_{“Lucy Barton, the stories you told me, for all that I could tell–had very little point to them. Okay, okay, maybe they had subtle points to them. I don’t know what the point is to this story!”
“People,” Lucy said quietly, leaning back, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.’
“Exactly,” Olive nodded.} —Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

In Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything, writer Lucy Barton makes weekly visits to 92-year-old Olive Kittredge who lives in a care facility. They meet to share stories. Wasting no time with small talk, one or the other begins with “So, here’s the story.” Both occupy that rare space of being heard. They tolerate each other’s interruptions, for they understand the stories they spin often need clarification and elaboration to make them come fully alive.

When Olive becomes frustrated during one of Lucy’s stories and demands that she reveal the point, Lucy answers: “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” These are stories of ordinary people living their lives, lives that both women narrate with uncommon care. Throughout this novel, I was struck with the same sentiment that a younger Olive Kittredge once shared: “All these lives,” she said. “All the stories we never know.” (Strout, Olive Kittredge) And I kept thinking how wonderful it would be if everyone’s stories could be told, their lives becoming known in the telling, their stories heard.

For decades when I taught the narrative essay, I was met with collective groans from my students who insisted that nothing important had ever happened to them, that they had no stories to tell. I knew what they were thinking: Hollywood producers would never visit their homes to hear the stories that would become feature films or Netflix mini-series. They were thinking there was no point to the stories they might tell. And yet, like all of us, they did have stories to tell, and their stories were poignant, funny, terrifying, and sad. They were people living their uncommonly common lives.

In this novel, Strout also develops the friendship between Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, friends who walk frequently, so Bob can smoke his one secret cigarette away from the watchful eyes of his wife, the Unitarian minister. Their friendship is founded on the assurance that each will be heard by the other. Lucy often looks expectantly at Bob and says, “Tell me everything, Bob.” As they pour out their experiences in the intimacy of this friendship, they rest in the assurance they won’t be rushed or judged; they’re confident they’ll be heard. There’s something remarkable about how Lucy and Bob not only invest in each other but in so many others. Throughout their small community, people and their stories are being heard every day.

American author Barry Lopez’s novel, Crow and Weasel, is mythic fable of self-discovery. In it, Lopez contends that sharing stories is a powerful way to care for people:

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.

It seems serendipitous that everything I’ve read in the past few months has revealed this truth. In Chris Whitaker’s New York Times best-selling novel, All the Colors of the Dark, the protagonist, Patch, is abducted and held captive with Grace, who’s also been abducted and abused by their captor. Both seek to survive their captivity by telling each other stories so that, though blinded by the abject darkness of their basement cell, they can see these settings and events vividly, as if they’re living lives far from the despair of their imprisonment. After Patch is ultimately freed, he’s obsessed with the girl whose stories sustained him. The words of these stories echo through his memory, compelling him to search for her in hopes that she, too, somehow escaped. For weeks, Grace kept Patch alive, her stories feeding his imagination and fueling his desire to live. These stories, as Lopez says, “have a way of taking care” of people.

In an interview with Book Browse, Elizabeth Strout spoke openly about what she hoped to give her readers:

I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. . . . I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love in the face of a variety of difficulties; that the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect.

The stories of our lives–of most people’s lives–are generally quotidian. That is, they are stories of ordinary people living their lives. And these lives, as Strout maintains, are often difficult and always worthy of respect. Yet, too often we discount the value and impact of these stories. Too often, we’re not the tell me everything kind of folk, neglecting to take the time and make the space for stories that deserve to be heard. In the sanctuary of such stories, however, we can learn much more about what it means to be human. This is holy ground where the lives of those we love and meet become the stories we remember and revere. Here, we discover heroes and heroines who endure the trials of our shared human condition and fallen world.

And this, as Lucy Barton insists, is the point of every story: though the settings and circumstances are unique (and oh so fascinating!), all people live, love, and endure all sorts of things. This theme is universally human. Although I try not to be discouraged, my years of teaching has given me cause for concern. Generally speaking, my students struggled to actively listen. Fed on a flashy diet of sound bites, Instagram posts, and TikTok videos, they weren’t in shape to listen to anything that took more than a couple minutes to deliver. Truth be told, they didn’t want me to tell them everything; they wanted me to tell them little and tell it quickly, to offer them a Reader’s Digest condensed version on a platter. A story, real or fictional, deserves the time and space to be told well. Most of my students didn’t have the will or skill to hear and read such stories. Regrettably, neither do many adults who often mentally will storytellers to “just get on with it.”

I’m not certain what it would take to ensure that more of us are in shape enough to enter the sanctuary of a good story. The training program, I fear, would be rigorous and time-consuming. Can you imagine meeting with 92-year-old Olive Kittredge or walking with Bob Burgess and setting aside time for them to tell you everything? Can you imagine listening with the same intensity and interest as you give an Audible book, living vicariously through each scene, holding your breath as the action rises, climaxes, and falls, and leaning into what it means to share this human condition? Can you imagine caring for people by hearing and sharing their stories?

Certainly there are those who have recorded and continue to record the life stories of ordinary people. These are the writers, the documentary producers, the journalists, and family members who make these stories available for interested readers and viewers. Through their efforts, I’ve learned about the lives of those who homesteaded the Sandhills of Nebraska, who endured the ghettos and concentration camps of WWII, and who’ve navigated the poverty of Appalachia, India, and so many other places. I’m grateful for these stories which transport me into lives that deserve my attention and respect.

What I’m proposing, however, is something for those of us ordinary people quietly living our lives. I’m hoping that more of us might be like Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess, intentionally making space and time for others’ stories. I’m suggesting that we might be better listeners who help others to feel “heard.” I’m envisioning a world in which more common people recognize the uncommon worth of their life stories. And I’m praying I’ll be patient enough not to grumble about the length of another’s story or its apparent lack of a point, patient and wise enough to remember, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.”

photo by Collyn Ware, Griffin age 2

How do you like to go up in a swing,
   Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
   Ever a child can do!  --Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Swing"

These were the first lines of poetry I ever memorized. Poem #33 from Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses was my favorite. From the time I opened my book–a birthday or Christmas gift, I forget which–I loved everything about “The Swing”: the illustration, the rhythm and glorious rhyme, the way it lifted me from the page into the reverie of flying through the air. There is real magic in a swing. When the world drags me to the mat, give me a good swing where I can pump my legs until I’m “Up in the air and over the wall,/ Till I can see so wide/ Rivers and trees and cattle and all/Over the countryside–” Everything is better from the seat of a swing.

