A Felt Longing

Today, as Katie and Maria gather to bake Christmas cookies, I know they'll be thinking about Cathy. I know I am.  It is a sad longing but also a reminder that her essence still fills our lives.

This was a story I wrote last year - and I can't say it better. It's still true.

@@@@

I think this rickety old house knows it will soon be sold, along with its quirks and antiques, its funny smells and its memories.

Today, Kellie visited the house for a final tour. As she walked past the dining room mirror, I could almost see Cathy on her arm, in bell-bottoms and a sweater. Just the way this place remembers her. And the way I do.

To Cathy, who left us last winter, Kellie was one of the inseparable few.  Like Sally and Bobbie, they seemed to be souls connected in early childhood - and maybe long before that.

And now, too often, the vacuum of Cathy's absence seems like an empty ocean that needs filling.

On a bitter and cold January night, I told Sally that we'd miss how Cathy helped each of us feel important. That who we are, what we've done and whatever we'd experienced in that moment in time was special.  She made our lives feel special because she believed in our goodness.

Sally stared at me.  "Now what?" And with that, she disappeared through the front door and into the night - without a coat. Just covered with sadness.

Now what indeed?

"I remember our first day in this house, before you moved in," Kellie said as we walked through the dining room.  "Cathy and I counted all the knobs in the kitchen because we'd never seen so many before.  There were 57."  Just like Cathy to see wonder in every little thing, like the number of kitchen knobs.

I offered Kellie a laminated copy of Cathy's secret cookie recipe, which Meg found in the back of a cookbook in the kitchen.  She smiled, "She never wanted me to have this whole recipe; she'd just give me parts of it and leave me wondering why my cookies were never as good as hers," she said, laughing, "I won't take it now, but I will take a picture of it." Just like Kellie to keep the joke rolling between heaven and earth.

As we passed through rooms and closets and different parts of the house, she'd recall what the two of them did there.  "Your mother asked us to make chocolate chip cookies so often in this kitchen that we used to time how fast we could finish a batch. I think our fastest time was eight and a half minutes."

She told us how they felt when they first saw the house, with dried fall leaves and dust covering the parquet floors. I'm sure we both thought of the transformation that would happen as we filled those same rooms with Simon and Garfunkel music, high school parties, and holidays.

Like Christmas.  When Cathy would decorate it with pieces of herself.

Every Christmas, from bolts of felt, Cathy would create Christmas stockings for each of us. With scissors and glue, she'd decorate each of them with illustrations.  They were her portraits of us - painting, cooking, our dolls, our music, our sports - us.  Reminders of how she felt we were special. And we were.  Together, we were.

Of course her green parrot, Charlie, was always on her stocking. Charlie, now an adopted member of Sally's family - spoiled and glorious and indestructible.

Last night, I received a text from my son Andrew. He was telling me how much he loved that Katie, his sister, was again making felt stockings for our family. About asking him for ideas for her boyfriend's family. He said, "For a moment I was sad because it reminded me of how much I missed Cathy. But then I thought how cool it was that Cathy lived on through Katie."

Cathy lives on in so many different ways. In felt stockings, in turquoise Christmas ornament parties that her inseparable soul-mates host in her honor, in stories and smiles, and in much much more.

Even in Sally's new adopted parrot.

But mostly she lives on in us - as we find ways to remember that we are special and that our lives are wonderful - which we thought would be unimaginable without her.

Now, her lingering sweetness - and goodness - is part of us, all around us.

Now what?  I think we found the answer.

Jamestown, Plymouth and the Camping Trip from Hell

I think I can picture it. The bubonic plague had just swept through England some twenty years earlier, and people had had enough of 17th century London. The exodus started with John Smith via the London Company and the Jamestown settlement.

It probably wasn't too hard for the Puritan leaders to pitch the Mayflower cruise to parishioners. They were probably only too happy to exchange the streets of London for religious opportunities and the imaginary landscapes of the New World.

John Rolfe had found his own heaven in the New World in 1614 with Pocahontas. Right?

And, after overcoming early horrors, John Smith and the Jamestown colony had started growing tobacco, reinforcing their forts and working to rebuild their relations with the local native Americans.

