Daylight And Other Things Saved

An almost-spring rain has been falling most of the day, and the birds have been very busy at the feeders and in the birdbath. The daffodils are up, along with the grape hyacinth. The Virginia bluebells are getting ready to bud out, the forsythia is daubed with yellow up and down its slender branches, and the peach trees are blossoming out as well. A near neighbor’s pear tree is a perfect pink lollypop in the distance, and all the colors are set off by the silvery mist in the hollers.

And tonight we move the clocks forward into Daylight Savings Time, and the tone and tenor of the days will be changed, with the mere twisting of a stem and the soft pressing of some buttons.

We went down into town and finally located a place we’ve been meaning to visit, a small produce store run by a local farmer who sells to one of the large grocery store chains in the area. Mrs. Orr was mostly interested in the strawberries he sells, and we took most of what he had left, along with a few other things, including his homemade sausage.

While my wife was browsing among the tables, I rolled the dice and asked the farmer if he’d watched the recent speech by the character currently drooling on the Oval Office carpets. I knew immediately that the farmer was of a like mind. He rolled his eyes, shook his head, and said that he had better things to do with his time. I watched his kind, lined face with the deep-set eyes as he talked, and we discussed some of the current sideshows in this circus in which we find ourselves as uneasy observers.

Our conversation was truly educational, as he told us some things that I had no idea about. Mentioning the fact that he uses migrant labor to pick his produce every year, he offered that he is required by the government to pay for the transportation of these workers to and from Mexico. I was stunned. He also said that he provides housing and pays the utilities at the housing, along with workman’s compensation and what sounded to me to be an exorbitant wage of $15.42 an hour. I know that my mouth dropped open. I looked out the door and at the old farmhouses on the other side of the road, my mind roiling with the knowledge that none of the local retired people had likely ever been paid more than $15 an hour.

The farmer went on to describe some of the horror stories about bureaucratic nonsense he’s had to deal with in recent years, of criminally stupid middle managers and robotic clerks and unsympathetic secretaries. As he talked, a great weariness was evident on his face, and I felt bad for the man. Here was a decent man who has watched his family business get chipped away one regulation at a time, and when he is gone, no one will step in to take his place in the little economy of the county in which he lives and attends church and plays with grandchildren.

***

The farmer’s sausage turned out to be superb, and we had breakfast tacos from it this morning. The dogs are snoring at my side, my beautiful wife is reading on my other side, and the rain is hissing down just beyond the front porch. We’ve seen a couple of birds today we’re not real sure about, and I need to go get my bird book and do some checking. I’m already thinking of hummingbirds, though their return is more than a month away. Saint Patrick’s Day will be a week from tomorrow, and the spring equinox just behind it. Life does not begin anew in the spring, as I thought when I was a child. Life awakens after its cold slumber. The busy wasps from last fall are dead, but their brood will emerge from the paper nests in a short time, and I wish I could have a super-sensitive microphone to hold next to the whiplike branches of the weeping willow so that I could hear the tiny pop pop pop of wee jade-colored leaves appearing like elvish magic. My old friend, Mr. Arthur Itis, Esq., allowed me to take a walk the other day, and though I overdid it a bit, it was glorious to be down in the country lane with the hawks overhead, and up in the old graveyard among the silent ones who now sleep beneath the greening carpet, near to the bones of the warriors and beasts who lived and died here so long ago. It was pleasant to lean against the old locust tree where my gravel road intersects with the little lane leading to a neighbor’s farm, and to feel the life inside the ancient, sky-reaching friend, whom I think of as a fellow male.

Back in  my brief but passionate flirtation with traditional Catholicism, this Lenten season was a time of intense reflection and meditation, the rituals and prayers and candles a steady comfort to me. I still have small rituals I observe, but they are not linked to any Church or any school of thought. They are the outward motions and significant things that tie me to the Eternity that I know I am approaching more rapidly every day.  Now when I light a candle or incline my head towards a symbol or an icon, I no longer wonder if I did it correctly or if I pleased the Eternal Father with my gesture. No, now when I observe my little routines, I do it from a solemn and mysterious gladness. True, I am saddened that I am unmoored from most of what I learned and believed as a child, as a young man, as a middle aged fellow. But now, as an exile in so many ways, as what the world sees as an elderly man, I am calmer. I watch more closely. I listen with greater attentiveness. And when I am moved to sing or to compose a poem or gaze at a tree or a work of art, there exists a purity that was not there before. And I say God Bless It.

And I offer blessings to each of you on this day in the closing weeks of winter. May the days be soft for you, and the nights still and deep. May your coffee taste so good and your spouse’s hair smell so sweet and the movements of birds and insects be a symphony to your alert ears.

~ S.K. Orr