In poet Robert Frost’s “Birches,” he writes of a boy who rides birch trees. He laments “when life is too much like a pathless wood” that he’d “like to get away from earth awhile”:

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.

He concedes, however, that “earth is the right place for love” and cautions that he doesn’t want some fate to misunderstand him, whisking him away forever. As child, I understood this as I swung for sky on the swingset in my backyard. I liked to go “toward heaven” but was happy to return to earth again. While some children had imaginary friends, I had Ginny and Susie, my red swings. I told them secrets and sung them made-up songs. I loved them, and earth was the right place for this love.

There are no more swings at my house. My husband recently removed the swingset we’d erected for my grandchildren who’ve outgrown the small yellow rubber seats that hung a few child-safe inches from the ground. And the two bigger swings that hung from the glorious oak in their yard are gone, too. A summer storm took the old oak and left a sunny spot where, for years, we’d taken refuge to swing in the shade. The absence of these swings haunts me. I can still see my grandchildren, heads thrown back, legs kicking out, shoes flung off. I can feel the rush of wind, hear the creak of the chains as we work them hard. And I remember their cries, “Do it again, Grandma!” as I push with all my might to give them an under-doggy.

Children grow up, and the heaven of childhood may live in memories on a swingless earth. This is the way of things. And though “earth is the right place for love,” some of us may find ourselves saying, “But not this earth. Not this place where the sweet days of swinging and singing and opening new boxes of Crayola crayons have left us. Not these days when we sit alone in a house once littered with toys and smeared with the remnants of sticky fingers. Not this life of repurposing ourselves as ones who look on from the sidelines. Certainly, not this.”

And yet, it is this. Swinging takes us up and away, only to return us to where we began. The absolute rush of reaching the peak of a swing’s arc is shortlived. We gasp, we feel the bottom of our stomachs drop, and then it’s over. We can make it happen again, as we pump our legs to keep up the momentum. But we can’t make this one incredible moment last for more than a second or two. This moment is a brief but wonderful gift.

Gifts such as these give us glimpses of heaven on earth. Whether we’re transported by swings, by experiences or memories, we escape momentarily from the world. And, thankfully, from ourselves–that is, from selves that are too often burdened with fear, insecurity, anger, and despair. These moments may open our eyes and hearts in surprising ways. And when they do, we pray the words from the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” and really mean them. For we begin to understand how heaven visits earth in childhood, in hillsides of autumn colors, in final visits with loved ones, and in all those moments that delight and bless us. We begin to understand that even as these moments transform us, we, in turn, have the power to transform the earth in small, yet heavenly ways.

Of course, from time to time, we can expect to be grounded. Herein lies the magic in a swing, though. In the midst of the world’s brokenness, we’ve only to pump our legs again, pushing up towards that sweet spot at the end of the chain, and believing as Robert Frost claimed: “one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

In our view, liberal education requires that students, like rowers, face backward in order to move forward. If they are to become active and reflective individuals, they must learn to regard the past not merely as the crime scene of bygone ages, but as the record of human possibilities—an always unfinished tapestry of admirable and shameful lives, noble and base deeds. . . [they must] allow themselves to be inwardly formed and cultivated by the classics—what the English critic Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said.” –Jacob Howland, “What the Freshman Class Needs to Read,” The Atlantic, August 24, 2024

During the past year, I’ve read a bevy of journal articles making much ado about liberal education. Some pronounce the death of it, bestowing last rites to humanities majors; others defend its inclusion in our universities, and still others argue for its renaissance in a culture that has increasingly abandoned it. In light of these diverse views, I read Howland’s Atlantic article, “What the Freshman Class Needs to Read” with guarded interest.

He had me at the claim that students, like rowers, face backward in order to move forward. He’s clearly not performing burial rites for liberal arts, I thought, as he cited Matthew Arnold’s defense of the classics as “the best which has been thought and said.” Howland described a classic work as one “with imperishable cultural vitality,” offering the Hebrew Bible and Homer’s Iliad as examples. He contends that [“a] liberal education must begin at the beginning, where strange, beguiling voices of the distant past speak with authority of what it means to be human.”

As I read on, Howland preached to the choir of liberal arts proponents in passages like this:

Today’s students tend to value social influence more than human excellence. Worse, they pay more heed to antiheroes—people who tear down civilization—than heroes: those who protect, repair, and rebuild it. So, at the outset of their studies, we think undergraduates should encounter not just thinkers and writers but also founders, doers, leaders, and pioneers such as Abraham and Socrates, da Vinci and Mozart, Lincoln and Churchill. They should study the works of great men, to use another unfashionable phrase, but also of great women: Sojourner Truth and Malala Yousafzai, Ada Lovelace and Lise Meitner. It is no small part of a liberal education to show students the broad range of meaningful lives they might aspire to lead.

Like Howland, I believe a liberal arts education is valuable and that much ado should be made about it. I concede my bias, but I also acknowledge my familiarity with opposing arguments, namely that a liberal arts education is impractical, colonialist, exclusive, elitist, and irrelevant. Certainly, good arguments can–and should–be made for including new and diverse voices in the literary canon and for acknowledging centuries of “white-washing.” I’ve heard and read these arguments for years. I’ve seen major textbook companies flush the likes of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner from their anthologies because they were dead, white males who were no longer relevant and represented the worst of our paternalistic practices.

And I’ve witnessed cultural and literary flattening. Turning away from classic works, many postmodernists reject tragic heroes and, instead, embrace antiheroes. My father referred to this as “writing down.” In the introduction to his collection, Greatest Hits: Don Welch 1975-2001, he commented on his poem, “The Unicorn:”

“The Unicorn” is a poem about the loss of belief, especially the nihilism of the second half of the century. Beginning with the 1960’s it became fashionable to talk down, dress down, act down, eat down, and believe down, although there was also a small effort to dream up.

Like Howland, my father valued a liberal arts education because it offers the kind of heroes who protect, repair, and rebuild civilization, who dream up and value the pursuit of human excellence. The last time I taught Hemingway’s classic novel, The Old Man and the Sea, to a group of high school students, I was met with collective groans about its value. What’s the point? they asked. It’s just 128 pages of a pathetic old guy losing his battle with a big fish, they whined. (One student did, however, point out that the book was relatively short, the only marginally positive comment from the group.) In spite of my best efforts, few students embraced Santiago’s heroism. They’d flattened Hemingway’s hero into a loser, failing to honor his efforts to dream up.

At my university alma mater, students currently must enroll in only one 3-hour humanities course to meet the General Studies requirements for graduation. Here, as in other universities, a liberal arts education for many students has been reduced to a single semester course. In some of these institutions, you might not be able to major in philosophy or literature because they’ve cut these majors and have decimated their respective departments. The message seems all too clear: Out with the old, in with the new.

