Tag: parting

I Know Why I’m Here

barnstormingblog2 Comments

my mother wants me to
go to college

the closest she has ever been
is this
the dorm

her father had needed her
to dig the potatoes
and load them into burlap bags

but here she is
leaving her daughter

on the campus in the city time to go

we go to the parking lot

old glasses thick graying hair
she is wearing a man’s shirt
has to get back to the job

we stand beside her Ford and it is
here she undoes the buckle of the watch
and holds it out to me

my father’s watch
keeping good time for him
and then for her

she says she knows I will
need a watch to get to class
we hug and she gets in

starts the car
eases into traffic
no wave

the metal of the back of the watch

is smooth to my thumb
and it keeps for a moment
a warmth from her skin.
~Marjorie Saiser from “She Gives Me the Watch off Her Arm” from 
I Have Nothing To Say About Fire

When I decided to attend college out of state, to a campus I had never seen before, my mother decided she couldn’t handle the goodbye in a strange place, so sent me on a two day drive with my dad. She was a very emotional person and he wasn’t, so he got the job of dropping me off.

It was a quiet car ride with only my dad and myself together. I think we both dreaded the upcoming parting moments.

When the moment came – my things scattered chaotically about my dorm room, marijuana smoke haze filling the dorm hallway and noise everywhere with loud music and the partings of students and parents – I looked at him with foreboding and desperation at this foreign environment to which I must learn to adapt. His eyes filled with tears — the first time in 18 years I had seen him cry — and he said “you know what you are here for,” hugged me tight and turned around and left.

My father didn’t give me anything but those parting words, but they still ring in my ears every day whenever I am feeling somewhat desperate, even now fifty years later.

It was a rough start at college for me, homesick as I was, in an unsupportive unstructured dorm environment. I came home at Thanksgiving that quarter and didn’t return until the following fall. But I finished strong and never looked back. You can’t go home again, not really.

Now I know what I am here for.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time and recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$5.00
$10.00
$20.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

At the End

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close,
and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
~Mark Strand “The End,” from The Continuous Life

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case.
~Annie Dillard from “Write Till You Drop”

I began to write after September 11, 2001 because that day it became obvious to me I was dying, though more slowly than the thousands who vanished in fire and ash that day, their voices obliterated along with their bodies.  So, nearly each day since, while I still have voice and a new dawn to greet, I speak through my fingers to others, who, like me, are dying.

We are, after all, terminal patients, some of us more prepared than others to move on, slipping away into darkness, as if our readiness had anything to do with the timing.

Each day we get a little closer. I write in order to feel a little more ready.  Each day I want to detach just a little bit, leaving a trace of my voice behind, wondering what will be left to say or sing at the end.  Eventually, through unmerited grace, perhaps so much of me will be left on the page there won’t be anything or anyone left to do the typing.

No words should go to waste nor moments allowed to lapse unnoticed.
I dwell here for now, knowing Who will be waiting for me there.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$5.00
$10.00
$20.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

We May Or Might Never, Meet Here Again

barnstormingblog2 Comments

My great grandfather had some fields in North Carolina
and he willed those fields to his sons and his sons
willed them to their sons so there is a two-hundred-year-old
farm house on that land where several generations
of my family fried chicken and laughed and hung

their laundry beneath the trees. There are things you
know when your family has lived close to the earth:
things that make magic seem likely. Dig a hole on the new
of the moon and you will have dirt to throw away
but dig one on the old of the moon and you won’t have

enough to fill it back up again: I learned this trick
in the backyard of childhood with my hands. If you know
the way the moon pulls at everything then you can feel
it on the streets of a city where you cannot see the sky.

I may walk the streets
of this century and make my living in an office
but my blood is old farming blood and my true
self is underground like a potato.

I have taken root in my grandfather’s
fields: I am hanging my laundry beneath his trees.
~Faith Shearin from “Fields”

It just isn’t possible to completely take me off the farm – I have generations of farmers extending back on both sides of my family, so I have dug myself a hole here, resting easy in the soil like a potato and ventured out only as I needed to in order to actually make a living.

A gathering of all my vaccinated clinic colleagues came to our farm yesterday to help me celebrate my retiring from office life. They brought beautiful flowers, plentiful food, kind and restoring words, thirty year old photos and lovely parting gifts, as well as my singing doctor buddy sharing a sea shanty about bittersweet parting. It is helping ease my sorrow at leaving regular doctoring behind, knowing there are more days to come, more time to grow things in the ground, more blissing out over sunrises and sunsets and more hanging laundry on the clothesline.

My dear friends know where they can find me – on the hill above our farm – we may or might never, meet here again but it was such a fine time together yesterday, thank you!

Kind Friend and Companions, Come join me in rhyme,
Come lift up your voices, In chorus with mine,
Come lift up your voices, all grief to refrain,
For we may or might never, all meet here again
Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass,
Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass,
Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never, all meet here again
Here’s a health to the dear lass, that I love so well,
For her style and her beauty, sure none can excel,
There’s a smile on her countenance, as she sits on my knee,
There’s no man in this wide world, as happy as me,
Here’s a health to the company, and one to my lass
Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass,
Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never, all meet here again,
Our ship lies at anchor, she’s ready to dock,
I wish her safe landing, without any shock,
If ever I should meet you, by land or by sea,
I will always remember, your kindness to me,
Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass,
Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass,
Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never, all meet here again
Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass,
Let us drink and be merry, all out of one glass,
Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain
For we may or might never, all meet here again

You may well love this book of Barnstorming photos, available to order here:

The Tears of Summer

barnstormingblog3 Comments

cowmorning

The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day
turns dry.
I miss you steadily, painfully
~Jane Kenyon from “Heavy Summer Rain”

The sun returns
and the tears will dry.

The impression left on my heart
still twinges with every beat.

Eventually, though trampled and toppled,
I right myself to face the rain again.

The truth is, I need it, can’t live without it.

sunsetgrasss

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

The Floating Clouds

barnstormingblog1 Comment

sunset8413

sunset84131Blue mountains lie beyond the north wall;
Round the city’s eastern side flows the white water.
Here we part, friend, once forever.

Oh, the floating clouds and the thoughts of a wanderer!
Oh, the sunset and the longing of an old friend!
We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
While our horses neigh softly, softly . . . .
~Li Po from “Taking Leave of a Friend”

sunset84133

sunset84132

A Heart Bared

barnstormingblog6 Comments

421152_10150518298024422_958316185_nThrough the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did – that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that – a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.
~ Debra Ginsberg

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.
~Dorothy Parker

I would expect to be used to this by now; saying goodbye to adult children who come home for a visit, and then return to do what they have been called upon to do, living far away from us.

I may be used to it, but it gets no easier.  Each parting serves as a reminder of how deep and wide is the love for family yet how necessary is the letting go.

My tear ducts are due for a good washing out any way.  I consider it necessary maintenance along with checking to make sure the tires are well inflated.

1001209_10151722993327107_1605593535_n
Our three in the middle,  leading outdoor church worship last night, photo by Brian Vander Haak

When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
~John Fawcett, last verse, Blest Be The Tie That Binds