Category: sadness

A Knock on the Door of Your Life

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When a great moment knocks on the door of your life,
it is often no louder than the beating of your heart,
and it is very easy to miss it.
~Boris Pasternak

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,   
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;  
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;   
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners   
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even   
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,   
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,   
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,   
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
~Walter De La Mare “The Listeners”

Years ago, a young woman I’d been treating for depression for several weeks in my clinic called unexpectedly on a Friday afternoon and canceled an upcoming appointment for the following Monday and did not reschedule.

The receptionist sent me a message as was our policy for patients who “cancel and do not reschedule.” It gave me a bad feeling that she was turning her back on her treatment plan and I was uneasy about the upcoming weekend without knowing what was going on with her.

I could have just put on my coat and headed home at the end of that long Friday after a very stressful work week and even more stressful year. I was discouraged about many aspects of my clinic work load and my after-hours responsibilities only seemed to get heavier. I was frustrated at how ineffectively I was communicating to administrative supervisors about the need for change. 

I was ready to quit and walk away.

Even so, in a moment of clarity about my role and commitment to those I was responsible for, I called my patient to find out how she was doing. She didn’t answer her phone.

I mulled over my options. Protocol was to call the police to go to her address for a “well-being” check. I looked up her apartment address and decided instead to drive the few blocks to get there.

As I approached her door, I could hear someone moving around in her apartment, but she ignored my knocks and my voice and when I tried to open the door, it was locked.

So I stayed right there, talking to her through the door for about 15 minutes, letting her know I wasn’t leaving until she opened up the door. I finally told her she could decide to open the door or I would call 911 and ask the police to come to make sure she was okay. She then unlocked the door, tears streaming down her face. She had been drinking heavily, with liquor bottles strewn around on the floor. She admitted an intent to overdose on aspirin and vodka. The vodka was already consumed but the unopened aspirin bottle was in her hand.

I was the last person she expected to see at her door.

Miraculously, the inpatient mental health unit at the local hospital had an open bed. I told my patient that we could save time and hassle by heading over there together right then and there, and avoid the emergency room chaos and delay, and the possibility of an involuntary detainment.

She agreed to come with me and be admitted voluntarily for stabilization. When I went to the hospital to see ger the next day, she greeted me with a hug and thanked me for not giving up on her when she had given up on herself.

In sobriety, her eyes were brighter and she was more hopeful. She never expected anyone to care enough to come knock on her door when she was at her lowest point. It was the start of her climb out of her pain and depression.

Four years later, a small card arrived in my clinic mailbox on another most challenging work day from an unfamiliar address two thousand miles away. The name looked vaguely familiar to me but when I opened and read the contents, this time it became the knock on the door to get my attention, to focus the beating of my heart on what was most important – not the stresses of my work place — and it was my turn to let tears flow:

“Dear Doctor,

I am not sure if you will remember me considering you see a number of patients daily; however, I am a patient whose life you changed in the most positive way. I never truly THANKED YOU for listening to me and hearing my silent words of grief and hearing my cries for help. If it had not been for you, had you not knocked on my door, I would not be writing this letter to you today. I don’t know exactly what to say to the person who saved me from hurting myself fatally. You were a stranger in my life, but a dear friend in my time of need. THANK YOU, for everything that you did for me. You have a permanent place in my heart, you have given my spirit hope, you have reminded me that a life is worth living. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Sincerely, L_____”

Somehow I had the sense that I needed to go knock on her door because I was keeping my word to take care of her at her lowest point. I had the stubbornness to stay put until she responded, and most of all, I’m appreciative for her gracious note letting me know it made a difference.

When I needed it the most, she made a difference for me that kept me on the job for another twenty years.

With her letter, she knocked, oh so gently, on my own locked door. I opened it, amazed that someone cared enough to let me know I kept my word.