But then, even as preparations were being made on the Mayflower, the settlers in Jamestown passed smallpox to the native Americans in the Massachusetts Bay area, killing 90% of them between 1618 and 1619.

Then, in September of 1620, 102 delusional - or brave - passengers aboard the sailing ship Mayflower arrived in the New World, at the eastern tip of what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They arrived into a beautiful and vicious land; unforgiving and violent. An imminent winter was waiting. It was a land of disease and danger and starvation.

By the following spring, over half of them had died from malnutrition and disease.

Those that survived, like Smith's group, planted corn and other crops.  Ironically, it was Squanto from the Pawtuxet tribe - a people entirely lost to smallpox - that the settlers relied on to learn basic survival, hunting, and planting skills. He spoke English because he had been kidnapped by the British and taken to England years before.

The abundance of their harvest in the fall of 1621 was cause for a celebration.  A gathering that we commemorate across America today as Thanksgiving. No doubt they had reason to be thankful - for having survived a terrifying ordeal across the Atlantic only to witness many of their friends and family succumb to death aboard the Mayflower, moored upon the icy New England shore.

Chief Massasoit (of Wampanoag tribe), who gave them 12,000 acres to colonize, was invited to the November feast. Massasoit showed up with 90 men - so many that they had to hunt for deer and fowl to supplement the foodstuffs of their hosts.

The following year, in 1622, in the English Colony of Virginia, natives of the Powhatan tribe
attacked the settlers along the James River and killed 347 people - men, women and children. The number amounted to about a quarter of all settlers living in the New World at that time.  It is alleged that this was precipitated by John Smith's violent raiding parties into the Indian settlements to demand food.

This brutal massacre emboldened the colonists and their homeland backers. Historian Betty Wood writes:

"(this) ... gave the colonists the excuse they needed to take even more of what they wanted from the indigenous population of the Chesapeake. As far as the survivors of the Massacre of 1622 were concerned, by virtue of launching this unprovoked assault native Americans had forfeited any legal and moral rights they might previously have claimed to the ownership of the lands they occupied."

Following counterattacks by the English colonists that same year (1622), a peace parley was arranged. The Jamestown colonists poisoned the Powhatan liquor for the parley's ceremonial toast. The poison killed another 200 Powhatan natives.

Taped to our refrigerators this time of the year, there are craft paper drawings of belt-buckle pilgrim hats and horns of plenty. Crayon sketches of indians and pilgrims sitting peacefully together sharing the abundance of the season.

Perhaps they were for a day. And maybe that's reason enough to be thankful.

That Thanksgiving afternoon was probably a brief respite from their camping trip from hell.

Dad's Felt Tip Halloween

This time of the year, I'm thinking of my father. To me, he's still just off on a short trip to Bass Pro shops, looking for fishing lures for one of his grandchildren. Or sneaking off to get something to eat. He'll be back soon, and I'll see him drawing on one of his mat boards or playing his piano. I can't imagine he's really gone.

Because he'll never be. There are so many ways he's still here. And he's especially with us on Halloween, courtesy of the witch sisters.

For a man who created so many timeless works of art in his lifetime, he could never match his sisters of the fall - even though it hangs in no gallery or museum or living room.

My father always told me that the best way to describe a beautiful work of art was the feeling that it evoked in the observer.  If the artist could express a feeling with his work, it became alive; true art. It became meaningful, relevant, timeless. Art without feeling was not art, it was just a colorful utility.

And, if you knew where to look, he kept proof of that everywhere - at home, in his gallery, and at his lake house. John T. McCutcheon's  "Injun Summer" was framed in the back room of his gallery; black and white photographs of once proud but now decaying mansions pinned to the wall; and brilliant green Irish landscapes, torn from the pages of a magazine, taped to his drafting table.

Back in 1966, when his career and his children were still young, I believe he did his best work. While he had fewer accolades then, he also had fewer pianos, bills and problems. Then, we were all young - and my father was at his innocent best. That's when he invented the witch sisters.

Three witch sisters, born on pieces of scrap-bin mat-board, floated into our childhoods like the wisps of smoke from burning piles of fall leaves - a sweet, unforgettable, and indelible thing.

