A Deep River Year
May 28, 2014

One cold January day, young Frans Petterson swerved to avoid a group of children walking in the road. He drove into a tree, destroying his brand new Nash sedan. He was thrown out of the car and suffered mi...nor injuries, but none of those children were injured. Presumably they grew up to lead productive lives in this little town, as did Frans. He and his wife Elsie lived in a white house set back from Village Street with a huge holly bush by the front steps. He would serve as Town Treasurer and sing in the Congregational Church choir, and Elsie would dote over their one and only son Leonard, her pride and joy. They would watch as Leonard graduated from the University of Maine and then fall in love and eventually marry his bride Catherine on a beautiful June day. Then he was off to war, serving with the Marines in the Pacific. Months later, on his way to Okinawa he was promoted to First Lieutenant, but on June 6, 1945, during the invasion of that little island, he was killed by a sniper's bullet, just days shy of his wedding anniversary.

The Purple Heart awarded to him could not completely console his grieving parents. After Frans died, I would occasionally visit Elsie and see Leonard's framed picture on the bureau. Elsie carried a sadness through her life and seemed burdened by loneliness and fearful about the unpredictability of an otherwise lovely world. Always she would invite me to come and cut branches of holly to decorate the church at Christmas, and I couldn't help but think of the poignant words of the old English carol, "The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn; And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ on Christmas Day in the morn."

I think of Leonard Petterson every Memorial Day, when the citizens of our town gather for a parade down Main St., ending at the town green. Again this Monday they were there: the fife and drum corps, the scouts, the fire department, a host of veterans wearing remnants of their old uniforms. I waved at my granddaughter with her green saxophone in the elementary school band just behind the oldest of the old soldiers seated on a bench. I watched them salute as a squad of sailors fired a volley in memory of Deep River's sons who had died in battle. A white rose was laid near our "Liberty monument" for each of those remembered dead, including Leonard Petterson. Later I would hug my granddaughter, tell her how wonderful the band sounded, and then she would head home to her house on Village Street, the one where once a great holly bush stood guard by the front door, with prickles sharp as any thorn.

Memorial Day

We stand
in a morning full of bird songs
and a wind ruffling the treetops
as a bugle cries
as if night, not morning, had come.
And so we must cry, all of us,
for those whose day has ended:
the old mother,
her son's picture pressed against her chest,
the child whose father's voice fades to a whisper,
the boyhood friend who wonders
why it was not he who walked
that valley of the shadow of death.
Today the names are called,
and a few still remember
the jaunty turn of the head,
the stolen kiss in the woods behind the cemetery,
the summer night of naked joy by the river
as fireflies rose into the sky
like a dream.
So we keep them in our hearts,
those dreams our world has lost
In heroes’ gallantry--
flesh of our flesh,
bright minds and tender lovers,
with us now only in the wind
ruffling the tall trees
this sweet morning.

--Timothy Haut, May 28, 2014

A Deep River Year
May 21, 2014

It was a joy to find, at the end of the driveway, a beautiful pile of manure--the gift of a friend with horses. When you have a garden, there is nothing sweeter than a load of manure. I was happily carting it into the garden to mix with the dirt under my infant tomato plants when a sparrow landed on a branch above me, long blades of grass in its beak. I pause...d to watch as she flew to the birdhouse on the side of the barn, disappeared inside, then popped out to repeat the process over and over again. There seemed to be two of them lining the nest with bits of leaf and grass, in anticipation of the brood which would soon emerge. I will never know the little sparrows-to-be with any intimacy, but somehow they have already become a part of my family.

This Saturday my wife's family will hold its annual reunion in our back yard here in Deep River. Phyllis' father was one of ten children, seven of whom are still alive. The clan will be coming in from Connecticut, Florida and California, Vermont and Arizona, as raucous and loving a bunch as there may be anywhere. Old and young will gather to eat hot dogs and hamburgers, compete in volleyball and croquet, and perhaps play cards late into the night as tiki torches blaze in the darkness. There will be laughter, dancing, and music, and maybe some tears, too, for when a family comes together there are memories and regrets and a few sorrows amidst all the joy.

