Tag: Weather vane

Summer’s Parting Sighs

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When summer’s end is nighing
  And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
  And all the feats I vowed
  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
  Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
  That looked to Wales away
  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
  The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
  And hushed the countryside,
  But I had youth and pride.

So here’s an end of roaming
  On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
  For summer’s parting sighs,
  And then the heart replies.
~A.E. Houseman from “XXXIX” from Last Poems

Mornings bring cooler air now, and there is haze hanging over lower ground where the previous day’s heat is rising. We are fast approaching the end of summer season, with its overabundance of constant activity, light and warmth. To be honest, I too am fried to a crisp; increasingly grateful for moisture, a bit of clinging mist, the reappearance of green shoots from parched ground. There is need for restoration after so much overproduction.

I don’t regret growing older, considering the alternative, but do feel sadness about not spending my younger years more aware of how quickly this all passes. I wish my eyes had been more open, my hearing more acute, my tongue devoted to silence, my skin sensitive to the slightest feather touch.

So I make up for it now as best I can – though my vision is cloudy at times, I strain to hear the quietest sounds, I talk when I should be listening, my skin wrinkling and dry. Each day brings new opportunity to finally get it right.

As the days end with foreshortened flare and our weather vane points from the north, I sigh deeply for all that has been.

And my heart replies. Indeed, my heart replies.

Pointing in the Right Direction

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vane3

Which way will the wind blow tomorrow?

It is a cold wind, whether coming from the south or the north, chilling our bones as various weather fronts meet and clash overhead, with more snow in the forecast.

A cold wind is blowing through America right now as well, not just on our farm.

There is considerable turmoil as Americans adjust to the new reality of  “pay as you go” rather than “borrow for what you desire”.   Our parents were  Great-Depression era children, so Dan and I heard plenty of stories convincing us never to reach beyond our means.  My grandmother, who moved with her three young children 20 miles away from home in order to cook morning, noon and night in a large boarding house, was  grateful for the work that allowed her to feed her family, even if it meant separation from their jobless, depressed and often intoxicated father for weeks at a time.  She told stories of making sandwiches to feed hobos who knocked on the kitchen door, hoping for a hand out, and after sitting briefly on the back steps eating what she could offer from left over scraps, they would be on their way again, walking on down the muddy road, hoping somewhere farther along there may be another handout or perhaps a day’s work.   Even in her time of trouble, my grandmother could find blessing in the fact she and her children had a roof over their heads, beds to sleep in (all in one room) and food to fill their stomachs.  There were always people worse off and she wasn’t one of them.

My grandmother never lived comfortably, by her own choice, after that experience.  She could never trust that tomorrow things would be as plentiful as today, so she rarely rested, never borrowed, always saved even the tiniest scrap of food, of cloth, of wood, as it could always prove useful someday.   My father learned from those uncertain days of his childhood and never borrowed to buy a car or a piece of furniture or an appliance.   It had to be cash, or it was simply not his to purchase, so he never coveted what he did not have money to buy outright.

So we, the next generation, were raised that way.  Even so,  borrowing began with loans for college, and then for the first car, and then for the first house.

But with grandma’s and dad’s stories fresh in our minds, we knew we couldn’t start that slippery slope of borrowing to take vacations or buy  the latest and greatest stuff or build the bigger house.   So we didn’t.

We live simply, drive our vehicles past 200,000 miles, continue to harvest and preserve from the garden, use appliances past the 25 year mark.

Now the chill wind has shifted again, and we wonder where it will blow us.   Now, instead of worrying our Haflinger horses could be stolen from our farm,  I worry I will wake to find neglected horses abandoned in one of our empty stalls, or our fields.   Joblessness is rising quickly, families lose their health benefits,  prospective retirees lose their annuities, and food bank lines are getting longer. What was taken for granted for decades is no longer a given.  Everyone is having to reconsider what their basic needs are for survival day to day.

It isn’t stuff.  It isn’t big houses.  It isn’t brand new cars or the latest gadgets.

It’s being under the same roof as a family, striving together and loving each other.  It is taking care of friends when they need help.  It is reaching out to the stranger in our midst who has less than we have.

The wind is pointing us back to the values we had long forgotten as we got much too comfortable.   It takes a storm to find that true contentment can rest only within our hearts.