How to Clear the Fog

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~Lustravit lampade terras~
(He has illumined the world with a lamp)
The weather and my mood have little connection.
I have my foggy and my fine days within me;
my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.
– Blaise Pascal from “Miscellaneous Writings”

Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled
to leave the house and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.
I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets.
Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.
Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied.
But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall—the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.
And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
widewinged toward me, settled
just offshore on his post,
took up his vigil.
                               If you ask
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.
~Denise Levertov “A Reward” from Evening Train

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Flee for a while from your tasks,
hide yourself for a little space from the turmoil of your thoughts.
Come, cast aside your burdensome cares,
and put aside your laborious  pursuits.
For a little while give your time to God,
and rest in him for a little while.
Enter into the inner chamber of your mind,
shut out all things save God
and whatever may aid you in seeking God;
and having barred the door of your chamber, seek him.
~Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works

And so you have a life that you are living only now,
now and now and now,
gone before you can speak of it,
and you must be thankful for living day by day,
moment by moment …
a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present…
~Wendell Berry from Hannah Coulter

photo by Josh Scholten

There were long days during my doctoring years
when I would be near tears,
physically spent, too fried
to keep listening, problem solving, comforting.

I needed to feel something other than needed.
I needed neediness myself — 
a sorry place to be
for a physician and healer.

Of course it had happened before, many times:
middle of the night mothering a vomiting child,
middle of the night mothering a frail mother,
middle of the night reassuring a frightened patient,
middle of the night worried about the state of the world.

Yet morning always comes because God has never left,
maybe not bright and shining and wondrous,
maybe still hidden behind a fog,
maybe not hidden at all
but waiting inside my muddled thoughts –

I found if I gently closed the door to all
that is not God,
I would find Him looking for me
and all would become clear.

Text by George Matheson:
O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thy ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O Joy that seeks me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

When the dawn
O’er hill and dale
Throws her bright veil,
Oh, think of me!

When the laugh
With silver sound
Goes echoing round,
Oh, think of me!

When the rain
With starry showers
Fills all the flowers,
Oh, think of me!

When the wind
Sweeps along,
Loud and strong,
Oh, think of me!

When the earth
Sleeping sound
Swings round and round,
Oh, think of me!

When the night
With solemn eyes
Looks from the skies,
Oh, think of me!”

-Frances Anne Kemble

Making Me Better Than What I Am

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At dusk, everything blurs and softens.  
From here out over the long valley,
the fields and hills pull up
the first slight sheets of evening,
as, over the next hour,
heavier, darker ones will follow.

Quieted roads, predictable deer
browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s
herd of heifers, the kitchen lights
starting in many windows. On horseback
I take it in, neither visitor
nor intruder, but kin passing, closer
and closer to night, its cold streams
rising in the sugarbush and hollow.

Half-aloud, I say to the horse,
or myself, or whoever: let fire not come
to this house, nor that barn,
nor lightning strike the cattle.
Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights
of the rooms convey what they seem to.

And who is to say it is useless
or foolish to ride out in the falling light
alone, wishing, or praying,
for particular good to particular beings,
on one small road in a huge world?

The horse bears me along, like grace,
making me better than what I am,
and what I think or say or see
is whole in these moments, is neither
small nor broken. For up, out of
the inscrutable earth, have come my body
and the separate body of the mare:
flawed and aching and wronged. Who then
is better made to say be well, be glad,

or who to long that we, as one,
might course over the entire valley,
over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace
of flight, who presses against her breast,
in grief and tenderness,
the whole weeping body of the world?
~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” from Talking Soft Dutch

photo by Emily Vander Haak

On this, my 72nd birthday,
I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself:
be well, be glad…

I’m still here
by the grace of God who carries
not just me on His back through each day,
but all earthly burdens.

I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings,
tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom
to transcend the weeping world.

I have seen so much goodness over 72 years,
sometimes through tears of sorrow.
I know there will be more joy
and sadness before I’m done.

I am grateful, so very grateful
to have lived all these years
seeing tears shed, then dried,
learning how love heals,
knowing the only thing to last forever
is God’s covenant promise
to always carry us home.

photo by Brandon Dieleman
photo by Brandon Dieleman
video by Peter Tamminga


Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit.
We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit.
No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do.
But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.
 
The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat.
The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet.
The village that we live in, and the community we share.
So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.
 
Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain,
It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again.
But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear.
Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear.
~Sandra Rickman

Lyrics:
Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet,
which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace.
Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat;
to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease.
In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears;
nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.

Plowing Deep for Love

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image
image
Photo by Joel DeWaard

It’s the immemorial feelings
I like the best: hunger, thirst,
their satisfaction; work-weariness,
earned rest; the falling again
from loneliness to love;
the green growth the mind takes
from the pastures in March;
the gayety in the stride 
of a good team of Belgian mares
that seems to shudder from me
through all my ancestry.
~Wendell Berry “Goods”

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.