I remember the family reunions of my mother's clan, German immigrants who came to Iowa during the great wave of settlement in the mid-1800s. Leberecht and Alma Kretschmar left their home in Germany for a place where they had heard there was rich, black earth and the promise of a prosperous life. The first winter in their new home they christened that earth with the body of their first child. Long after they, too, were buried in that earth, each October their brood of descendants would gather in the little community center at New Era, in Muscatine County, Iowa. And around fried chicken and green tomato pie and strong coffee they would laugh and marvel at the power of family. The grandchildren would play hide-and-seek under the tall oak trees, and sometimes slide in the cow manure hidden beneath the leaves. The men would play horseshoes and smoke cigars. Aunt Frieda would spit on her linen handkerchief and wipe the dirt off my cheek, and Cousin Margaret would helplessly try to call a meeting of the family to order. On Saturday, this great grandson of German immigrants will gather with the descendants of Swedes and Brits into which I have married, and I will feel the handkerchief on my cheek and watch for the sparrows making a family, too.

Family Reunion

We are tied
To the ones whose faces
We can no longer remember,
Who left their homes for a dream,
And to the ones who watched them go.
And we are tied
To the ones unconceived, unborn,
Who have not yet walked joyful
Into a May morning,
Or heard a sparrow sing wild and free.
And we are tied
To the ones we know too well,
Who have fought with us
And said our name with pride,
Who have held us in our darkest days
And remembered wrong some ancient folly.
But blood and tears make love
And we are better for this:
the learning to live together,
time’s kindness, and the shared dreams,
the gift of laughter, and the wrestled love,
the spilled blood and the tears,
the spit on the cheek and the arms around,
and the saving wonder,
that we are all
family.

--Timothy Haut, May 21, 2014

A Deep River Year
May 14,  2014
 


The hummingbirds are back, and the mosquitoes, too. This is truly the changing of seasons. I am ready to plant the tomato seedlings I have watched grow under the lights in my basement. My great uncle Emil knew that it was time to plant his fields--especially his sweet corn--when the leaves of the oak tree were the size of a squirrel's ear. For me, who does not climb up and measure the size of oak leaves, that is always around the middle of May, when the lilacs are in bloom. Right about now.

 There was a time not too long ago when lilacs could be counted on blooming around Memorial Day. Children would gather the blossoms and lay them on the graves of fallen soldiers. In this day of climate change, they are mostly finished blooming by then. But now, in the middle of May, the great clusters of purple begin to open in the midday sun, their sweet aroma filling the air. In the bleak days of winter, I search the nursery catalogs for pictures of lilacs, and the anticipation of their wondrous blooms carries me through the colorless days.

There were lilacs a-plenty when Phyllis and I were married, 21 years ago tomorrow. Phyllis and her sister went out the night before the wedding to gather lilac blooms along the country roads of Connecticut. The church and reception were decked with armfuls of those beautiful blossoms. I even wore a tie adorned with lilacs. Their blossoms still remind me of the sweetness of that day, filled with love's utter loveliness. Perhaps I am not the only one who cherishes these May beauties. Go out into the woods throughout New England, and soon enough you will come to a tall patch of lilacs. Perhaps there will be a clearing, and the lilacs will mark the place where once settlers planted a homestead. Nearby there likely will be the remnant of an old chimney, or the foundation of a little house where love tried to set roots and build a future. The lilacs still growing there are a sign that love will not give up.

 Lilacs

Should this world of mine pass away,
this old house, solid and chimneyed,
the big barn, steady under the shade
of ancient maples,
the stone paths leading to the door--
should they one day sag
 under the weight of time,
fall into themselves and slumber
under the tangles of bittersweet and ivy,
yet there shall be this:
one May morning
 the tall persistence of lilacs
will rise again into the sun and blue above,
and there will be purple clusters,
sweet as holy incense,
to hallow that day with a memory.
Perhaps someone will pass by,
see in the blooms some ancient gratitude,
and know that once a home was here,
know that once before the fall,
 the sadness, the ache of parting,
there was a joy,
know that one spring day lilacs bloomed
for us.

--Timothy Haut, May 14, 2014

A Deep River Year
May 7,  2014

These are sweet days, gentle, delicate.   These May days are tender, as if their life is not quite fully formed.  They are the times of birth and bud.   Now the first life in the garden is apparent.  The peas are an inch or two high, and the onion sets have pushed up through the friable earth with their tiny green swords.  Soon it will be time for the first mowing of the grass, which is already dotted with golden blossoms of beautiful dandelions.  Loveliest of all, I discovered this week that the Quaker Ladies are in bloom--waves and waves of them--in the vacant lots and across the cemetery’s meadows, and even in the thin strips of earth between sidewalks and streets.  Also known as bluets, these fragile little blossoms—blue with a golden center—are an ephemeral sign of Spring’s promise.