My father would gather us together and, with his felt tip marker, he'd draw the witch sisters on those scrap mats. Each piece would hold a different part of the story. He'd develop the characters as he drew; funny and heartwarming and sometimes scary.  He was an unwitting Walt Disney before Disney was cool.

Like pumpkin spice and piles of burning fall leaves, the witch sisters evoke strong and wonderful memories. They help me remember my father at his best. Not by painting or writing or public speaking, But just being his most loving, creative, brilliant best - back when the world was smaller and we were all younger. Being a father.

Memories like these make me miss him - sometimes painfully.

But they also make me warm and thankful. My siblings and I will always remember dad's Halloween tradition of the witch sisters. It keeps him with us forever. It helps us see the magical in the mundane - like he's standing next to us as we look across October fields of hay and imagine that we see Indian tee-pees.

Perhaps that's why the faded "Injun Summer*" clipping spent so many years on the wall in his gallery's back room.

When my father passed away, we found a dusty box of mat-board and brown paper that had several witch sisters drawings he'd made. Some were from the 60's. They must have brought him beautiful memories as well.

And so, another Halloween comes.  And with it, the memory of my father in 1966, gathering scrap mats, pocketing his felt tip marker, and heading home under the fall skies and burning leaves.

Thanks Dad. We so miss you.

* John T. McCutcheon's Injun Summer Link

Beautiful Minds

If a super-smart geneticist were to study the genome of my family - our little group of artists, writers, thinkers, dreamers, and reality-stretchers, they might be amazed. Or they might scratch their chins and squint in confusion at the results.

And we'd laugh. We siblings have known this for a long time.

At family gatherings, brother and sister in-laws would huddle separately in a protective, collective quiet. They'd raise eyebrows and spin fingers against their heads. Roll their eyes.

Who cares? We've always known we were right. That we're leaders, communicators and creators. Among us, Indian headdresses all around, no single feathers.

Give us the ball. Get out of the way. We need space. Step aside. For your own good.

In our sometimes churning wake, there are waves. They're kinda cool - but not for everyone. Maybe best chronicled by a professional storm chaser. They are warm and Caribbean - but eminently capable of capsizing the passing sailboat or innocent sea turtle.

It is there, in that synaptic storm, that my mind lives. I am idealistic, determined, disjointed, confusing, clairvoyant, creative and powerful. I can rock your world. Spin you around.

Love you. 

After all, God gave me an amazing three million lines of special source code.

Sometimes, I wonder about finding someone else like me out there. The best I can do is look for someone willing to hide with me under the overpass, in awe of the purple clouds, lightning, and tornadoes. Someone willing to lie in the sand at sunset and wear out my iPhone battery playing music. To look across fall fields and imagine tents and tepees.

Someone who wants to incessantly take iPhone pictures. Love me enough to smell my breath and look into my eyes and see my mind.

Might be tough. These John genes - they're God's overtime work. They're artistic and lyrical. And sometimes puzzling but kinda cool. They're the Yellowstone. The special blue of turquoise that can only be seen staring at Caribbean waters, with the sand between your toes. The Appalachian mountains and their trails and mysteries. The Hudson River and New York City.  Sleepy Hollow.

And they're not for everyone.

Perhaps that's why I'm waiting to find someone on that same ether. Someone who wants to live within storms and sunsets; inside colors and sounds and feelings. With passion, change, and beauty.

Kindness, understanding, love.

As I wait, I'll be on the beach, listening to music. Looking for inspiration. Hoping for purple skies and lightning.

A new pitching mound

To Andrew upon his graduation from Florida State.

Even though no one said it would be easy guiding a boy into manhood, it was - with you.

In many ways, like helping you stay innocent. That was easy - as easy as walking the Toys R Us isles looking for the new batman figure; making sure your kitchen towel cape didn’t fall off when I lifted you to see the new stuff.

Easy like teaching you to throw a safe-rubber baseball when you were little; to toss those wobbly pitches from just a few feet away. Then helping you learn to play in those loose-fitting little league jerseys that hung on your skinny and gangly frame. Always hoping you'd be on the Cubs - even the little league ones.

