Just having passed my 47th, generations are on my mind again. How does one convey a sense of what was to one's children and the current generation? I know a lot of folks speak in terms of what we didn't have, but my childhood memories - especially of my grandparents - wasn't about lack, but fullness.The wood stove and the huge stack of fire wood. The dipper we all drank out of and never worried about germs. The taste of the water from the spring - the best water in all the world. The vast quiet and the way an airplane flying over sometime during the day startled the silence. Whooper wills singing the night away. Cornbread baked in that wood stove and topped with gobs of country butter, melting into it. Left over cornbread broken up and scattered along the long board on the posts just off the backporch for the birds to feast on - blue birds, cardinals, all kinds. Iced tea so sweet it hurt your teeth. Long hours swinging on the porch, talking now and again and then as well drifting into silence. The laughter of family gathered together and happy just to spend time together with no TV on anywhere around. Heat the whole house for winter? Why??? There were no pipes to worry about busting. If you didn't use it, you didn't heat it, and even some of what you did use, you didn't heat - thinking particularly of Granddaddy Chance's big bedroom as cold as ice, but warm beneath the blankets and snuggled in the feather-tick. Singing together around the piano - or listening to Sue practice for church on Sunday. Forts in the woods and reliving all the great battles of the late great unpleasantness between the States. Boats floating down the Branch and looking up to see the dragonflies do their midair dances. Gathering the greens for Christmas, especially the sprigs of running pine and running cedar. Cats here, there, and everywhere, and Aunt Fanny feeding them each day. Wash day and the huge tubs carried by my aunt and mother - and how my mom always loved feeding the wash through the wringer.
It was a different world indeed. I miss it, though. Both of my grandparent's houses stand empty at present. One so dilapidated it's a miracle it hasn't fallen to pieces. The other one sort of paralyzed as it is "owned" by 22 some heirs and no one can decide what to do with it. But when I visit either one, the air is alive with sounds that I seem to be the only one hearing.
10 comments:
My soul resonates to what you write here. You are experiencing the dawning of wisdom as knowledge combines with experience and is shaped by the long, slow obedience of faith. You will realize this in ever increasing measure over the next several years - the importance of place, tradition, people, rootedness, history. How sad about those two houses. The home rehabber in me sees the vast potential of history come alive.
Even at the risk of being tedious, immerse your children in this dawning wisdom. Our culture despises the wisdom that comes with grey hair, and so we are stuck in perpetually foolish adolescence. Tell the stories, sing the songs, hand on the well-worn traditions, take them to their ancestral places where they can grind their feet deeply into the same soil and know more deeply who they are.
Nostalgia is a strong component of religious feelings, and this for good reason. We are restless for home, more than we could ever know.
Yup, how true it is that wisdom is wasted on the youth. The recent death of my father has made me more contemplative than ever before, and anyone who knows me will tell you I'm a contemplative person by nature.
Oh, yea, Bill you and Cwirla are both a couple of old coots, loveable old coots.
I wouldn't trade the wisdom of age for the fountain of youth; there is no comparison.
I'm rather enjoy being an aspiring "old coot." Not quite there, but working on it.
If what Pastor Cwirla says is true, about realizing "this in ever increasing measure over the next several years", then I count myself lucky to already be heading down that road in my early forties. Like Pastor McCain, I think it was spurred on by the death of a parent a few years ago. I really do consider it a blessing to be able to begin to apprecite after four decades, the things that some people never appreciate in a lifetime. I am greatful to the Lord that he opened my eyes a bit!
Thanks for sharing that, Bill. It sounds wonderful. Except for the part with all the cats!
Jeff
Jeff,
Trust me, the cats were a vital part of the experience. And they were ALL outside varmits.
Now, on the other side, Bessie and Chance had an insight cat named Hun. And it was a very naughty critter. There was the time they came home from church to find a turkey CARCASS on the steps rather than the baked turkey that Bessie had prepared and left there... Bad, bad puddy cat.
insight! Ha! INSIDE. Gremlins in the fingers...
Ah, but cats are creatures of great "insight" as well, recalling the marvelous lines by Christopher Smart in Benjamin Britten's "Rejoice in the Lamb":
For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the living God.
Duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance
Of the glory of God in the East
He worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body
Seven times round with elegant quickness.
For he knows that God is his saviour.
For God has bless'd him
In the variety of his movements.
For there is nothing sweeter
Than his peace when at rest.
As one who is in the same range of age (46th year), with both parents now asleep - it is the loss of the stories that most embarasses me - that I didn't listen well enough, and so certain tastes, thoughts, and adventures are lost - at least as far as words are concerned. It should make me a better listener... but still it hasn't.
May God have mercy on us all - and bring to remembrance all that we should know for the sake of our grey hairs....
None of these things are lost forever in Him who holds all things in His Being, who redeemed all things in the sleep of His Death, and who makes all things new in the power of His resurrection.
I believe that our truly being "home" in Christ, which is the final end of our homing instincts, means that all these things will be ours in a profoundly new way.
Amen, William!
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come.
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