A Deep River Year
July 16,  2014

“Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day!”  Children have been singing that old chant for hundreds of years, especially on summer days when they wanted to  be outside playing.  Most of us still wish for sunny days, and these are often the setting for the happiest days of our lives.   But rain, too, is good and necessary.   The peppers in our garden have been drooping and even the morning glories climbing the fence have been limp as they wait for rain after a long stretch of dry weather.  By this time in July, too, the grass in a hundred lawns is looking brown and thirsty.  So it is as if the world was uttering a long, sweet, “Aaaah!” when yesterday it rained at last. 

In the book The Outermost House, Henry Beston’s classic description of a year spent in a spare cabin amid the sand dunes of Cape Cod, he notes that there are “three great elemental sounds in nature”:  the sound of rain, the sound of wind in the trees, and the sound of the ocean on the beach.     There is something wondrous about the sound of approaching rain:  the whisper in the treetops on a nearby hill, the swish of car tires passing on the street, the blip of drops hitting the water of the creek or the pond around the corner.   Last night we slept to the patter of rain against the window glass, a rhythmic, sweet sound that reminds us of a primal truth:  that rain is life.   We, earth creatures, are mostly water.   And we live on the only planet yet discovered in a vast and lonely universe that is wet.

Sometimes the wetness is annoying.   As a matter of fact, I was a block away from home walking our dogs when the rains began.   It came as sheets of heavy, soaking rain, and by the time we got home, we were wet and soaked, too.   The dogs had a good shake in the kitchen, and I changed into dry clothes.     But this morning, in shorts and bare feet, I resisted the temptation to run for cover.   I felt the wet grass between my toes, savored the cool leaves brushing against my legs and splattering my shirt and pants, laughed at the rivulets running down my face.     I was alive with summer rain.

Summer Rain

I am wet with life,
Slippery as morning.
I walk through a green world
Where the most precious of gifts
Falls from the sky.
The earth drinks deeply
Of such goodness
As something like a song
Ripples through the tall trees.
We wish the summer rain away,
Seek shelter, wait for sun.
When we could walk uncovered,
Dripping with joy
And drenched with glory.
O sweet rain,
Moisten the dry earth.
Soften my thirsty heart.
Be gentle!   Be life!

--Timothy Haut, July 16,  2014

A Deep River Year
July 9,  2014

There we were, looking down on that wonderful emerald green field in the midst of the concrete city.   It was Fenway Park in Boston, a mystical place where a summer night means baseball.   We were up above third base, in seats which were a gift from my sons who had heard that the Chicago Cubs would be coming  to New England for a rare inter-league game between these two ill-fated teams.   I grew up rooting for the Cubs, as had my father, believing that someday they might have a winning team.   It has not happened yet.   In fact, it has been 106 years since the Cubs won the World Series.  But on this night in July the Cubs' pitcher was throwing a no-hitter into the eighth inning.  We, these men tied together by blood and story, joined in the chants and cheers and watched night fall over the great green wall in left field where so much Boston magic has taken place.  

I thought of my father-in-law, who grew up cheering for these Red Sox, and especially for his idol, the great Ted Williams.  In some sense, my father-in-law was a boy who never grew up.   He dreamed of playing baseball forever, and once he had a chance.  He was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he made his way up through the minor leagues for a while.  He was a star for the Sheboygan Indians and remembers playing for the Greenwood (Mississippi) Dodgers, where in the heat of the Gulf summer they played in short pants as the girls in the grandstand hooted.     Once, in spring training, he caught a fly ball that Willie Mays hit to the wall in center field.  But because of an injury, he never made it to the Big Leagues.    Still, he got farther than most of us who dream of such things.  My father-in-law died last night, still reliving those memories and those dreams.

A Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale University who was later the Commissioner of Baseball, once said  that baseball "tells us that much as you travel and far as you go, out to the green frontier, the purpose is to get back home, back to where the others are."   My wife's dad  has been leading off third base most of his life.   Maybe at last he's sliding into home.   On that night last week in Boston, when the Cubs won 2-0, there was almost a no-hitter.   But the real glory of the game was up in the stands, on the third base side, where a father and his sons were together, ball caps on our heads, screaming our lungs out, remembering where home was.