And then they moved the pitching mound back. I remember getting to the field early with you, before you pitched in your first pony-league game, our voices dimmed by the loud trains running next to the park. We walked that new stretch of grass, to the distant mound and your new outer limits.  You knew you had to learn to throw strikes, throw faster. To use your curveball; really use it. To get stronger, gain weight (aka drink more shakes), play smarter.

And to my amazement, you did.

Last night, watching you graduate, I remembered so many of our times together.  Days we spent in the afternoon sun, swallowed in cut summer grass; you and Tommy looking up, looking for scuffed white balls floating into the blue summer sky. They seemed impossible to catch at that height.  But as they got closer, you found that you could – even if there were a few black eyes and bruises when the wind shifted.

I remembered our days in the basement playing Nerf basketball; when you thought I had played for the Bulls; me on my knees to make it even.  You dunked on the playschool hoop so many times it was reinforced with screws and glue and home-made parts.  It was only Playschool, but even so it seemed transforming. If you could dunk on an ex-Bull when you were six, couldn’t you dream of soaring ten feet and dunking for real? (which I saw you do last week) Or even flying?

Creating that chemistry with you was fun.

Then we drove to college. I see us stopping for Gatorade in Tallahassee, on a sticky summer afternoon. We met your next step in life together. A big campus, a cranky coach, and sacrifices driven by your baseball dreams. After class, you'd ride your bike through Florida summer storms and they'd call you “Lance.” But they didn't know about you – you and me – and what we'd done together. On character, determination and the will to accept challenge. On willing yourself - seeing yourself - soar.

You came to know the adrenaline-sweet feeling of being in the real game.  All of it; on buses and benches and summer sandlots.

Then, in the Legends; you discovered who Andrew really was. You saw yourself as a person and a friend - of character, honesty and integrity. You understood yourself as I’ve always known you. You've just become bigger and better. I have great memories helping you get there. But as I said, you made it easy. So easy.

Over the last year, we've helped each other so many times. Sought to understand our new limits; our new pitching mounds.  And I’m glad I have you with me as I try.

I love you Andrew.  And I'm proud of you.

At the Corner of the Future

On First Avenue in New York city, on a cold and rainy day just before Thanksgiving, I could feel destiny just around the corner. Among the coffee shops and delis, the Christmas tree lots and stores, I sensed a phenomenon, intangible and everywhere, like the floating and twisting fog that darted among the sea of yellow cabs in Manhattan.

I remember standing at the corner, waiting. Waiting for someone. Something, anything. To share an experience; to discover a destiny.  A destiny already written by a a higher hand; one that knows the path of my soul.

Looking up at the soaring buildings and their intersecting fire-escape ladders, they seemed to stretch into the clouds. They reminded me of Lhasa, grand and glorious, its cliff-walls stretching into the mystery and the mist of the Tibetan steppes. Around me, I sensed the city as an incense, its sounds like the soothing and rhythmic chanting of monks.  

For the first time in years, I didn't feel scared. I didn't feel afraid that someone I loved was struggling to stay here - fighting to remain on our conjoined timeline. That they were alone in a hospital bed, trying to stay alive.

I no longer felt that awful shared pain. The pain of desperation and hopelessness.

Walking down First Avenue, my world went from black and white to Kodachrome. To color and clearness. I started to feel the pain and fear fade. Freedom washed over me like the Thanksgiving rain.

It was an inexplicable knowing. As if I had opened The Book of Secrets in a clairvoyant dream.

The secret was that these soul loves don't leave us. They don't. They just shift; like a sideways step. They become a reflective presence - like the mirrored street lights puddled in the intersection of 71st and First. A comforting inverse of the original. A comforting release.

At last, I knew.  As if God had whispered, "It's time, John. Now you know. Be comforted." And then He gently pushed me in the back and said, "It's time to move on, I've got stuff planned for you."

On this First Avenue journey, I didn't feel lonely. There was a presence, announced by the warm and slanting sunlight on my face. A connection. To something, everything, everyone. I wanted to linger at the deli and talk to the cashier. To sit at someone else's table at Starbucks. To step into every store and look for someone I knew.