So much for looking backward in order to move forward. Too often we seem hellbent to move forward without giving much thought to the past. For years, I heard educational experts tout the benefits of technology in the classroom. Just teach students how to use it, they argued, and watch the progress we’ll make with student achievement. But consider the research on how this technology affects brain chemistry, how we’re losing the ability to memorize, to perform basic math, to read critically, and–this is the big one–to think for ourselves. And consider the schools who are now going “old school” with print materials and no-cell phone policies. They’re looking backwards to the days before the proliferation of technology in order to move forward. Their answer to progress seems clear: Out with the new, and back in with the old.

A day after I’d read Howland’s article, I discovered Ezekial Emmanuel’s article, “The Worst Advice Parents Can Give First-Year Students” (The Atlantic, August 25, 2024). He opens by featuring Ben Franklin’s curiosity and desire to improve the world and argues that parents should promote such values:

When parents send their children off to college, they need to encourage them not to focus on narrow careers but to acquire the sort of all-purpose intellectual skills that allowed Franklin to thrive: the ability to ask deep questions and wrestle with big issues like human equality, the limits of individual freedom, and justice. Students need to learn how to reason critically; to distinguish bad, baseless ideas from deep and eternal insights; to justify their views; and to express those views lucidly enough for others to grasp. These skills have proved essential for thousands of years and will never become obsolete.

Of course, he knows that “[m]ost universities are no longer set up to impart such skills, having deemphasized their core curricula in favor of offering more and more specialized majors and courses.” He understands that it’s become increasingly difficult to find the kind of liberal arts education in which students wrestle with big issues, learn to reason, read, listen, and communicate critically.

Emmanuel concedes that higher tuition costs have driven students, parents, and society to “adopt a narrow investment approach to higher education,” with hopes for “tangible returns denoted in postgraduate salaries.” Still, he argues for the benefits a liberal arts education–as opposed to “career training”–may provide:

Despite this, college students should take a wide range of courses and resist being pushed into majoring in business, economics, or computer science by default. Who knows what transformative insights and ideas they might gain from courses in art history, or the great American plays, or ancient political philosophy, or Russian novels? Serendipity is what makes college a truly educational experience, not just career training.

Whether or not to preserve and promote a liberal arts education may be more than an ideological battle, though. We may be forced to limit or abandon liberal arts courses simply because we can’t find the people to teach them. I recently learned of some high schools in the Nebraska Sandhills who’ve hired their English teachers from the Phillipines. For years, we’ve outsourced physicians from around the world to serve our rural areas, but English teachers? Students enrolled in high school English courses do much more than learn to speak and write the language well. Traditionally, they learn to read and think critically, to speak and write effectively, and to discover “the best which has been thought and said.” In the years to come, will we be tasked with finding American literature teachers from outside of America? Or will we choose to abandon such courses altogether as we narrow our curriculum and shift our priorities to career training?

Let me be clear: I’m a proponent of career training–just not at the expense of the liberal arts. We can, and should, embrace both. In light of this, we should be alarmed by the cuts to K-12 and postsecondary liberal arts programs. We should consider the efficacy of moving forward without looking back. And we should make much ado about this, for it is something worthy of serious consideration.

Photo by Michal Mancewicz, Unsplash

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark… Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas – a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. –Jodi Picoult, My Sisters’ Keeper

It’s 10:38, and I’ve just opened my Kindle to read in bed when my phone buzzes. It’s a FaceTime call from my grandson, Griffin. When I answer, he says, “Oh sorry, Grandma, I didn’t know you’d be in bed yet.” I assure him that I’ve just started to read when, a bit breathless, he blurts, “Do you want to come over on the deck and watch for meteors with me?”

I throw on some clothes, grab a blanket and flashlight, and make my way over to his house where he’s lying on a yoga mat, eyes fixed on the night sky. His dogs announce my arrival as I make my way up the deck stairs. He pats the mat to his right, inviting me to take my assigned position beside him. And we lie there, a whole grammar made of light above us, the night is falling down around us. For a few perfect moments, we take it all in: the silence, the starlit sky, the companionship.

And then his bright words percolate through the dark. He’s teaching me all he knows about the Milky Way, the speed of light, the night sky. With the patience of a good teacher, he warns me not to be fooled by the flashing lights of planes. You might think it’s a meteor, he cautions, but look closely for the three blinking lights. As he spots small meteors, he turns to me, hopeful. Did you see it, Grandma? Chastened, I admit that I didn’t. How can he see these small flashes? How can he, a boy who struggles to sit still for more than 60 seconds, remain so vigilant? Still, he continues his narration of interesting celestial facts as he encourages me to keep moving my eyes around the sky.

I feel him put his hand on my forearm and turn to see him pointing toward the northern sky. There, he motions, did you see it? I’m disappointing him. I’m disappointing myself. After 10 minutes of sky-watching, I haven’t seen a single meteor. But just as I’m ready to confess my failure, we both gasp as a meteor streaks across the west. I saw it! I say, That was awesome! He’s smiling as he admits that this was an even bigger one than he’d seen the night before. I’m smiling because I can see how happy he is that his tutelage has been successful.

We lie there in a post-game reverie, recounting the moment we both saw the meteor, declaring its beauty, and sharing our great joy. Above, the Milky Way stretches a filmy trail, a plane bisects our view, and pair of bats swoops perilously low. Bats! Griffin says. We giggle and pull our blankets over our heads. Emerging to find more bats flitting above us, he announces that he’s ready to call it a night.

As I walk the 100 yards home to my house, I navigate the familiar terrain with my face turned to the sky. But I don’t see another meteor. And it doesn’t matter. I shared one with Griffin, and this was more than enough.

Days later, I’ve been thinking about the shared moments my grandson and I’ve had. Earlier this summer as we were feeding the fish in our pond, we witnessed our favorite Koi swimming so closely to the edge that we might’ve reached out to touch them. They’ve been notoriously coy (forgive the bad pun!), hiding out in the shadowy eastern corner where it’s almost impossible to see them. On this night, however, flashing their fan tails and brilliant colors, they swam leisurely back and forth along the bank. Having just thrown the last handfuls of food into the pond, we turned to each other, smiling. That was awesome! he exclaimed. We could see them so clearly! It was Diesel and Angel-–oh, and Pumpkin swam by once, too! I nodded. Griffin has named all the Koi, and only we can identify them by name. I hope we see Camo next time, he said. He’s old and might not be around for long. In the June twilight, we walked back from the pond together without talking. I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking, that, at 69, I might not be around for long.

