to the mills. He learned how to live with a group of men who surfaced once or twice a month from the hills to take a bath, bootleg booze during prohibition and maybe go to church with their womenfolk.
Mostly the loggers taught him how to curse and drink.
He headed home to the farm with muscles and attitude a few years later, and started the process of felling trees, creating a “stump farm” that was a challenge to work because huge stumps dotted the fields and hills. He slowly worked at blasting them out of the ground so the land could be tilled. It proved more than he had strength and motivation to do, so his fields were never very fruitful, mostly growing hay for his own animals. He went to work in the local saw mill to make ends meet.
He cleaned up some when he met my grandmother, who at eighteen was seven years younger, and eager to escape her role as chief cook and bottle washer for her widowed father and younger brother. She was devout, lively and full of energy and talked constantly while he, especially when sober, preferred to let others do the talking. It was an unusual match but he liked her cooking and she was ready to escape the drudgery of her father’s household and be wooed.
They settled on the stump farm and began raising a family, trying to eke out what living they could from the land, from the sporadic work he found at the saw mill, and every Sunday, took the wagon a mile down the road to the Bible Church where they both sang with gusto.
He still drank when he had the money, blowing his pay in the local tavern, and stumbling in the back door roaring and burping, falling into bed with his shoes on. Grandma was a teetotaler and yelled into his ruddy face about the wrath of God anytime he drank, their four children hiding when the dishes started to fly, and when he would whip off his belt to hit anyone who looked sideways at him.
When their eldest daughter took sick and died of lymphoma at age eight despite the little doctoring that was available, Grandpa got sober for awhile. He saw it as punishment from God, or at least that is what Grandma told him through her sobs as she struggled to cope with her loss.
Over the years, he relapsed many times, losing fingers in his work at the mill, and losing the respect of his wife, his children and the people in the community. Grandma took the kids for several months to cook in a boarding house in a neighboring town, simply to be able to feed her family while Grandpa squandered what he had on drink. Reconciled over and over again, Grandma would come back to him, sending their only son to fetch him from the tavern for the night. My Dad would bicycle to that dark and smoky place, stand Grandpa up and guide him staggering out to their truck for the weaving drive home on country roads. On more than one occasion, Grandpa, belligerent as ever, would resist leaving and throw a punch at his boy, usually missing by a mile.
But once the boy grew taller and strong enough to fight back, managing to knock Grandpa to the ground in self-defense, the punching and resistance stopped. The boozing didn’t.
Grandpa sobered up for good while his boy fought in the war overseas in the forties, striking a bargain with God that his boy would come home safe to work the farm as long as Grandpa left alcohol alone. It stuck and he stayed sober. His boy came home. Grandpa saw it as a promise kept and became an elder in his Bible Church, taught Sunday School and gave his extra cash to the church rather than the tavern. He and Grandma donated a house on their property to the church for a parsonage.
Some twelve years later, sitting in a Christmas Sunday School program one Christmas Eve, Grandpa leaned toward Grandma and she saw his face broken out in sweat, his face ashen.
“It’s hot in here, I need air, “ he said and collapsed in her lap. He was gone, just like that. He left the rest of his family behind while he sat in church, sober as can be, on the day before Christmas.
There is no question in my mind he knew he was forgiven. He headed home one more time, not weaving or swerving but traveling straight and narrow.
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In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls. This is the great reward of service. To live, far out and on, in the life of others; this is the mystery of the Christ, –to give life’s best for such high sake that it shall be found again unto life eternal. ~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889
The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars… I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did…
I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come. ~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow
A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for decades until last year. I started reading.
My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.
They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together.
The letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting, lots and lots of waiting.
I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who desperately wanted to have a home together. They somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.
Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.
Thank you, Dad and Mom, for what you gave up to make today possible.
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I hear the mountain birds The sound of rivers singing A song I’ve often heard It flows through me now So clear and so loud I stand where I am And forever I’m dreaming of home I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
It’s carried in the air The breeze of early morning I see the land so fair My heart opens wide There’s sadness inside I stand where I am And forever I’m dreaming of home I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
This is no foreign sky I see no foreign light But far away am I From some peaceful land I’m longing to stand A hand in my hand …forever I’m dreaming of home I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home ~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”
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I loved you before I was born. It doesn’t make sense, I know.
I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see. And I’ve lived longing for your ever look ever since. That longing entered time as this body. And the longing grew as this body waxed. And the longing grows as the body wanes. The longing will outlive this body.
I loved you before I was born. It doesn’t make sense, I know.
Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes. And I’ve been lonely for you from that instant. That loneliness appeared on earth as this body. And my share of time has been nothing but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly. Your face fleeing my ever kissing it firmly once on the mouth.