I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.

Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—

The farmer plows to plant a greening season.
~Parker Palmer “Harrowing”

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

It’s not likely anyone would say I didn’t work hard enough.

After all, I come from a long line of human work-horses
who knew it takes sweat and tears, and sometimes bleeding.

Even so, all those years
I know I could have plowed more deeply than I did.

I could have thrown myself more fully
into the pull on the tugs,
shared the load more effectively,
shouldered the yoke with greater enthusiasm,
bent my neck down low with unbroken determination.

You could say somewhere
I lost the gayety in my stride,
and you would be right —
toward the end, I was trudging through the furrow,
bruised from turning up too many submerged rocks,
bumping into immoveable tree stumps,
tripping on hidden roots,
stuck in the deep mud
of long and lonely post-midnight hours.

You might even say the knowledge of a job well-done
lay at a depth my plow could ever reach.

I had seen others die in the harness,
never able to rest easy.

A few years ago I knew
the time had come
to shrug off the yoke,
shake off the bridle and bit,
shudder free of the harness.

On this side of the ground,
I find myself wondering and wandering,
the blinkers no longer impeding my vision,
feeling the morning sun on my unyoked withers.

Yet when I see an untilled field,
something in me even now
still tries to hold on to the plow —

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

Go Help Your Dad

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We will grieve not, rather find                     
Strength in what remains behind;                     
In the primal sympathy                     
Which having been must ever be;    

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
~William Wordsworth from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

It was hard work, dying, harder
than anything he’d ever done.

Whatever brutal, bruising, back-
Breaking chore he’d forced himself

to endure—it was nothing
compared to this. And it took

so long. When would the job
be over? Who would call him

home for supper? And it was
hard for us (his children)—

all of our lives we’d heard
my mother telling us to go out,

help your father, but this
was work we could not do.

He was way out beyond us,
in a field we could not reach.
~Joyce Sutphen, “My Father, Dying” from Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems.

                 

Henry Polis 1968
Pouring the sidewalk by hand
Grouting the tile perimeter

Thirty-one years ago today
we watched by your bedside as you labored,
readying yourself to die;
we could not help
other than to be there while you
slipped farther away from us.

This dying, the hardest work you had ever done:

harder than handling the plow behind a team of draft horses,
harder than confronting a broken, alcoholic and abusive father,
harder than slashing brambles and branches to clear the woods,
harder than digging out stumps, shoring up foundations, fixing roofs,
harder than shipping out to war,
harder than leaving behind a new wife after a week of marriage,
harder than leading a battalion to battle on Saipan, Tinian and Tarawa,
harder than returning home so changed there were no words,
harder than returning to school, working long hours to support family,
harder than running a farm with nothing but muscle and will power,
harder than coping with an ill wife, infertility, job conflict, discontent,
harder than building your own garage, your own house, a pool,
harder than ending your marriage, a second wife dying,
and returning home forgiven.

Dying was the hardest of all
as no amount of muscle or smarts could stop it from crushing you,
you, who could do nearly anything you put your mind and muscle to,
taking away the strength you relied on for nearly 73 years.

So as you lay helpless,
moaning,
struggling to breathe,
we knew most of your hard work was complete;
what was yet undone was not for us
to finish up for you.

All Parents Must Feel This

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Today I’m sharing some poems I’ve collected recently about parenting, as I realize, looking back at my life, being a parent (and now a grandparent) has been my greatest joy.

In the early afternoon my mother
was doing the dishes. I climbed
onto the kitchen table, I suppose
to play, and fell asleep there.
I was drowsy and awake, though,
as she lifted me up, carried me
on her arms into the living room,
and placed me on the davenport,
but I pretended to be asleep
the whole time, enjoying the luxury—
I was too big for such a privilege
and just old enough to form
my only memory of her carrying me.
She’s still moving me to a softer place.
~Leo Dangel “In Memoriam” from Saving Singletrees.