As I walked along, a felt a hopefulness. A certainty of expectation; that this was the time. That this was a wonderful life.

And that something would happen. I just didn't know when.

On felt and love

I think this rickety old house knows it will soon be sold, along with its quirks and antiques, its funny smells and its memories.

Today, Kellie visited the house for a final tour. As she walked past the dining room mirror, I could almost see Cathy on her arm, in bell-bottoms and a sweater. Just the way this place remembers her. And the way I do.

To Cathy, who left us last winter, Kellie was one of the inseparable few.  Like Sally and Bobbie, they seemed to be souls connected in early childhood - and maybe long before that.

And now, too often, the vacuum of Cathy's absence seems like an empty ocean that needs filling.

On a bitter and cold January night, I told Sally that we'd miss how Cathy helped each of us feel important. That who we are, what we've done and whatever we'd experienced in that moment in time was special.  She made our lives feel special because she believed in our goodness.

Sally stared at me.  "Now what?" And with that, she disappeared through the front door and into the night - without a coat. Just covered with sadness.  

Now what indeed?

"I remember our first day in this house, before you moved in," Kellie said as we walked through the dining room.  "Cathy and I counted all the knobs in the kitchen because we'd never seen so many before.  There were 57."  Just like Cathy to see wonder in every little thing, like the number of kitchen knobs.

I offered Kellie a laminated copy of Cathy's secret cookie recipe, which Meg found in the back of a cookbook in the kitchen.  She smiled, "She never wanted me to have this whole recipe; she'd just give me parts of it and leave me wondering why my cookies were never as good as hers," she said, laughing, "I won't take it now, but I will take a picture of it." Just like Kellie to keep the joke rolling between heaven and earth.

As we passed through rooms and closets and different parts of the house, she'd recall what the two of them did there.  "Your mother asked us to make chocolate chip cookies so often in this kitchen that we used to time how fast we could finish a batch. I think our fastest time was eight and a half minutes."

She told us how they felt when they first saw the house, with dried fall leaves and dust covering the parquet floors. I'm sure we both thought of the transformation that would happen as we filled those same rooms with Simon and Garfunkel music, high school parties, and holidays.

Like Christmas.  When Cathy would decorate it with pieces of herself.

Every Christmas, from bolts of felt, Cathy would create Christmas stockings for each of us. With scissors and glue, she'd decorate each of them with illustrations.  They were her portraits of us - painting, cooking, our dolls, our music, our sports - us.  Reminders of how she felt we were special. And we were.  Together, we were.

Of course her green parrot, Charlie, was always on her stocking. Charlie, now an adopted member of Sally's family - spoiled and glorious and indestructible.

Last night, I received a text from my son Andrew. He was telling me how much he loved that Katie, his sister, was again making felt stockings for our family. About asking him for ideas for her boyfriend's family. He said, "For a moment I was sad because it reminded me of how much I missed Cathy. But then I thought how cool it was that Cathy lived on through Katie."

Cathy lives on in so many different ways. In felt stockings, in turquoise Christmas ornament parties that her inseparable soul-mates host in her honor, in stories and smiles, and in much much more.

Even in Sally's new adopted parrot.

But mostly she lives on in us - as we find ways to remember that we are special and that our lives are wonderful - which we thought would be unimaginable without her.

Now, her lingering sweetness - and goodness - is part of us, all around us.

Now what?  I think we found the answer.

A Witch Sister Halloween

On a wet and windy Halloween morning, I'm thinking of my father.  In fact, I'm sitting in his studio, on a dunes bluff, looking out among wet leaves and crooked branches of Indiana oak trees.

There's a note here on his drafting table, which we've left exactly as we found it.  "Gone to bass pro, back soon." The note is on watercolor paper, brushed with test washes of russet, golds, and greens.

On the top he has written "4:15".  That's probably the time that twilight came creeping across the cornfields near his lake home.  A good time to break from work on some fall painting - something with purple skies, lowering clouds, and fields of pumpkins and squashes.  These were the fallscapes he loved.