A Baseball Dream

We played catch in the back yard,
my father, tongue clenched in his teeth,
left-handed mitt on his hand,
and I, a would-be second baseman,
who lived through his stories.
Once he met an over-the-hill Babe Ruth--
the great Bambino--
barnstorming through town
for a few bucks and, mostly,
for the love of it.
Some lucky Iowa boy
could be on his team
for one night, they said,
by heaving  a baseball
over the tallest building in town.
My Dad leaned back and threw it--
heart and soul he threw it--
up, up, higher than he ever dared dream.
He recalls that the ball nearly went over,
bounced against the highest ledge,
and fell back to earth.
I am still waiting to catch it.

--Timothy Haut, July 9,  2014

A Deep River Year
July 2,  2014

The Fourth of July is our American holiday, a pause in the midst of summer to celebrate the founding of this nation.  Roadside stands not only offer piles of watermelons and not-quite-native tomatoes to provide for family picnics, but also boxes of sparklers,  bottle rockets, cherry bombs, fountains and firecrackers that are designed to make maximum amounts of noise and smoke and a few glorious explosions of light at nightfall.   As a child, my mother warned us against such things ("you could blow a finger off with one of those!"),  though at least once my father brought back a stash to our home in Iowa from a place across the border in Missouri where they were legal.   You could see the bright explosions reflected in his joyous eyes.

If we really wanted fireworks, we'd head out to a field on the edge of town and, with hundreds of other families, spread out our blankets and have a picnic.  As the sun settled on the western horizon we became restless for darkness.   Fireflies twinkled over us as the stars began to come out, one by one, and at last it was night.   We stretched out on our backs and watched spectacular displays erupt over us--great fiery chrysanthemums and waterfalls of light, booming gloriously as ashes drifted down and settled on us.   Never was a child  so happy as when the grand finale of fireworks burst and shuddered in the sky.

In these my older years, I confess, I avoid the traffic and the hungry mosquitoes at whatever local fireworks displays may tempt me.   My Fourth of July is a time to rest and to participate in quieter celebrations.   I walk in the back yard and check the sour cherry tree, hoping that the blue jays will have left enough fruit for a Fourth of July pie.   I gather the sugar snap peas in the loose tail of my shirt and sit in the shade to see if the oriole will come down to feast on the mulberry tree which we let grow by accident.   Across the street the bright orange day lilies line the street, on schedule again for their Fourth of July visitation.   They toss their heads in the breeze, like fireworks.

Fireworks

High in the deep sky
Great showers of light explode,
Fountains and blossoms
Filling the darkness.
Their boom and thunder shake the ground,
Stirring a wide-eyed child to laugh with wonder.
But somewhere another child cowers,
Face buried in a terrified mother’s arms
As she waits for silence to cover her.
There is no delight for her,
No joy of picnic and celebration
In the ancient percussion of death
Dropping from the sky.
We wish her freedom from this.
We would give her a bright summer day
Of games in grassy fields
And sweet starry nights of gentle dreams--
A world where the only explosions
Would be the flash and fire
Of orange blossoms waving
In the peaceful morning
Of a new day.

--Timothy Haut, July 2,  2014

A Deep River Year
June 25,  2014

The carnival set up on the ball field down the street last weekend.   We walked over on Friday evening, one of the sweet, long days of the year.   We watched our granddaughters race from ride to ride, giggling as they whipped around on the Tilt-a-Whirl and Cobra.   The youngest persuaded her dad to go with her on the Ferris Wheel and something called the Sizzler, and it was a good thing that she didn’t ask me.   Things that make me dizzy and sick to my stomach have lost most of their appeal for me.  