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry –
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.
~Marie Howe “Hurry”

It wouldn’t even matter if I could sleep
as in was capable
since soon as I tuck in
my son calls from his bad
dream and I’m upstairs wiping his brow
and saying how it’s okay
so I trudge back down and arrange
the pillow just right and my breath steadies
till my daughter coughs and needs water
downstairs to get it creak back up and I tell
her it’s okay and I flop downstairs again
and find my bed after and in it the baby
upset by all this walking and creaking
and I hear her and I pat her on the back
and make wave sounds with my mouth
telling her she’s okay and I don’t know if
I am really I’m tired but I also feel guilty
like I’ve won something huge, opulent
and undeserved.
~Mischa Willett “Price”

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~ W.S. Merwin, “Rain Light” from The Shadow of Sirius

The best thing I did
for my mother
was to outlive her

for which I deserve
no credit

though it makes me glad
that she didn’t have
to see me die

Like most people
(I suppose)
I feel I should
have done more
for her

Like what?
I wasn’t such a bad son

I would have wanted
to have loved her as much
as she loved me
but I couldn’t
I had a life a son of my own

a wife and my youth that kept going on
maybe too long

And now I love her more
and more

so that perhaps
when I die
our love will be the same

though I seriously doubt
my heart can ever be
as big as hers
~Ron Padgett “The Best Thing I Did” from Collected Poems.

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
~Ada Limón “The Raincoat”

In the spelling bee my daughter wore a good
brown dress and kept her hands folded.
There were twelve children speaking

into a microphone that was taller than
they were. Each time it was her turn
I could barely look. It wasn’t that I wanted

her to win but I hoped she would be
happy with herself. The words were too hard
for me; I would have missed chemical,

thermos, and dessert. Each time she spelled
one correctly my heart became a bird.
She once fluttered so restlessly beneath

my skin and, on the morning of her arrival,
her little red hands held nothing.
Her life since has been a surprise: she can

sew; she can draw; she can read. She hates
raisins but loves science. All the parents
must feel this, watching from the cheap

folding chairs. Somewhere inside them
love took shape and now
it stands at the microphone, spelling.
~Faith Shearin “Spelling Bee” from Moving the Piano.

Each carried a balloon from a special event for kids and their families.

It had been a morning of our family being together, just because. Being a grandparent needs no other reason other than “just because.”

Big sister was saying how she planned to take her balloon to school on Monday to show her friends. She was enjoying the balloon’s bobbing and weaving in the air … until suddenly it popped, causing her to jump and then she had nothing left but tatters in her hand.

Her face crumpled and the tears began to flow.

Little brother gripped his balloon more tightly, looking at his sister’s tears and worrying the same thing might happen to his balloon. His face contorted, ready to cry right along with her.

Then there was a moment of clarity and insight in his eyes.

He handed his balloon to her. He said, “here, you can have mine.” And though he was clearly sad at the thought of having no balloon himself, his eyes were shining with proud tears.

He had discovered what it meant to sacrifice, to comfort and care for someone he loved.

She was speechless. She held his balloon gently, struggling to know how to respond. If it was even possible, she loved him so much more in that moment.

So their parents said to her brother, “we think that gift deserves stopping for a hot chocolate on the way home.”

Big sister looked at her parents, looked again at her little brother, and handed the balloon back to him, saying “why don’t we share?”

Hot chocolate makes all things wonderful and cozy and better, when shared with children we would give up anything so they can flourish.

All the Pretty Little Horses

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The mare roamed soft about the slope,
Her rump was like a dancing girl’s.
Gentle beneath the apple trees
She pulled the grass and shook the flies,
Her forelocks hung in tawny curls,
She had a woman’s limpid eyes,
A woman’s patient stare that grieves.
And when she moved among the trees,
The dappled trees, her look was shy,
She hid her nakedness in leaves.
A delicate though weighted dance
She stepped while flocks of finches flew
From tree to tree and shot the leaves
With songs of golden twittering;
How admirable her tender stance.
And then the apple trees were new,
And she was new, and we were new,
And in the barns the stallions stamped
And shook the hills with trumpeting.
~Ruth Stone, “The Orchard” from What Love Comes To

Only one retired Haflinger mare remains on our farm now, her small herd diminishing one at a time as they passed from old age. She now is thirty herself, living her remaining days with two geldings in their twenties.

Over four decades, we have kept over a dozen mares born on this land, where they served us well, birthing us their foals and working when asked. In their retirement, they deserved this easy life on pasture for as long as their legs and feet could carry them up and down the slopes of our hilly farm – they more and more resembled our ancient crooked crippled orchard trees, some of which have toppled in the winter winds..

