Ramblings from the Homestead

Last Saturday, David and I walked through the Weeks Bay Pitcher Plant Preserve. The weather was warm, breezy, perfect for the outing... A wide boardwalk keeps hikers feet out of the flora and away from the fauna. This boardwalk meanders down through open field and woods to the mouth of Fish River, where it joins Weeks Bay. The pitcher plants were not in bloom when we visited, but they were beautiful, nonetheless. We sat a while on a shaded bench, and admired the play of sunlight and shadow on trunks and leaves, and were still... listening to birdsong, frogs, and the wind in the trees. It was a perfect example of God's beautiful creation... Thank you, Lord!

Polished and dark, the baby grand sat solidly in the corner of the living room. As you entered the front door the stairs rose directly in front of you across a small vestibule. To the right, along the wall, sat a small slant-front desk with cubbyholes and tiny drawers. The desk was forbidden territory, but the piano was not. A black and white vase always perched atop the piano, and a large fern on a stand sat nearby. Sunday afternoon light from the front window slanted across the keys as I practiced. I cannot remember how old I was when I learned how to play, probably five or six. I was given a scale fingering book, and my chubby fingers picked at the notes. Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. It was how I was taught the line notes, and F-A-C-E were the notes inside the lines. I still remember the notes from the lessons in the language of a child. My first piano teacher fades from memory, but by the time I got to the second teacher, I knew the basic notes. Mrs. Dusseldorf was a flat fa

In about a minute this feisty fellow found the door I had left propped open. When I returned from inside the house with a broom, there he was, trapped at one end of the screened porch, beating his wings against the screen. I ran for cover and yelled for D... who came up the steps, took his hat off and gently, so gently, put it over the bird, then flipped the hat over and held him. He spread one wing downward and we admired the white patch on it. A few indignant squawks and one very fierce eye later... D tossed it gently out the door into the air, and it made a beeline to a nearby pecan tree, scolding us the whole way.

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do --determined to save the only life you could save. Mary Oliver

When we set out, I had no idea it would turn into a summer on the road. Honestly. We gave the phrase “traveling light” a new meaning. Simply hitchhiking away from the familiar, leaving behind roads and houses that we recognized, and sailing off on a grand adventure with just the clothes on our backs, and twenty five dollars in our pocket. From northern Wisconsin we made our way south, then east, meandering through state after state, begging meals at Burger King and Dairy Queen, offering to pick up the parking lot trash in the hot sun for a chicken sandwich, fries and a drink. We lived on the kindness of strangers; we slept curled in the corners of backseats, jolted awake by turns and braking… a surreal world of lights in darkness, and the swoop of semi trucks as they passed too close for comfort. Down through the late summer haze we traveled, to the Florida Keys, burning our skin in the blinding sun and our feet on the hot pavement. We swam the sugar sand beaches of Panama City in our

A hound dog puppy screaming for its life because she can’t aim the gun, she takes a shot of whiskey after doing this thing, after it is all messed up. Does it while the kids are home, and let them hear the screams, the shots. Calls the vet to do the rest. Just get rid of those puppies . He backs up the truck, rigs up the gates and plywood walls , jabs the pitchfork in the sow’s white flesh and pushes her, screaming, toward the ramp. Over and over. Again and again. Cursing, slipping, jabbing, yelling. I just retreat, small in a corner, hands twisted and NO I can't help you please the pig is so big and scary and her sounds--like the puppy and its raining and dark and I cannot see... God help me to remember how to pray. I was twelve.

The call came during the meal. We were gathered at rough benches and a long wooden table in the unfinished kitchen of the old farmhouse. Did I know, somehow, twelve years old, what that call meant? How in God’s earth does a man sit back down and go through the motions of a meal, when that call has been to tell him of the death of his mother? And then why tell his little girls to get into the pick-up truck and drive us to a nearby empty farm, to a barn, used only for hay storage? Why take us to a secret place to speak one sentence? “Your grandmother has died.” Why? Was the grief and her death to be kept from the rest of the family? Do not speak of it. No tears. Ignore them, and they will stop flowing. It was all warm sunlight pouring through wavy glass windows, playing a pattern with the marching squares of a pastel quilt. Clean, warm, and familiar. Collections of books, pennants, dolls, horses, pictures, small stones. Rag rugs on creaking, polished wooden floors. Leather-bound Bible on

I almost didn’t write it. It seemed, at the time, a story that was perhaps tragic, comic, amazing, but certainly not worth the time it would take to put on paper. I kept it inside, and told it out in bits and pieces to people I met. I heard it too many times, though. They said I should write a book. I knew that someone would read it who knew me then… someone who remembered. And with that knowledge was the realization that the past would always drift through me unless I put it down for you. All the dark, almost forgotten, repressed, if you will, details. I have, of course, changed the names to protect the guilty. No innocents here. Not unless you count the children… but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning, or before. How to start before the beginning, you ask? A history, if you will pardon my use of the word. A search and a delving into generations past… Perhaps their lives will tell me why mine pointed in the direction it did, or shed light on why some primal an

The clear images of my grandmother have faded with time. I recall sensible shoes and plaid shirtwaist dresses, sewed painstakingly on the old black Singer permanently parked in a corner of our dining room. I’m not sure she ever wore slacks for her gardening chores. I believe it was those deep pocket dresses, sewed from cool cotton in subdued gingham checks or tiny prints. A wide brimmed straw hat gave some protection, not against the sun, but against the confused blue jay who insisted on landing on her head. She had an irrational and intense dislike of birds, but this saucy and otherwise completely wild creature apparently decided she looked like a tree, and had an amusing habit of swooping down and startling the poor woman into unladylike screeches so very uncharacteristic of her. She gave me the years that saved my life.

Mystery: meditation, contemplation, unfolding revelation... immersion in that which eludes our desire to control and possess. Problem: that which demands analysis, action, resolution... swimming for our lives toward the shore of "answer"... Mystery: fascination, unknowing, veiled in darkness, tantalizing mist, unfolding, evolving, ongoing... Problem: frustation, impatience, detached from our heart, reasoned and calculated... Problem must be solved... Mystery must be lived...

A cluster of six small homes sit facing each other at the end of a gravel road. The homes are small, unmatched, and at first glance unremarkable. It isn’t until you understand that each donated home was actually moved in entirety to its tiny lot, then prepared for occupancy, that you begin to know the formidable determination and understand the gentle heart of the woman who lives here as well, among the grateful families she has helped. Without her, the probability is that they would not have a roof over their heads. Not all of the houses are occupied. Two of the latest acquisitions sit empty, facing the small, newly grass-sodded play area and bare community garden plot. The empty houses need electrical and plumbing work. They need sheetrock, paint, a host of details; small things done in anticipation of a loving family presence. There is drainage work to be done on the newly formed road. The need is great. The telephone rings constantly, and her sadness is apparent as she answers the