In longing, I am most myself, rapt, my lamp mortal, my light hidden and singing.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) ~e.e cummings “[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]”
if everything happens that can’t be done (and anything’s righter than books could plan) the stupidest teacher will almost guess (with a run skip around we go yes) there’s nothing as something as one
one hasn’t a why or because or although (and buds know better than books don’t grow) one’s anything old being everything new (with a what which around we come who) one’s everyanything so
so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough (and birds sing sweeter than books tell how) so here is away and so your is a my (with a down up around again fly) forever was never till now
now i love you and you love me (and books are shuter than books can be) and deep in the high that does nothing but fall (with a shout each around we go all) there’s somebody calling who’s we
we’re anything brighter than even the sun (we’re everything greater than books might mean) we’re everyanything more than believe (with a spin leap alive we’re alive) we’re wonderful one times one ~e.e.cummings “if everything happens that can’t be done”
My heart is no longer blank because I carry your heart in mine. Over 44 years ago I handed my heart to you, trusting you to write whatever you wished.
And you handed me yours.
Over the decades, our story has poured forth. There is still more to come.
Even before we were born, it was clear: we’re wonderful one times one…
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When it snows, he stands atthe back door or wanders around the house to each window in turn and watches the weather like a lover. O farm boy, I waited years for you to look at me that way. Now we’re old enough to stop waiting for random looks or touches or words, so I find myself watching you watching the weather, and we wait together to discover whatever the sky might bring. ~Patricia Traxler “Weather Man”
My farm boy does still look at me that way, wondering if today will bring frost, a wind storm, maybe fog or mist, a scorcher, or a deluge.
I reassure him as best I can, because he knows me so well in our many years together:
today, like most other days, I predict I will be partly cloudy with a chance of showers, and as always, occasional sun breaks.
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You never know what may cause them. The sight of the ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow…
You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure.Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next. ~Frederick Buechner fromWhistling in the Dark
photo by Emily Vander Haak
I’m not paying close enough attention to the meaning of my leaking eyes if I’m constantly looking for kleenex to stem the flow. During the holidays, it seems I have more than ample opportunity to find out the secret of who I am, where I have come from, and where I am to be next.
So I keep my pockets loaded with kleenex, and there is a box ready in every room of the house.
It mostly has to do with welcoming our three children, their spouses, and six grandchildren back home for a few days to become a full-out, noisy, messy, chaotic household again. There will be puzzles and games and music and laughter and unending laundry and constant meal preparation and consumption. It is about singing grace together in five-part harmony before we eat, praying precious words of gratitude.
It is about remembering the drama of our youngest’s birthday thirty-one years ago today, as if it were only yesterday, when her life was saved by a snowstorm. Now she and her husband bring their own son for visits back to the farm.
It certainly has to do with bidding farewell again, gathering them all in for that final hug and then letting go.
We have urged and encouraged them to go where their hearts are telling them they are needed and called to be, even if that means miles away from their one-time home on the farm. For our oldest son’s family, that means returning and settling in just down the road.
I too was let go once and though I would try to look back, too often in tears, I set my face toward the future. It led me here, to this marriage, this family, this farm, this work, our church, to more tears, to more letting go if I’m granted more years to weep again and again with gusto and grace and gravitas.
This is what I’m sure is the secret of me: to love so much and so deeply that letting go is so hard that tears are no longer unexpected or a mystery to me or my children and grandchildren. It is a given that Grandma will weep at a drop of a hat, at a hug, or a hymn. My tears are the spill-over of fullness that can no longer be contained: God’s still small voice spills down my cheeks drop by drop like wax from a burning candle.
No kleenex are needed with these tears.
Let them flow as I let them go. It is as it should be.
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One life, George learns, touches so many other lives. Far from a failure, his life was the glue that held together his family, his business, and his community. In the end, George embraces life, and the people of Bedford Falls gather around him in love, donating the money to restore the Building and Loan that had helped them to achieve their own simple dreams of freedom, independence, and dignity.
George Bailey neither does that which feels good nor asserts his own narrow vision of himself and his role in society. He accepts the responsibility that is placed upon his shoulders and allows himself to be shaped and defined by the needs of others around him. Rather than change the world to suit his own self-centered desires, he changes himself to adapt to the true calling that is upon him.
George Bailey does more than delay gratification. He embraces his true and essential identity and purpose and is strengthened to perform the work for which he was created. ~Louis Markos “Christmas With Capra: Classic Films for Our Troubled Times”
“ZuZu’s Petals” ~Lessons from “It’s a Wonderful Life”~
Our children had to be convinced Watching black and white holiday movies Was worthwhile~ This old tale and its characters Caught them up right away From steadfast George Bailey to evil Mr. Potter- They resonate in our hearts.
What surprised me most Was our sons’ response to Donna Reed’s Mary: ~how can we find one like her? (and they both did!) Her loyalty and love unequaled, Never wavering…
I want to be like her for you. When things go sour I won’t forget what brought us together In the first place. I’m warmth in the middle-of-the-night storm When you need shelter. I’m ZuZu’s petals in your pocket When you are trying to find your way back home.
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