We are close to the end of our horse-keeping days; hard decisions must be made at some point and I don’t feel quite prepared to determine when they are no longer enjoying their time under the sun and I am too frail to care for them as they deserve.

I don’t want them or me to topple over like an old hollow tree in the wind.

I listen for their nickers as I come into the barn each morning and gauge their eagerness to be set free to the fields. The other day, as the sky was gray with a passing rain shower, the geldings went outside happily. As I let our mare out to pasture, she stopped on her way through the gate and turned around, poised to head back to the barn rather than get wet.

I looked her in the eyes and understood exactly how she was feeling.

Perhaps I have identified a bit too much with the stiffness as my aging mares move, their need for frequent napping times in the field, swishing at flies while they dream of younger days of flirting with stallions, nursing babies, having suppler joints and the occasional wild gallop at twilight.

I sing a sad lullaby to myself as I work about the barn with slow deliberation, knowing there is a somber sorrow to life change.
The years pass, never to return, leaving those limpid eyes, flowing manes and tails in their wake.

Ah, yes,
I have had
all the pretty little horses…

The Sweet Ache of Memories

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All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
~W.S. Merwin “Rain Light”

Well-away and be it so,
To the stranger let them go.
Even cheerfully I yield
Pasture, orchard, mowing-field,
Yea and wish him all the gain
I required of them in vain.
Yea and I can yield him house,
Barn, and shed, with rat and mouse
To dispute possession of.
These I can unlearn to love.
Since I cannot help it? Good!
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”

the farm where I grew up in east Stanwood
the Stanwood farm from the road

From the road, each of the two small farms where I grew up in western Washington state (Stanwood and Olympia) look nothing like they did in my childhood.  When I drive past now, whether on Google Earth virtually or for real, the outbuildings have changed and are unfamiliar, fences pulled down, the trees exponentially taller or gone altogether, the fields no longer well-tended. Instead the familiarity is in the road to get there, the lean into the curves, the acceleration in and out of dips, the landscape which triggers a simultaneous comfort and disquiet deep in my DNA.

Though my brother once stopped and got permission to look around our long-ago childhood home, and sent me pictures that looked barely recognizable, I myself have never stopped to knock; instead I have driven slowly past to sense if I feel what I used to feel in these places.  My memories are indeed triggered but feel a bit as if they must have happened to someone else.

I have the same feeling when driving past my parents’ childhood farms on Similk Bay on Fidalgo Island and in the Palouse wheat fields. Part of me belongs to these places even though they have never been truly “mine” – only part of sweet memories from my own childhood.

barn on Olympia farm
Olympia house
the driveway to my mother’s Palouse farm where she grew up
my mother’s childhood home in Spring Valley, the Palouse

One clinic day years ago, I glanced at the home address of a young man I was about to see for a medical issue and I realized he now lived in my childhood home located over 100 miles away.  When I greeted him I told him we had something in common: we had grown up under the same roof, inside the same walls, though children of two different generations. 

He was curious but seemed skeptical — how could this gray-haired middle aged woman know anything about his home?  He told me a bit about the house, the barn, the fields, the garden and how he experienced it felt altogether strange to me.  He and I had shared nothing but a patch of real estate — our recollections were so completely disparate.

The two daughters of the family who sold our current farm to us over thirty years ago have been back to visit a time or two, and have driven by whenever they are in the area. Many things remain familiar to them but also too much has changed – it is not quite the same farm they remember from their childhood. I know it aches to visit here but they do let me know when a photo I post has a particular sweet memory for them.

I worry for the fearsome ache if someday, due to age or finances, we must sell this farm we cherish ~ this beloved place our children were raised, animals bred and cared for, fruit picked from an ancient orchard, plants tended and soil turned over. It will remain on the map surely as the other two farms of my past, visible as we pass by slowly on the road, but primarily preserved in the words and photos I harvest here.

Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.