I used to like these things better than I do now—especially the joy of being with friends and sharing an adrenalin rush as we went spinning around, rising and falling.  But I’ve had some misadventures on these things, too.  A few years ago when my own kids were young, I was standing at the gate to one of the rides—a kind of gigantic pendulum—waiting for the screaming to cease.   As the kids came racing off the ride, one of them erupted his yet undigested hot dog and cotton candy all over my shoes.  And then there was the time when my wife and I were at one of the huge theme parks in Florida, and we wound up on something called “the Tower of Terror.”  It was an elevator ride to the top of a several-story structure, and when you got to the top, the whole thing made a precipitous drop.  At the end of the ride, I raced around to get in line to do it again, missing the fact that my wife was crying and shaking on a bench down below.   That took something of the thrill away.

And thrills are the attraction of a carnival, no doubt.   But for me, now, the things that thrill me most have changed.    This weekend we went to the carnival to eat cheeseburgers and fried dough, as well as to watch our granddaughters in their joy.   Lily won a life-size  inflatable green alien for ringing the bell on that sledge-hammer midway game, and there was a sweet nostalgia about being there in the long light of a June evening as young teenagers held hands and imagined being in love.  Phyllis and I walked home, hand in hand, hoping we might catch a glimpse of the rose-breasted grosbeak on the feeder by the back door.    

June Night

The carnival has come to town,
And we are pulled in by its magic:
Music, and the cries of midway barkers,
Laughter under the glittering lights,
And wild, unfettered screams of joy
Rising in a moment of wild abandon,
And once again the world is young.
But she and I turn toward home
As rose streaks the sky
And the first stars welcome the night.
We look for fireflies on the meadow,
Listen for the tender song of crickets,
The soft ringing of wind chimes,
And perhaps the flutter of wings
As a bird seeks a roost in the trees.
We pause here, at the last edge of day
At the fulcrum of the year
And are content
With our simple thrills
As the earth spins us round again
Together.

--Timothy Haut, June 25,  2014

A Deep River Year
June 18  2014

For the first time in over sixty years, a graduation took place on the stage of our old Town Hall Auditorium.    The last previous crop of high school graduates who scrawled their signatures on the wall backstage  are mostly gone,  and these 54 sixth-graders still have a while to go before they march to Pomp and Circumstance to get their high school diplomas.    But last night's was a signal moment nonetheless.   Under the grand chandelier above them, wistful parents and grandparents leaned forward in their seats to watch their bright-eyed, suddenly grown-up looking young men and women march across the stage to receive their "certificates of promotion" to Middle School. 

One of them was my perfect twelve-year-old granddaughter.    There will be other rites of passage throughout her life, as there have been for most of us.   She will fixate over her outfit and peer out at a gathered audience to catch the eye of someone who loves her.   I know that most of the time, that person she looks for will be someone other than me.    Still, I hope to be there to add my applause and cheers, and sometimes my prayers, as she steps out to graduate, or perform in a concert or play, or get married, or deliver a speech, or have a baby.  And I hope I will be there, too, at some of those passages that happen quietly, unnoticed by the rest of the world.

These occasions allow us stop and remember how quickly it goes--this life.   We recall our own passages:   the day my voice cracked for the first time in Bill Coolidge's basement;  an unexpected kiss from sweet Norma on a science field trip;  riding down a country road in my first, oil-burning, car;  watching my grandmother slowly die.    And then I remember this:   Once, in 7th grade, we were asked to write something about an animal.   Most of the kids wrote about cats and dogs.  I wrote a poem about lemmings.   The teacher gave me a zero, because she didn't think it was possible that a 7th grade could come up with something that original.   I felt the sudden turning of the world, the road that veers into the heart of darkness. People hurt us, disbelieve in us.   We feel betrayed.  Pomp and Circumstance helps me come out of it again.

Pomp and Circumstance
 
Who is there watching

as we make such a crossing?
Not just the walk across the stage,
the hand stretched out to ours
in salute, or pride, or sympathy.
But the steps we take
into what we cannot know.
Who is there
who knows the price  we have paid for this,
who has seen us through
the tender losses
and dares to tell us that there is
some goodness yet to come?
And if we make some passage today or tomorrow,
if we leave a part of ourselves behind
as we seek a new place to be,
will someone be there
to give us a day of roses to remember?
Will there be a rustling in honeysuckle so sweet
that the world will stop and smile?
Will there be a kiss on the cheek, salted with tears?
And when we make the last of our crossings,
who will be there watching?
At the last, will there be someone
to call out our name,
leaving an echo of joy to linger in the air?