On the walls here in his studio/cottage, he's hung his favorite works.  Gloomy fall afternoons with crows and telephone poles. Tunnel-like pathways of orange oaks and crimson maples.  Roadside pumpkin stands. There's even a 9-foot oil painting of an Indiana farm. As you stand near it, you're pulled into it. You can smell burning piles of fall leaves and the hay in the haystacks.

As I said, I'm thinking of dad. When we were young - and on days like today - he'd tell us stories about the witch sisters.

The three sisters were born on scrap pieces of mat-board he picked up from under his framing table. From these, the witches flew into our childhoods like bluish wisps of Bond Street smoke that curled from his pipe.

The stories started at bedtime, in days when we all fit into the same bed. In the stories, my father would illustrate them as he told them.  They were storyboards.  I recall watching his large fingers pushing the felt-tip marker - magically - as he spoke. As the stories unfolded, we'd see pointy hats, warts, and flowing black dresses.  He spin their funny personalities and odd quirks. And he'd draw us castles and haunted houses, teetering and comic; a hybrid of Edward Gorey and Dr. Seuss.

The sisters worked in a six-story room for making broomsticks. The naughty children of the neighborhood would be cleverly tricked by the sisters into the broom making room. Until they were contrite or escaped, they'd help the sisters make their brooms.  Then they'd be eagerly and recklessly tested; with black capes and pointy hats fluttering through the cavernous space. He'd make evil cackles that scared us. He created witch-Quidditch before J.K. ever wrote of it.

The memories of the sisters are starting to get foggy, like the Halloween scenes they lived in.  But what we will forever remember clearly is their best story-line: that a father of seven would find the time and the energy to give the sisters life - and to empower each of us with creativity, excitement and moments to treasure.

When my father passed away, we found a dusty box of mat-board and brown paper that had several witch sisters drawings he had made for us over the years. Some he had been keeping from as far back as 1966. Evidently they meant much to him too; his art, his children, his life moments.

So, on days like today, looking out among the oak branches and wet fall leaves, I think of dad.  And I smile as I remember the Witch Sisters.  I picture my father, in 1966, picking up scraps of mat board from the floor of his gallery to bring home.  And I see him putting that felt-tip marker in his pocket.

But now, I read his note and I see he's gone to Bass Pro Shop.  At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Thanks Dad. We miss you.

New post at http://timewards.blogspot.com/

http://timewards.blogspot.com/2013/02/winter-of-our-winters.html

Witch Sisters III

I'm heading down Chicago's Longwood Drive, looking past the wet leaves sticking to my windshield and watching the last bits of bright gold desperately cling to the windblown Maple branches.  The sky is low and heavy and grey.  My mind sees it purple.  The atmosphere is a book, a fantasy, a painting.

The only thing missing are the witches. As I pass the Irish Castle, I look up over the hill and through the branches and I pretend they're there, just over the turrets; circling the old limestone battlements on top of the hill.

I know they've been in the Broom Room all summer, spinning and flying and cackling. And waiting for this time of year. A Beetlejucian production worthy of Tim Burton showing up and directing it himself. But we don't need him, because we have my father.

In some ways, the three sisters aren't archetypal witches.  Yeah, they have pointy hats and broomsticks.  Cauldrons and warts, yes. But they're not scraggly and smelly shopping-cart ladies like you might see on Western avenue or the L-platform.

Our witches are an eclectic mixture of different themes, like the ones written by the Brothers Grimm and found in family favorites like Magical Beasts and Bed-knobs and Broomsticks. Strangely more Nancy Drew than Creature Features.

My father sketched the witches on scrap mat-board left over from framing projects he did himself in his first gallery - the one next to the railroad station and across the street from Monterey Pharmacy, Kreteck's and Kaden's.

It was probably fun for him too.  He was so busy painting local houses and drawing historical landmarks that any child-like diversion was almost certainly welcome. And thus, they came drifting into our childhoods like bluish wisps of Bond Street smoke from his pipe.

We knew, as the leaves piled up on the driveway and it would get dark just before dinner, that it was witch time.  My father already had a love for storms and clouds and folklore.  All he needed were his pencils and mat-boards and us, and the sisters and their world readily came to life.  Vincent Price had his pipe organ and my father had his art supplies.    