I hoped he wasn’t, but I remembered a stormy night months before when we’d lost power. I called my daughter to see if they needed extra flashlights, volunteering to bring some over. In the background, I heard Griffin say, Don’t let her come over, Mom. She’s old, and we need her to survive. I chuckled and remarked, I don’t think my survival is at stake! But at 10, he did.

Recently, I’ve recognized how he’s assumed the role of caretaker. Last night he asked if I was o.k. to drive our sport utility vehicle home. I can back it up for you, he offered. When I assured him that I’d be fine, he watched me back out of his driveway and head for home. Like an anxious parent, he watched until he could no longer see me before he turned to go inside.

Lately, when I pitch the whiffle ball to him, he’s taken to walking into the outfield with me as I retrieve his balls. Sometimes he stoops to pick up the ball and hand it to me; other times, he just accompanies me as I retrieve it. In part, he does this out of gratitude that I’m willing to pitch and retrieve his balls. But in part, I fear he does this because he sees that I’m walking–not running–to field balls, that he knows I’m no spring chicken. Sometimes as we walk together, we talk about baseball; most often, however, we just walk in companionable silence, content just to be together. Between us, there is a whole grammar made of light where no words are necessary.

Last night, he wanted to drive me around in our sport utility vehicle. There is one particular stretch of gravel drive that invites speed. Instructing me to watch the speedometer as he sped up the hill, he pushed the accelerator. As he slowed at the top of the drive (he’s actually a really good–and safe–driver), he turned to me expectantly. 22 mph, I said. Grinning, he said, I just love this, don’t you? When I hit the gas, you’ll always see a smile that comes so eagerly to my face. I smiled and thought: What 11-year-old says uses adverbs like “eagerly”? He’s amazing, truly amazing.

At the risk of sounding corny and cliched, these moments are priceless. I’m painfully aware that Griffin is at the cusp of adolescence, a period during which he’ll undoubtedly want to spend time most of his time with peers–not his grandma. Perhaps it’s this awareness that sweetens our shared moments. These moments are meteors which flash brightly–and quickly. They are the exclamation points that punctuate my life.

How good it is to look sometimes across great spaces, to lift one’s eyes from narrowness, to feel the large silence that rests on lonely hills!
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen

“Too many trees,” my father said as we stood behind my home looking out at the treeline which had grown into its June fullness. Years ago, my parents had come to visit our new home in rural Iowa, an area abundant with hardwoods and hills. As we stood together, I tried to look through my father’s eyes at the timber I’d come to love. How could there be too many trees? I thought, turning my head to the sky to admire the overstory of large cottonwoods that flashed their waxy leaves like iridescent scales in the noonday sun. “It makes me feel a bit claustrophic,” he explained, “hemmed in.” A native Nebraskan who spent summers on his grandmother’s farm in the Sandhills, my father loved wind and wide open spaces. If he could’ve raised a staff to part this treeline, he would’ve. If he could’ve opened a way forward towards the distant ridge, he would’ve breathed more easily.

Recently, I drove from my Iowa home to my daughter’s home in Great Falls, Montana. A 19-hour roadtrip, this drive is not for the faint of heart. As I made my way across South Dakota, I recalled the jokes I’d endured when I moved to Iowa. One of my colleagues took great pleasure in catching me before a college break to wish me a good holiday in Kansas or Oklahoma or South Dakota. He smirked as he delivered his well wishes and safe travels, playfully refusing to identify my home state as Nebraska. Once in a defensive moment, I asked him what he had against Nebraska. He shrugged and smiled, remarking that Nebraska was a drive-through state, a necessary inconvenience on the way to great ski resorts and some of the nation’s most popular parks. With painful realization, I saw that my home state was little but an ellipsis in the travel plans of many who ventured west.

In her 1904 travel story, The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen, English novelist Elizabeth von Arnim celebrates the great spaces which rescue us from life’s narrowness. She would’ve found a kindred spirit in Nebraska author, Willa Cather. Cather’s love for the prairie is evident in her novel, My Antonia:

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.

As I drove across the prairies in South Dakota, I felt just this–the whole country running before me, the land stretching endlessly towards a suggestion of horizon. I felt my soul open. It was like shedding clothes, letting the the open road pull me forward. My only companions were sun and sky and land and silence. It was magnificent.

Oh, I’m well aware there are risks for a woman driving alone across a land where there are often no services for miles (as in nothing!) And I confess that there were moments when I felt particularly vulnerable, all that space unfolding before and around me, all that silence threatening to undo me. But most of the time, I felt particularly grateful for the wide open spaces. You would love this, Dad, I said aloud as I left Rapid City, South Dakota and headed into Montana. And knowing this made me happier than I could say.

Poet, novelist, and rancher Linda Hasselstrom grew up on a cattle ranch in western South Dakota, a family ranch homesteaded in 1899. For years she hosted writing retreats on her family ranch, offering residents an opportunity to understand and love the prairie as she did. She claimed that “[u]nless one has lived thus, intimately with the prairie, it is a universe difficult to understand, to feel” (“Thunder Butte: High, Solemn, and Holy,” in Land Circle, 1991). The prairie is, indeed, a difficult universe for many to understand and impossible for many to love. It’s an acquired taste developed from living intimately with a land others snub as “fly-over or drive-through” territory. If driving alone through this region is not for the faint of heart, just imagine the challenges of living as a female rancher here.

I’ve long admired the prairie photography of Solomon D. Butcher, who set out to photograph the history of pioneer life in Nebraska. Between 1886 and 1912, he enmassed a collection of more than 3,000 photographs. Many of his photographs are stark reminders of just how tough it was to survive the prairie’s many challenges. Families stood in front of sod homes that rose humbly from the prairie, not a tree or another structure in sight. Or they stood around a child’s grave, wearing their Sunday best as they paid homage to a life that might have been. Many families created unique tableaus, hauling their finest possessions out of their homes and arranging them in the yard as backdrops for their photos. One prairie woman instructed her family to move her pump organ a quarter mile away, so their crude sod home wouldn’t be seen in the photo. There, she arranged her husband and children around the pump organ, a piece of culture to impress–and allay the fears of–the family back east. Several of Butcher’s photos feature trees, animals, and people that he actually inked into the finished works. In his photograph, “Lookout Point Near the Snake River, Circa 1890,” he drew in 7 trees, 2 horses, and a man. Perhaps he thought that eastern folk just wouldn’t have the stomach for photographs of endless land and sky. Perhaps he feared that they’d see nothing when he saw something, that they simply didn’t have eyes to see the wonder of the great grasslands. Perhaps he, like writer Randy Winter, feared that they might look at the prairie and “see a great emptiness, a void that staggers the psyche and leaves much too much room for a mind to wander” (“Nature Notes”, 1987).