--Timothy Haut, June 18,  2014

A Deep River Year
June 11  2014

Thursday is June’s full moon—the Strawberry Moon.   The name comes from our Native Americans, who  knew that the season for gathering these sweet, red berries was a brief and wonderful time, and perhaps they celebrated by feasting under the month’s wondrous full moon.  Some of them called these fruits “heart-berries,” and it’s not difficult to figure out why if you hold one in your hand and look at it.   They cherished these little fruits as one of the earth's first and sweetest gifts.   Even modern scientists agree that strawberries are good for the heart, help reduce blood pressure, and may even have anti-aging properties.

Last Sunday afternoon our local historical society had its annual Strawberry Social in the carriage house across the street.   They served strawberry shortcake the correct way, with biscuits and not sponge cake, and it was topped with real cream whipped by the president of the society who has been the official whipper for many years.    For many years one of the old members actually grew the strawberries in the field back behind the old Stone House.   Everyone always hoped that the berries would ripen in time for the festival, and that the day for picking would be fair and gentle.  Now, I think, they get  the fruit from the local grocery store, and that is a little disappointing, even though I ate the whole shortcake and licked the plate.

These days you can get strawberries almost year-round, as you can peaches, asparagus, blueberries and tomatoes.   It is a luxury we take for granted, even though these gifts of earth don’t quite taste the same when they are shipped thousands of miles and are bred for travel-hardiness instead of flavor.  No winter strawberry tastes like ones you can pick yourself.   When my children were little, we would wait for some sunny June day and head off to the strawberry field to pick a box full.   Later those berries would become jams and pies and topping for shortcake; and some would be frozen for a cold, gray day when we needed a taste of summer.   But the best ones were those eaten right there in the field, warm, sweet--the ones which left a red ring around your mouth--the ones which made your heart glad to be alive.

Heart Berries

We weary of the bitterness,
the aching disappointment
when a hopeful day
turns tasteless on our lips.
Then some green morning
a red heart shows among the leaves,
warm as the sun.
And this glory that fills
our mouth,
is light itself,
and joy,
and June explodes
for one bright moment,
runs down our cheek,
drips on chin and fingers,
makes us red with desire.
Then  we are child,
the world ripe before us,
and, for a moment,
 we grow sweet
again.

--Timothy Haut, June 11,  2014

A Deep River Year
June 4,  2014

June has come, with its long afternoons and the deepest green  of the year.   The warm, settled, summer days have yet to come, and the roses, usually in full bloom by now, are just beginning to break out of their tight buds.   And the hillside laurel, which by now usually decks the landscape as if a wedding were about to take place, is late this year, too.    But the iris and rhododendron are glorious, and here and there other surprises have begun to reveal themselves. 

Hidden at the edge of the terrace are lovely pink stalks of wood hyacinth, and the trillium has opened its secret blooms deep in the shade where no one would ever see it if they didn’t know where to look.   Today or tomorrow I will take a walk in Canfield Woods to see if I have missed the lady slippers where they come and go so quickly in a wet, shady grove just off a turn in the trail.   It is a challenge to catch these seasonal visitors at the moment they appear.  Wait too long and they are gone.     That is what happened, I think, to the jack-in-the-pulpit that grows near our back door.   Away for a long weekend, we returned to find little Jack limp and shriveled under his three-leaf cover.

I have always especially loved jack-in-the-pulpits.   I have vague memories of my grandmother, but one of the clearest is walking down the path behind her little house to look for the jack-in-the-pulpits in the shade.   She would lift the curving green leaf and smile as she pointed to little “Jack” peeking out from his shelter, almost as if we had found a friend who had once disappeared and now come back.    And we had. 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit

 Some treasures
Are shy visitors,
Hiding in shadows
Or peering at us
From their secret dwellings.
Busy at our important labors,
We lumber past
These gentle faces
That will not be with us long
And miss
Their tender blessing.

--Timothy Haut, June 4,  2014