There will always be hoping something will still remain familiar on the map of my memory. After all, there is no such beauty as the place where I belonged – now and forever ago.

eveningporch51218

Tell me, where is the road
I can call my own
That I left, that I lost
So long ago?
All these years I have wandered
Oh, when will I know
There’s a way, there’s a road
That will lead me home

After wind, after rain
When the dark is done
As I wake from a dream
In the gold of day
Through the air there’s a calling
From far away
There’s a voice I can hear
That will lead me home

Rise up, follow me
Come away, is the call
With the love in your heart
As the only song
There is no such beauty
As where you belong
Rise up, follow me
I will lead you home
~Michael Dennis Browne

Always Enough

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There is always enough.
       My old cat of long years, who
              stayed all the months of his dying,

though, made sick by food,
       he refused to eat, till, long-stroked,
              he turned again to accept

another piece of dry catfood
       or spoonful of meat, a little water,
              another day through which

he purred, small engine
       losing heat—I made him nests
              of pillow and blanket, a curve of body

where he curled against my legs,
       and when the time came, he slipped out
              a loose door into the cold world

whose abundance included
              the death of his choosing.
~Robin Chapman “Enough” from Abundance

\

I remember the long orange carp you once scooped
from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond
her swung broom, across summer lawns

to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks
for that. I’m not one to whom offerings
often get made. You let me feel

how Christ might when I kneel,
weeping in the dark
over the usual maladies: love and its lack.

Only in tears do I speak
directly to him and with such
conviction. And only once you grew frail

did you finally slacken into me,
dozing against my ribs like a child.
You gave up the predatory flinch

that snapped the necks of so many
birds and slow-moving rodents.
Now your once powerful jaw

is malformed by black malignancies.
It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way
I pray for: Lord, before my own death,

let me learn from this animal’s deep release
into my arms. Let me cease to fear
the embrace that seeks to still me.
~Mary Karr “For a Dying Tomcat Who’s Relinquished His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature”

I have reposted these memories of José after learning of my farmer friend Zach’s recent loss of his 16 year old black farm cat friend Toby, after years of love, companionship, shenanigans and persistent doctoring…

When you look back, Zach, you’ll know Toby’s secret power was to always be enough to get you through the day…

José had been our front porch cat for years.

Not our garage cat, our upper barn cat, our lower barn cat or those that come and go on the farm because we’re a hospitable place where food is always on the table.

He was the king of the farm cats.  No one questioned him (usually) and no one occupied his front porch bench/throne without his express permission. His Majesty showed mercy to any who showed proper submission, and every once in awhile, that included the dogs.

He trained every pup here over the years.

He was the official front porch farm greeter, rising from his throne cushion to investigate any newcomer walking up the sidewalk, mewing a cheerful little “chirp” of a meow in welcome. Then he turned around and returned to his perch.

José was a performance cat, having been trained in his younger years to ride on a bareback pad on our Haflingers, at walk, trot and over jumps (sorry, no pictures). This once again proved his ability to get any creature, large or small, to submit to his will.

The only love of his life was our daughter, Lea. As José arrived to our farm at an indeterminate age, we didn’t really know how many years he would be with us. Before Lea headed off to college, and when home on breaks, they had many happy snuggles together for nearly 15 years.

During our harsh winter storms, José would move to a warm farm building with all the necessary provisions until the storm was done, then reclaim his favorite spot on the front porch when he deemed it cozy enough to be worthy of him.

After one particularly nasty storm, when the cold northeast wind went away, José didn’t return from his hiding place.

I looked, I called, I left goodies out. But no José. No chirpy meow, no yellow-eyed gaze, no black velvet fur to stroke, no rumbly purr to vibrate in my lap. I think this tough cat chose a bad winter to leave for warmer quarters far far away.

I suspect – as I still keep an eye out for it — there must be a velvety black coat he abandoned somewhere here on the farm.

He simply didn’t need it any more and unafraid, he left it behind.

photo by Lea

Staring at Empty Air

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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

peekaboocloud

I remember my grandfather as a somber man who slowly rocked in a wooden chair, staying warm by the wood stove.

That chair now sits empty in our home.

For most of his life, 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 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 lived with a group of men who surfaced once or twice a month from the hills to take a bath, bootleg booze during prohibition then try to avoid being arrested and thrown in the local pokey. Once in awhile, they maybe went to church with their womenfolk.

Mostly, being a logger taught him how to curse and drink.

He headed home to his father’s homestead 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 “old growth” stumps dotted the fields and hills next to muddy Similk Bay. 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 on that rocky hillside. He mostly grew 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 be wooed to escape the drudgery of her father’s household.

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; 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.

marshmallowmay3