In Cather’s novel, O Pioneers!, her protagonist, Alexandra Bergson, settles in Hanover, Nebraska where she’s determined to farm. Through the years, Bergson grows to understand the power and endurance of this land:

The land belongs to the future, Carl; that’s the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it–for a little while.

A century later, I felt as Bergson did as I drove west across the prairie. The land is always here, and we own it but for a little while. At least, I hope that the land will always be here, for its loss would be immeasurable.

When I pulled into my daughter’s driveway in Great Falls, I took a deep breath and stretched, willing my 69-year-old bones to move after 2 full days of driving. Later that night when I eased myself into bed and closed my eyes, I could still feel the hum of the car on the road, feel the grasses, like waves, washing up on the shore of my soul. I could see a herd of pronghorn antelope grazing near a herd of cattle, see the sun, a bright tangerine ball, suspended in a sky veiled with smoke from Canadian wildfires. I could hear the sound of my own breathing, the words I spoke into the silence of my car. I could feel and see and hear all of this, and it was good.

And lying there, I understood what Cather’s Antonia felt when she said, “If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. . . I felt what would be would be.” There are times when feeling erased and blotted out isn’t painful but wonderful. To stand between earth and sky, to succumb to a geography where what would be would be can be a freeing thing. And a humbling thing. On the prairie, one can feel blessedly small and grateful for the immensity and wonder of creation. Here, one might be content to simply drive without arriving at any particular place. In these wide open spaces, one might roll down the windows, turn off the radio, and escape the narrowness that too often defines us.

for Nicole

Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass. –Nicola Yoon, The Sun is Also a Star

I’ve always had a thing for names. I first became aware of this as I surveyed my new box of 64 Crayola crayons. What a smorgasbord of names, a veritable feast for name-afficianados like me! Periwinkle, aquamarine, salmon, maize, emerald, fuschia, raw umber, orchid, tangerine, cerulean! As I pulled each crayon from the three-tiered box, I marveled at how its name was a perfect identity marker. To become a crayon namer, to examine the 64 perfectly pointed crayons and christen them with perfectly chosen names! Be still my heart! In time, I sorted and moved my favorite crayons to the top tier, vowing to keep their points for as long as I could resist using them. Even at 8, I felt something magical in these names. In late July when I see the aisles of school supplies begin to emerge, I still make a pass through the crayon section. As I stand in front of these big box crayons with new and spectacular names (macaroni and cheese, banana mania, Granny Smith apple, wild blue yonder, jazzberry jam, and timberwolf) I’m grounded in the time and geography of childhood. A name can do this: provide a kind of map to particular moments and memories.

British poet W. H. Auden claims that “[p]roper names are poetry in the raw.” I became school-age in the 60s when a name like Shannon was relatively exotic in a field saturated with Debbies and Julies. And I loved this. I loved that my name was unusual, that it sounded like a poem to my ears. When I began considering names for my own children, I spoke them aloud often, trying them on, listening to how the first, middle, and last names worked together. I rejected many combinations as being too flat. I wanted something musical and memorable. And I wanted my children to love their names as I loved mine. Above all, I wanted them to know that their naming had been a sacred act, for “[a] good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” (Proverbs 22:1).

So, what if you aren’t blessed with a beautiful name? What if your name is common or odd? What if the very sound of it–its combination of consonants and vowels–jars the senses? In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People,” the protagonist’s mother refuses to call her daughter by the name she’d chosen for herself. O’ Connor writes: “When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it.” Although I’m certain there are worse fates, a name that evokes the broad blank hull of a battleship must come with a unique set of challenges.

Children’s novelist Katherine Patterson writes: “The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it.” I often shudder when I hear the names that some parents have consciously–or unconsciously–given their children. My dad told the story of a brother and sister in his hometown whose names sadly shaped others’ attitudes towards them. What were their parents thinking when they named their children Harry and Rosie Rump? Consider, too, the name of my former student, Kinda Short. When I called roll on the first day of class, I hoped that my pronunciation of “Kinda” with a short i was accurate. But she corrected me quickly. It was “Kinda” with a long i. And tragically, she was kind of short. As I was chatting with a group of students before class one night, a young woman announced that her brother and his wife just had their first baby, a girl. “What’s her name?” I asked. She shrugged and said, “They’re still deciding. But they’re considering Twin Towers.” Twin Towers? Did I hear her right? This was a name straight out of the Frank Zappa playbook (remember Moon Unit and Dweezil?) In his short story, “The Scarlet Ibis,” James Hurst writes: “Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I ever did for him, because nobody expects much from someone called Doodle.” If this poor girl was to be saddled with a name like Twin Towers, I wanted the power to rename her, so that she might escape the legacy of terror and grief associated with her name. Renaming her would be, at the very least, an act of kindness. At best, it might save her life.

In L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea, we read a conversation in which Diana, Anne’s good friend, proposes a possible solution for an unfortunate name:

“That’s a lovely idea, Diana,” said Anne enthusiastically. “Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn’t beautiful to begin with… making it stand in people’s thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.”

To beautify one’s name, to make it memorable as something lovely and pleasant is a lovely thought. Like O’Connor’s fictional character, Hulga, my maternal grandfather, Wilbert Zorn, had a name that sounded like the broad blank hull of a battleship. He lived such a wonderful life, however, that he beautified it, softening its hard edges with sunny days spent on the banks of sandpits, a bucket of crawdads and a whole lot of love between us.

Recently, I commented on Nebraska photographer and blogger (Sandhills Prairie Girl), Nicole Louden’s post, confessing how much I love how she names things that populate the Sandhills. Naming things, I wrote, is a divine act, for it calls them into the significance they merit. Confucius argues that “[i]f names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.” Nicole’s pratice of using correct names for the things about which she writes and photographs endows her work with a truthfulness and a profound sense of place: not plant but “soapweed,” not wildflower but “pucoon,” not shore bird but “phalarope,” not moth but “cecropia moth.” How well she uses the power and the majesty of particular names!

And speaking of particular names, my favorites are the names of my grandchildren, Gracyn Mae and Griffin Jay. Though they are 11 and 14 now, I can’t say their names without remembering their births, their name days. When I say their names, I can feel the sweet weight of their infant bodies in my arms. I can hear the giggles of sleepovers, and I can see them sitting companionably on the dock at the end of a summer’s day. I want to speak their names, proclaiming, “Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name” (Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn). Melodramatic, maybe, but nontheless true.

