Summer Comes In

While the spotted twins snoozed on the back porch this morning, I walked for an hour and inhaled summer’s new air, holding it in my lungs like a stoner, letting it absorb into my body and give me a morning buzz. The neighbor’s feed corn is thigh-high, the leaves grinning their green grins beneath the sun’s path. While I leaned against the fence and scanned the rows, I could still hear the dogs — two yappy Dachshunds and a basset mix — carping about my temerity in daring to pass their house on the way to the pastures. I knew that if I was near Jinx and Bluebelle, I would hear them exhaling their soft growls in annoyance at the dog-noise. But I moved on, and on the down the lane I looked between two trees in a pen and saw new cows on the next pasture, their soft hides absorbing the morning’s clean gifts of light and air and birdsong.

Ah, the birds. I spoke yesterday to an elderly Chinese man in the course of my job’s duties. While we were chatting, he mentioned that his dog had died. “He was my friend,” he said with quiet intensity in his lilting nasal tenor. He went on to tell me how he worked as a custodian at a local store and how one day, years ago, a small brown stray dog had entered the store and caused a ruckus among the patrons. He told me how he had coaxed the dog to him and had taken him home, where the pair became inseparable. “But he get sick. He die. I not know why. He was my friend.”

“But,” he brightened, “now I feed all birds, all time. They come to my window, to my yard, to my steps. I feed them all time. They are my friends now.”

“You and I are similar,” I told him. “If I could figure out a way to get paid for watching birds, I would be a happy man.”

He liked that. “Oh, you are my friend, too!”

In the gravel dust of the road, I stopped beside a cedar and admired the wild roses choking it, along with a grape vine. Mrs. Orr loves the wild roses and always comments on them when we pass them along these country lanes. I tried taking a cutting some years back to try and grow some for her, but my efforts didn’t pay off. I did, however, plant her two climbing roses in front of the old goat shed, roses from Tyler, Texas, the rose capital. We planted grapes and created an arbor ten years ago and the vines have pretty much taken over our Rose of Sharon shrub next to the house. I meant to prune the vines back this past fall, just as I meant to build an enclosure for the blueberry bushes and meant to build a lean-to under which to store the grill and smoker and meant to disassemble and haul away the old riding mower hidden next to the small barn and meant to plant some zinnias for my wife last weekend and meant to finally move the wood inside the garden to the interior of the old goat shed. I meant to do many things in my life as well, and never got to most of them.

I won’t go so far as to say that I am learning to be more at ease with myself about the things I have failed to do, but I have at least come to be a bit more philosophical about it, and this state of mind and heart have come to me in a natural way. I spent time a couple of years ago reading lots of esoteric books about the mind and the spirit, and profited almost nothing from them. I have long been a fan of the music of guitarist (and beekeeper!) Steve Vai. I heard him mention in an interview his admiration for the German writer Ekhart Tolle. I found two of Tolle’s books and read them, and I found some of his points about trying to live in the here-and-now somewhat interesting; he apparently influenced the current hipster fixation on mindfulness. But then I watched a video of Tolle that he shot inside his home when the scamdemic was getting revved up. There he was, all masked and whispering, staring at the camera with fear-glazed eyes and talking as if winged and taloned Death itself were perching on his windowsill. And I thought, “I don’t need some spergy little German to tell me about how to think, and especially if he’s going to lose his mind about this Covid crap.” And so away with him and his books. But I have found myself able to enjoy more of my hours in a pure way, pushing away the cares of how to earn a living or what to say to that annoying relative or why I do this or fail to do that, and simply reveling in the glint of morning light on small green grapes and the amplified flute notes of the Carolina wren who has taken over one of my wife’s hanging flower baskets or the splash of frothy water in the fountain on the front porch.

This past weekend was the convergence of Father’s Day and Juneteenth on the same day. Until Tapioca Joe and the Juggalos pushed Juneteenth into a national holiday in order to curry favor with the Mostly Peaceful crowd who will certainly be Mostly Peacefully Burning Down Some Cities this summer, the only people who knew about Juneteenth were Texans, because it was rightfully a state holiday related to a state event. But now the day has lost its savor, having become nationalized and politicized and hyped into something uglier than I could have imagined. And so I have to comfort myself with fond memories of Juneteenths in the past, where we would all celebrate with spelling bees and slide-rule races and impulse control relays. Ah, Teempf, we hardly knew ye.

And now summer has come in, and the blissfully cool days we’ve enjoyed since Friday evening will come to an end, and the heat will return, and we will see it and pronounce it good. Because it is life, the life we live here in these mountains, beneath God’s good smile.

An elderly lady with whom I worked for years at my last job died the other day. I received the news via a call from a former coworker. The lady who died was shamefully treated by the management at my former job, and I wonder if they’re pretending to love and miss her like those who truly did love her and who truly will miss her. As has become my pattern in the last few years, I have been thinking much in the aftermath of the news of death and the nature of life’s passage. Death seems more and more natural, and not a tragedy, not a sad affair, except for the absence of a smiling and gentle person.

Mrs. Orr and I have enjoyed for years the music of Joey and Rory Feek, she a singer and he a respected songwriter in Nashville. Joey died six years ago of cancer, leaving her husband Rory behind to care for their daughter, who was born with Downs Syndrome. After Joey was diagnosed and learned that the prognosis was poor, the duo recorded an emotional song called “When I’m Gone.” The tune moved Mrs. Orr and me to tears the first time we heard it, and I want to place it here for my readers on this beautiful day. Yes, it’s maudlin, but maudlin is one of the threads in my personal fabric. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you all have a soft, soft day in this year of wonder and life. And remember that the birds and the living things all around us really are our friends.

~ S.K Orr