Saturday, our granddaughters spent the day with us.   The sun was shining, and a light breeze blew through the greening maple branches.    It was a day for badminton and whiffle ball, for a hot dog picnic and a long ride on the swing.   And for bubbles.   It’s never enough just to use the little soap bubble wand you can buy at the variety store.  You need to pour quarts of the stuff into a upturned garbage can lid and use one of those big hoops that make enormous bubbles, bubbles with curious shapes and remarkable size, bubbles that rise and sail on the spring wind reflecting rainbows in their passage below the sun.

No matter how old you are, you want to have a turn at making bubbles like that.   They make you laugh and cheer, marveling at their magic.   There are laws of physics that explain a bubble, things that have to do with inner air pressure and surface tension.   It is enough for me that they are wondrous and beautiful, and that anyone can make them.   C.S. Lewis once wrote that love has three dimensions—one arising out of our needs, another from what we can give to others.  The third is appreciative love,  when we merely stand in awe, feeling joy or elation.   Our heart wants to sing: “We give thee thanks for this great glory!”  Sometimes we have this kind of love for what is holy.   Sometimes we have it for bubbles, or Quaker Ladies winking at us in the grass.

Bubble

Up into the blue it sails,
Shimmering with rainbow light,
Held for a moment
On the wind--
An evanescent glory.
It is lifted by a breath,
And filled by a breath,
The very breath of one little life
That may be as ephemeral
As this bright thing.
We stand in a world
Of passing wonders,
The choir of bluets on the cemetery hill,
The bee at rest on a quince blossom,
The wild mint rising in turned earth,
A child awake to joy,
And this sigh of delight in me,
this whisper of laughter
that slips out, rises like a bubble
full of breath,
and then is gone.

--Timothy Haut, May 7,  2014

A Deep River Year
April 30,  2014

There is no green like the green of  a late April day.   Today a line of willows shines in the afternoon light, a neon green with golden highlights.   It is what I call Easter green, and it is also erupting in the tiny flowers on a thousand maple trees and in the new foliage on the lilacs waving in the breeze next to the barn.  And on the hillside, close to the ground beneath the canopy of trees, that same bright green makes even the hated Japanese barberry look beautiful.   Amid this profusion of green, the bright yellow blooms of forsythia and daffodils and the deep purple of periwinkle and the profusion of violets in the meadow add to the breathtaking loveliness of these days.    Even when it rains, the earth seems to smile.

Tomorrow is May Day.  For millennia this was a day to celebrate the return of life, and it was marked by a variety of celebrations that may or may not have been fertility rites.   My grandmother recalled a tradition of her youth, when young people would gather flowers into  May baskets, often made out of paper cones, then leave them on the doorstep of a beloved, bang on the door or ring the bell and run like the wind.   If you were caught, it was forever.   And then there was the ritual of a Maypole, to which long ribbons were attached.   As I recall it, the point was that each young man took a ribbon and danced one direction, and the ladies went the other way, weaving in and out until the ribbons were all wound tight against the pole.   In the end you could wind up face to face with your one true love!  

One of the treasured pictures of my father's childhood has him amid a group of friends, a tall Maypole in the background.   He sits in the front row, finger up his nose.  Romance apparently was not on his mind.   Freud thought the Maypole was a phallic symbol; others weren't so sure.   One idea was that the Maypole represented the "axis mundi," or the center axis of the world.  And why not.   We spin on this terrestrial ball, and at the center of everything is love's renewing power.   More recently May Day has been observed as International Workers' Day, and during the cold war years it was marked by parades of tanks and soldiers.  I, for one, prefer the old version of the celebration.   I like romance better than tanks.  Yesterday I bent down to find a walnut amid the remnant of last fall's leaves, broken in two.   Inside, a heart smiled.   Happy May Day!

May Day

Sweet day,
 gowned in green and gold,
 you call us to dance with you
 to an oriole's tune.
 It is time for joy,
 as ribbons of clouds fly
 from the passing rain,
 and the earth sings, sprouts,
 rises true as a promise.
 The living has been hard too long,
 hard as a bitter hermit
 red in hand from the cold
 which gives no kindness.
 And so the weary laborer,
 who bends away from wind,
 trusts no generous invitation
 for fear that all true goods
 are finally false, and thus lives wretched
 in a wounded world.
 But some, instead, leave flowers at the door,
 run to dance to the orioles' tune,
 astonished at the secret
 hidden in the hollow of this May day.
 Here is a walnut split, like the atoms of everything,
 showing a heart,
 and can it be that all is held together,
 sings, sprouts, rises
 out of love?

--Timothy Haut, April 30,  2014