In the past few years, I’ve begun to lament my inability to remember names. Often as soon as I hear a name in an introduction, it floats away like chaff in the wind. I hate this. For I know that naming is ultimately an intimate act of knowing and blessing. I want to be able to say “wild chicory” to distinguish it from other roadside plants. I want to be able to say, “Hi, Laura” to distinguish my friend from other women. In the sanctuary of naming, I take solace in the unmerited grace for those, like me, who occasionally forget. And when I can’t recall the name “periwinkle,” I take solace in the fact that, with patience, I’ll be able to retrieve this name eventually. For a name is a powerful thing, and no self-respecting periwinkle would answer to “blue”.

The housing crisis—and the arbitrary regulations that fuel it—are killing off places to eat whether we like it or not, designing loneliness into American floor plans. If dining space keeps dying, the U.S. might not have a chance to get it back. M. Nolan Gray, “America’s Loneliness Has a Concrete Explanation,” The Atlantic, June 10, 2024

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what my life would’ve been like without a family dining room. But I didn’t have to think too long or too hard to know this: my life would’ve been much poorer. I cut my teeth on the discussions held around our family dining table. I listened and learned, laughed and cried around this table. I sat in second-hand wooden chairs that looked innocently enough like Ducan Phyfe knock-offs, but were–by everyone’s admission– really torture devices. To leave the table, however, was unthinkable. To leave was to miss out. To leave was to declare that you weren’t made of sturdy stock, that, even when your butt had gone numb and you’d consumed gallons of liquid, you didn’t have what it took to remain in the conversation. This may sound like torture, but it was anything but.

In Gray’s recent Atlantic article, he reports that the death of the dining room plays a significant role in Americans’ loneliness, a condition that has only increased since the pandemic:

According to a 2015 report by the Food Marketing Institute, nearly half the time we spend eating is spent in isolation, a central factor in America’s loneliness epidemic and a correlate to a range of physical- and mental-health problems.

Gray cites real estate developer, Bobby Fijan who contends that “[t]he reason the dining room is disappearing is that we are allocating [our] limited space to bedrooms and walk-in closets” and that many apartments now offer only a kitchen island as a place to eat. This, Gray argues, is literally designing loneliness into American floor plans.

Yesterday when a neighbor stopped over for a visit, she commented on our large kitchen island. When we opened up our small galley kitchen, we built an octagonal island that seats 8-10 people. This is our dining room table, and we spend the majority of our family holidays and get-togethers around it. We play games and eat grilled burgers here. We share news and memories here. We celebrate birthdays with cake and homemade ice cream here. We drink coffee and watch the birds here. No one who gathers here is lonely; like those who value the dining room table, we intentionally designed fellowship into our floor plan.

When my children were young and we visited my parents over school breaks, I recall the utter joy at sitting at the dining room table after the kids were excused to play in the basement or outside. This table offered genuine adult conversation, and I sucked it up like a dry root. Add to this the fact that I could talk about teaching English with my father, and I felt as though I’d won the lottery. These hours rejuvenated me, sent me back to my classroom with new vigor and conviction. I would’ve been so much poorer, so much more discouraged and anxious without them.

Undoubtedly, most of us have read reports and testimonials regarding the impact of the cell phone on personal relationships. It goes without saying that the cell phone has played a significant role in America’s loneliness problem. This technological barn door has been flung wide open, however, and it’s unlikely it will ever be shut. The dining room may be dying, but it’s not dead. Not yet. I’ve watched enough HGTV to know that there are buyers and builders who still value the dining room as a gathering place. These folks may want grand kitchen islands topped with granite or marble, but they understand that regardless of their size or beauty, they are no substitute for dining room tables.

Now that both of my parents are gone, I’ve imagined what it would be like to have one more dinner in our family dining room. We’d be eating my mom’s famous hamburger cassserole, Marcia’s Mess, my grandmother’s frozen cherry salad (with and without nuts), and at least two kinds of pie. To prepare for this occasion, I would’ve put in some serious endurance training, so that I’d amaze my siblings with my capacity to stay seated, numb butt, full bladder, and all. No one would leave the table, and everyone would feel as though there was no place they’d rather be. Gathered around our dining room table, we’d happily do our part to make a dent in America’s loneliness problem.

When I discovered that my Facebook proflie picture had somehow disappeared into Meta’s black hole, I added a new photo. This is a photo my traveling buddies took when they encouraged me–goaded actually–to buy some food from a vendor in the plaza in front of the Duomo di Milano and feed the pigeons. (Even at their insistence, I drew the line at singing “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins). We were traveling through Italy and on this day, we were seeing the sites of Milan. Go on, they cajoled, You’ve got history with pigeons! You’re a natural! Make your dad proud! And so, I spread my arms, opened my food-laden palms, and to the delight and cheers of my friends, several pigeons immediately swooped in and ate right out of my hands.

It’s true: I have a history with pigeons, and I might be considered a natural. For as long as I can remember, my father raised and raced homing pigeons. When we moved into our family home in Kearney, half of our garage quickly became a pigeon loft, and over the years, my dad’s pigeon operation expanded into the backyard where he and my husband built another loft for “breeders.” My dad and his racing pigeon club sent crates of birds by air to Texas where a designated airline worker released them on the tarmac. A good homing pigeon could fly the 500 miles from Texas to Nebraska in a single day. The rookies were often sidelined in Oklahoma or Kansas, returning days–or weeks–later. Determining the winners of these races involved mathematically calculating the bird that flew the fastest air mile per minute. It involved special racing pigeon clocks, a large table around which club members would gather to calculate and eat snacks, and time. After moments of quiet calculation, an announcement would be made and a winner declared. The whole process was a common event in our home. The pigeon guys are coming today, my mom would tell us, and this was our cue to make scarce, so they could do their work. If there were any snacks left over, we had permission to partake.

One of my dad’s birds returned from a race, dehydrated and so fatigued that she flew right into a utility wire that hung across our alley. When she fell into the yard, her breast split open from impact, my dad solicited my help as he scooped her up and prepared for surgery. I held the trembling bird, pushing back her feathers as my dad stitched her up. At ten years, I witnessed the miracle of of life-saving measures with a needle and a little fishing line.