And we were an attentive audience - we'd rather hear about their magical and mischievous antics then listen to an opera or hear about some old building on Prairie Avenue. Give us the girls.

At bedtime, in the days when everyone could fit into the same bed, we'd listen to the witch stories, and my father would draw them as he told them.  I oddly remember his hairy fingers gripping his Turquoise Pencil or his felt-tip pen. The pictures were never really the same, but we didn't care - or probably even notice at the time.

I wish I still had some of the illustrations, just to see them once more. But sometimes memories are even better than the real thing. And when the good ones are happening, you never really know it at the time.

Crumpled pictures find their way into the trash - but memories find their way into blogs.

And when it feels like the fall - a purple-grey sky, a leaf-rustling wind - I think about the Witch Sisters.  I picture my father, in 1966, picking up scraps of mat board from the floor of his gallery to bring home.  And I see him putting that felt-tip marker and Turquoise Pencil in his pocket.

Thanks dad.

Cutting the Blue Spruce

This week, on a blustery fall afternoon, I found a kind of sadness in my parents' front yard.  

I was trimming the aging blue spruce, which stood among a collection of mismatched apple trees. They stood like a maze of confused sentinels, intent on guarding the old Victorian house.

Under the slate sky, I felt the past.  

I saw Riley, our one-time gardener, in his bib overalls and leaning on his rake.  I heard his toothless and raspy Louisiana laugh; possibly at some direction my mother had just issued from the front porch. Maybe asking if he wanted a lemonade.  He'd shake his head, laugh again, and pat his pocket.  

Over there, near the sidewalk, an enormous granite block had been anchored to the lawn.  It was an odd - and certainly incongruous - donation from my father to the orchard.  I could hear him telling the grandchildren that it was actually some kind of old hitching post.  Embellished, of course, by tales of its paranormal powers; that it would mysteriously shift as a result of creepy occurrences around the property.  

I watched the crab-apple shadows as they fell across the antique post, reminding me of the two only-children and their two only-perspectives, living there together in the old house.  I sighed, wondering about a man who would plant an immovable relic in his yard, and the woman who would carelessly crisscross it with a hybrid population of catalog apple trees.  

My father, for his part, was content to paint the relic, as it stood, on Arches 140 lb - in yellow ocher and brown madder. My mother would bake hers, over and over, every season, on long afternoons in her long Victorian kitchen, occasionally stopping to direct Riley on some important yard task. 

Curiously, both post and apples were of madder and ocher.

As I gathered the cut branches on the grass, I saw that the blue-green needles were mostly gone.  After braving so many seasons, they finally succumbed.  In Decembers past, though, these branches were fragrant green and sticky with sap - and the Christmas snow gathered on them like soft powder.  I remember it blowing across the front of our minivan as we pulled into the driveway on certain Christmas Eves.  

After the snow melted in the warm spring winds, we'd sit on the porch and watch the storms.  We were self-appointed lookouts, on the swing with my father, on alert for for lightning strikes and tornado touchdowns. He'd occasionally whisper, "Did you see that?" and we'd all gasp. We'd count until we heard thunder, and watch as the giant oaks threw their branches across the sky in a panic. Then we'd listen for sirens and speculate on devastation we couldn't see. 

On the porch, there on the wall, is a brass plaque.  It commemorates how the old house was restored from broken pipes and windows and leaf-filled rooms. I can see my mother and father standing next to it, posing for a picture; my father in his crew cut, smoking his pipe. My mother in a dress and holding a baby. The Beverly Review taking pictures of them for the local paper.  

Now, no one really looks at the plaque anymore.  It's just an old Victorian house with a big front yard.  With twisted and unkempt apples trees and a weird looking block of granite on the grass. 

And a blue spruce tree that has lost most of its older branches because of things like snow and thunderstorms and old age. 

But looking up, the blues and greens are there - on the younger, higher branches.  Sticky amber sap, like fragrant pine syrup, drips from them to the brittle needles below.  

And past the high branches, if you squint your eyes and see the way I do, you'll probably see my parents in the window, looking out across the yard.  And at their past.

And that's what made me sad on that blustery fall afternoon.