We stopped the car on Wood street and looked across Mrs. Jacob's yard on the corner. The Chicago street lights threw their weak pink light a few feet into her vast property.
Beyond her front yard, we could see the historic Civil War era Victorian in the shadows, ringed by what remained of the ancient oaks that once guarded this sentinel of our past. The old house looked empty and unhappy.
It was silhouetted against the November sky, with just a few lonely lights shining somewhere inside. The front porch illuminated by a harsh, incongruous florescent bulb that was everything about light that would make an artist cringe.
Oh well, the artists are gone. As is the harpsichord music and Handel being played too loud. The sounds of brothers and sisters arguing. The smells of baking too much bread and too many unnecessary pies. The phone ringing and ringing. All vanished.
I remember my father explain the forest of giant oaks on our property. "John, those oaks love the underground sand bars here. They're from when Lake Michigan covered this area. Most of them are very old... Mrs. Platt's Oak tree - the Council Oak, is over 800 years old. The Indians used it as a central meeting place for tribes in this area." Dad made the oaks sound potent and poetic - mysterious and magical.
And I guess they were.
Until the destructive winds of a millennium arrived a few years ago. They came from nowhere, disturbing the Indian spirits and knocking over Mrs. Platt's Council oak. They also crashed many of my father's oaks into his coach house and power lines.
The unexpected winds blew other changes into our lives. The old house emptied. The trees and leaves and happiness - scattered South and East. And up.
These years later, things seem fuller. Brighter. And I've come to understand that it's an illumination that comes from all of these beautiful minds I see around me. Souls that were seeded among those giant oaks. Generations that heard too much loud harpsichord music, did way too many chores, fought, loved, and never answered the phone. Because they were in the living room, looking out through the stained glass - out at the oaks.
And on this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for that brightness in my life.
Looking South, East, and Up.
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