In second grade, I began the yearly ritual of bringing a homing pigeon to school. I’d explain how these pigeons had an natural instinct to return to their homes and then show my class the bird my dad had outfitted with a special leg band that contained a message capsule. My class would write a message to my dad, and I’d insert it into the capsule. Then at the beginning of recess, I’d take the pigeon out of the crate on the playground and release him to fly home. When the local newspaper photographed this event one year, the caption beneath the photo read, “Shannon Welch releases a homing pigeon on the Park School playground (see blur).” The photographer had captured the pigeon in the blur of takeoff. On the day after the release, I’d proudly return to school, message in hand, to the delight of my classmates who’d exclaim, He made it all the way home! The fact that I lived a scant three blocks from school was largely lost in our wonder.

As momentous as these yearly school releases were, however, if I had to rate my pigeon moments on a scale of 1-10, one experience stands out as a resounding 10. I was teaching at a community college that had just been awarded a National Endowment for Humanities grant to bring humanities into technical programs. A colleague and I were tasked with a group of tractor maintenance students whose classes met in a large Morton building. Suffice it to say that when two women pedalling humanities showed up, these students were not impressed. I recall the art teacher whose class proceeded ours confessing that he’d flown through 500 years of art history slides in 30 minutes in an attempt to keep their attention. And I remember thinking that this didn’t bode well at all for two young English teachers. They’ll eat us alive, I thought.

But fortune struck when a barn pigeon swooped across the class room one day and took refuge behind a large metal cabinet in the corner. Without thinking, I walked over, reached behind the cabinet, grabbed the pigeon (all the while teaching), opened the door, and released the bird. Nothing I’d said or done previously–or after–this moment had much, if any impact, on my students. When I closed the door and turned to face them, they were gobsmacked. Mouths open, eyes fixed on me, dumbstruck. Finally, one young man said, You caught that bird! You just reached back there and caught him! It was the closest I’ve ever come to pure adoration from an entire group of students. It had nothing to do with my intellect or educational training, and everything to do with my pigeon skills. I basked in the moment, for I knew that this was about as good as it would get; I’d never again have such a rapt audience. This was the stuff that legends are made from.

Another pigeon moment that ranks right up there occurred during the night of one of my dad’s 500-mile pigeon races. Homing pigeons don’t generally fly at night. They’ll roost in trees after the sun sets and fly again at daylight. I was lying in bed at about 10 that night when I heard a pigeon land on the roof above my bedroom. My dad hadn’t gotten a single bird back from the race that day, so I rushed downstairs to announce that a race bird had just come come back. Skeptical, my dad rose from his chair and made his way into the backyard with a flashlight where he scanned the roof. And sure enough, there was Apollo, his race bird. My dad rushed into the pigeon loft, grabbed a can of food, returning to the yard as he shook the can, whistling. This was his way of coaxing birds to enter the loft. Hearing the familiar call, Apollo left the roof and returned to his loft, securing my father first place and several hundred dollars in prize money. For years, Apollo’s framed photo proudly hung in my dad’s office.

One afternoon as I pulled into my children’s school parking lot to pick them up, their principal ran from her supervisory post towards my car, motioning for me to roll down my window. There’s an injured pigeon by the front door. You know what to do, right? I parked, found the pigeon huddled up against the building, picked it up, and walked towards the playground where I released it. It had been stunned and took to the air again, circling the school once before it flew off. There were collective sighs of relief as I walked back to my car. All was right with the world again.

In the world of birds, the pigeon is pretty commonplace. In the bird world, it’s tough to compete against the plummage of a mandarin duck, the grace of a trumpeter swan, or the music of a nightingale. But how about a little praise for pigeons? After all, it wasn’t the mandarin duck, swan, or nightingale who braved enemy airspace to carry important military communications during World Wars 1 and 2.

In WWI, a homing pigeon named Cher Ami was one of the 600 Army Signal Corps pigeons used in France. Cher Ami flew 12 successful missions, an amazing record considering enemy troops began to recognize these birds’ role in communication and actively sought to shoot them down. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918, Cher Ami was stationed with the 77th Division, referred to as the “Lost Battalion.” Trapped behind enemy lines and unable to communicate their position, the 77th relied on their assigned pigeons for communication. German soldiers quickly shot down almost their entire group of pigeons as they took to the air with crucial communication. Only one bird remained, Cher Ami. American Maj. Charles Whittlesey attached a note to Cher Ami’s leg,: “We are along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it.” Dodging German bullets, Cher Ami flew, suffering a shot to the chest which grounded him. Miraculously, he took to the air again, covering 25 miles to the American base in less than 30 minutes. Army medics were able to save Cher Ami’s life, but he lost his right leg and was permanently blinded. Cher Ami’s successful mission saved the lives of 194 soldiers. Later, the French government awarded Cher Ami with the Croix de Guerre for bravery on the battlefield. In gratitude and with respect, U. S. General John Pershing exclaimed, “There isn’t anything the United States can do too much for this bird.”

If I ever return to Milan, I plan to feed the pigeons again. I may even channel Dick Van Dyke and bust out with “Feed the Birds” as I open my palms to the sky. Because I’m a natural and happily share a rich history with those who appreciate pigeons. Because I want to make my dad proud. And because the pigeon is worthy of a little praise.

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

A single indigo bunting appeared on one of our bird feeders a few days ago. Since then, he’s returned multiple times, and I’m equally astonished each time. Buntings are small birds–think bigger than a goldfinch but smaller than a robin–but their splendor is great and immeasurable. In the right light, they are neon blue, otherworldly blue, a blue that makes bluejay-blue wave the flag of surrender. In the jewel box of summer birds, here is a true sapphire, a real sparkler.

Seeing this bunting makes me happier than I can say. I’ve waited for almost 24 years to see one at my feeder. My family can attest to my obsession with the elusive indigo bunting. They tell tales of how I’ve nearly walked into all sorts of objects, my eyes trained on the tree tops, my ears fixed on the bunting cries. They’ve been known to say things like, “If you see Mom standing in the middle of the yard looking at the tree line, she hasn’t lost her mind. She probably thinks she’s spotted an indigo bunting” or “If Grandma shushes you, don’t take it personally. She probably thinks she’s heard an indigo bunting in the timber, and she’s trying to locate it.” It’s safe to say that my obsession manifests itself in behavior that some may call crazy. I call it necessary. For one intent upon small things hardly noticeable, such vigilance is necessary. You have to be prepared–even if it means an occasional run-in with a parked car or lawn chair.

Yes, you must be prepared to look for those small things which often become immeasurably great. Years ago when I was walking the rural roads in late summer, the roadsides and ditches were largely mown off. The county crews had cleared them of Queen Anne’s lace, wild chicory, trefoil, and occasional stands of daylilies. There was something funereal about these shorn shoulders of gravel roads that stretched for miles along the creek bottoms. One day, however, I looked down to see a 50-yard stretch of roadside where wild chicory had begun to grow again. Here were miniature versions of the chicory’s summer self; small but stout stems held star-shaped periwinkle blossoms. You can’t keep a good wildflower down, I thought as I marveled at the life that had risen against all odds from the hard-packed clay of late summer.

