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Pages
It may be a cliche, but even cliches can be true. Each of my days is like a new page in the book I’m simultaneously reading and writing. I get to the bottom of one, my stub dull and whittled down, almost too short for my fingers to grip it, and then I blink my eyes, and in the quick space of that blink, a Hand has reached down and covered that page with a fresh one, and in the groove between the previous page and the new one sits a new, sharpened pencil. With the aroma of good coffee hanging in the air of the house where I think…
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Forever And A Day
We met today after not seeing each other for almost a year. She was subdued and hesitant, and I waited for a pause in the conversation so I could ask her about what I was perceiving. She told me of her brother, just a few years older than her, and how he’s been caring for his wife for the past few years after she had a series of massive strokes. Her sole caregiver, he has dedicated all of his energies to taking care of the lady he’d once courted, married, fathered children with, and built a home for. But just a few weeks ago, he showed up at her…
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New Year, New Decade, New Day
My mother used to say that whatever a person does on New Year’s Day will indicate what that person will be doing for the rest of the year. Mindful of her words, I have all my life avoided doing things like laundry, paying bills, or coming within aural distance of zydeco music on the first day of January. If today is any indication of my coming year, I will be living like a kaiser. We slept in after falling asleep last night in front of a mellow fire in the stove, arose in good health and spirits, and feasted, thanks to Mrs. Orr, on a regal brunch of eggs and…
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Feast Day Of Saint Imina
The tenacity of the remaining leaves at our farm was finally bested by Saturday night’s wind and rain. The limbs are now mostly bare, and the leaves are piled in ankle-high drifts, as if the sky deposited beige origami figures during the hours of darkness. The little suncatchers, who labored so faithfully for the trunk and limbs, have fulfilled their purpose and have died and returned to the earth to fertilize the same trunk and limbs. And in the spring, when the sun swings round again in its power, the trunk will push power into the limbs and the limbs will be dotted with green popcorn exploding on the tips,…
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Recoverable And Precious
I have been working for some time now on a memoir, a memoir focused on a particular area of my life and a particular person. As the stack of pages grows incrementally, I find myself remembering things long forgotten, and discarding memories that I once thought important but now see as distractions. As with all the things I have ever undertaken in my life, I feel inadequate to the task, but I also feel a strong compelling hand in the small of my back, pushing me forward as certainly as my own fingers push the pencil along the page of my notebooks. Reading this evening in one of Frederick Buechner’s…
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Visit To The Grocery Store
And just like that, it happens. The grinding heat of recent weeks was with us up until Friday. That morning the air felt different, and by dusk, it was noticeably cooler and breezier. I took a little stroll before dark and had to don a light jacket. When I arose yesterday morning, the coolness had intensified a notch. I went out into the back yard and stood beneath the maple tree, looking up through the branches at the curling leaves, throwing a shade for at least a little while longer. On the trunk of the maple I noticed a daddy longlegs picking his way along the bark “Better find yourself…
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Stories And Wishes
“Once upon a time…” Those words, flowing from the mouth of my mother or a school teacher, or rising off the page to meet me — those words were enough to fill me with the most immediate of joys. A story was beginning. Troubles were coming for the young hero. A battle of some sort was about to be joined. Disaster would come so close. And then good would win the day, and with the end of the story would come relief…and the desire to hear it again. I suspect that many people today think of their lives as a movie, starring themselves, complete with soundtrack and innovative camera angles.…
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Between
On my walk this morning before dawn, my shoes marking my cadence on the gravel, the deer in the distance alerted by the measured stride of a two-legged creature, I was exactly between two heavenly bodies. At the country cemetery, I looked west and saw the moon hanging high above the kingdom she ruled during last night’s dark hours. And then I turned and went to the fence and looked east, and I saw the pockets of mist in the distant hollows of this chain of mountains, mist lit by the light crawling up from behind those peaks, and then in an instant the day had begun and the regal…
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Little Griefs
The second foggy morning in August so far, and I am tracking them. Mountain lore holds that the number of fogs in August forecasts the number of snows in the coming winter. Last year it was off a bit, but it’s still great fun to monitor. Through the fog’s gloom as I drove, I saw a tiny fawn in the road, lying exactly along the yellow stripe in the center. Such a delicate and beautiful little creature, fragile and soft and spotted. It looked to be sleeping as I slowed and passed it. And I had the same thought I always have when I see such sights. I thought of…
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The Potential To Waste
I caught myself. Driving down the mountain, looking at the haze in the air, that wispy harbinger of the 90-degree day just then in blossom, I caught myself in a familiar and hated ritual: rehearsing and rehashing all the resentment and distaste I have for the behavior of the people with whom I work every day. Like most people, the quotidian necessities of my life require that I spend a large portion of my life in close contact with a group of people with whom — if I had a realistic choice — I would not even be near for more than five minutes. All the petty squabbles, the laziness…