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
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
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