In her 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard reflects on the time she spent at Tinker’s Creek in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. With Dillard, I find myself in good company, for she, too, is unabashedly obsessive about those things in the natural world that simply amaze her:

I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.

I’m certain that I’ve fixed family and friends with that wild, glitt’ring eye as I’ve recounted my hunt for the elusive indigo bunting. If I could hear their thoughts, I’m guessing that I’d hear collective groans: Oh no, she’s going to talk about that bird again. . . . But, like Dillard, I don’t set out to make idle chatter with my bird talk but to change lives. Because the preternatural blue of the indigo bunting is life-changing. Oh, there may be innocents who flee the tales of bunting or goat moth sightings, but I’ve learned to let them go. You just can’t force this kind of wonder on those who have no eyes to see.

Just this morning I was leaving the nature preserve and noticed some hefty waves in the pond across the road, so I decided to investigate. I suspected the work of muskrats, but I was wrong. At the pond’s edge, there were two behemoth snapping turtles mating. For a time, they circled each other in a ritual dance. And then they locked up, their prehistoric claws wrapped around each other, their tails, like antennae, shooting straight for sky. They floated entwined–an eight-legged reptilian marvel–as mist burned off the pond, and curious sunfish moved around and below them. For at least ten minutes I stood there, rapt. When one of the naturalists pulled into the parking lot to begin her day’s work, I considered yelling and beckoning her to come and see. But I didn’t. I stood there alone, bearing witness. Eventually, I ran to my car to get my cell phone, so I could take a video. For proof, I thought, as I imagined recounting this event to my family who would almost surely question that this was what I’d really seen and might chalk it off to a just another new obsession. For nearly 10 glorious minutes, it didn’t occur to me to take a photo. I inched towards the pond’s edge, watching, barely breathing, and fully present. This is the power of an ordinary, natural act that unexpectedly becomes great and immeasurable.

In Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” he writes of the peace of wild things like the wood drake and heron which “do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.” He commends the “grace of the world” which gifts us with “still water” and “day-blind stars.” I love this poem, for it speaks to the heart of those, like Dillard, who contend that “[b]eauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” It speaks to the heart of those who want to do their part, to bear witness to their share of beauty and grace. It speaks to a world grown weary of ugliness and evil, a world that too often sacrifices the natural for the artificial. It speaks to me as I continue to explore my own habitat in search of small things of inestimable worth.

In her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Annie Dillard claims that “[a]t a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.” Although it’s taken decades, I believe that I’m ready. I want to be present for those small things that poet Rainer Maria Rilke believes may unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. And I want to know the names of all these things, for to name them is to see them–and to love them.

There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you’re going is as good as where you’ve been.
― Richard Proenneke, One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

Even as I write this post, I can hear my critic-voice accusing me of being too maudeline. Still, I must confess that I’m sad. Sadder than I’ve been for a long time. There’s no getting around it: packing up is sad business.

Yesterday, my family home became someone else’s home. When I close my eyes, I will always be able to walk the rooms and see where my mother placed all her treasures, most secondhand or inherited finds from family and friends. I can see my father’s racing pigeon trophies high on the book shelves in his den and the gallery of family photos that completely took over the upstairs hallway. I can see the bedroom where I slept under the eaves and the small galley kitchen where we once ate on stools, barely an inch of space between us. When you pack up a house, you also pack up the glorious and the painful moments that have lived companionably in that space. And I suppose that, as author Richard Proennecke writes, you wonder if where you’re going is a good as where you’ve been.

I recently learned of the death of a dear friend. Her unflagging optimism and quirky sense of humor sustained me throughout junior and senior high school. We shared secret jokes that insulated us from the sharp edges of the “popular girls.” We cooked up missions that sent us into unsuspecting yards to pose with the lawn ornaments there just as cars of college students passed. We shared an appreciation for the humor of Jerry Lewis and regularly greeted each other in the school hallways with “Come fly with me!” We got each other. And this was more than enough to make the slings and arrows of adolescence bearable. We pack up homes, but we also pack up lives, boxing up moments and images that we’ll carry with us. Today, I remember my friend and know that I’ll need a storage container for the friendship I’ve packed.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been really lousy at leaving places and people. While others may part in what appear to be graceful exits, mine are most often messy, slobbering affairs. I always had to circle the block several times when I left my parents’ home, hoping to get one last glimpse of them on the terrace. When I finished a school year, I always planned parting celebrations for my students, so that I could memorialize all we’d shared. As a young mother, when I drove out of town without my children, I felt the compulsion to formalize my goodbyes, just in case I died and never saw them again. Each time I drive into town, I still pass the Queen Anne house we left decades ago. It never occurs to me to take another route; it’s a ritual I must perform. Before I left my family home a week ago, I walked through each room and into each closet one last time, as I formally and tearfully let go. Then I packed up the life I’d lived there and drove away.

It comes as no surprise to me that I’m struggling with this season of packing up. As people I know and love die or move on, as familiar places change hands or are torn down, sadness seems inevitable. But it’s a particularly sweet sadness that comes with boxes of treasures, all waiting to be opened again–and again. It’s a sadness that overwhelms you with tears one moment and smiles the next. And it’s a sadness that reminds you that you have loved and been loved and that your storerooms are full.

Packing Up
--for my siblings

I’ve been trying to pack up all our treasures:

that bright space we leaped into,
our nightgowns like flannel sails in the evening air
as we jumped from bed to bed,
the wooden slats underneath trembling—once breaking—
and our father, cajoling and laughing,
urging us higher, but quietly or your mom will hear;

the moments after supper
when dark mounds of fudge cooled on wax paper
and us crowding the kitchen doorway, salivating
and asking Now, now?

the history of us around the big table,
warming our lives over casserole and pie,
each of us refusing to be the first to leave,
all of us tethering ourselves to the wooden chairs
which numbed our butts beyond reason.

All these things I’ve tried to pack,
knowing that soon I’ll shut the door 
on our family home one last time,
fearing that I may not remember the magic of my closet,
the sweet hours there with dolls and books and plastic horses,
fearing that I won’t hear the gray cat purring on our mother’s lap
or the low cries of mourning doves from the eaves,
fearing that I may not be able to close my eyes
and see the walls papered with our father’s words.

Yet even now as I close the door,
there is the soft hum of the black Singer from the basement
and our mother’s able hands
stitching these remnants into a family.