From: Jan, unicorn(a)sun-spot.com
Hello folks,
This is one of those days when my mind wanted to weave a story. Bear with
me as I explain just why.
One of the beautiful things about our ancestry is the patchwork of it, and
it is that very patchwork of different walks of life, different ideas,
different ways that has fascinated me. I have often thought of it, one
family coverlet, and all the pieces of different cloth that make it
up. Within my family are doctors and truck drivers, carpenters and
soldiers, lawyers and teachers, homemakers and factory workers, company
executives and craftsmen, ministers and nurses, bookkeepers and firemen,
janitors and construction workers. There are the wealthy and those who
live very simply. The list goes on. Folks from every walk of life, folks
who made all manner of decisions about the path they wanted to walk down,
yet call themselves "a family". And in this country, it was all possible.
Often I have wondered at the descendants of the same common ancestors,
descendants of the same roof overhead, and wondered how it was that a
common tree tended to branch out so many different directions leading to so
many different ways of conducting a life. And in my thinking, imagination
took hold, and I thought how it might be that branching off could have
begun. Excuse me now, I am going to step into the shoes for a moment of a
boy who could have been in one of those families. He could have had
brothers and sisters who chose a far different life than he, not any
better, not any worse, perhaps. Just different. Yet the fabric he was cut
from was stitched side by side that of a different texture and pattern, and
made up a part of the same family coverlet.
Something Like Poetry (from the "Sunday Afternoon Rocking" series)
Papa always said wasn't but two things for certain in this life: you gonna
pay taxes and you gonna die. From my point of view he might have added two
more: Mama gonna have a new baby this year and you gonna work from sunup to
sundown six days a week and have little for your efforts. The seventh day
you going to be so dagblasted wore out you can't hardly stay awake through
the sermon.
I don't rightly know what it was give me the idea, but it came to me at an
early age that all I had known in all of my young life was a new youngin
every year to scoot over and make room for, and rising at the break of day
to work in the fields, falling into bed too bone weary to even eat supper
at night come dark. Seemed that is all I saw of Papa's life too. And it
come to me if that was what life was all about, I was not real sure I
wanted any part of it.
Fact is what I hungered for was what I could not have, and it sung in my
heart like the beat of a fervent poem. Tickled me pink when the times when
farm work was slow and I could go down to the school house with the younger
ones. Got so Mr. Henry, the schoolmaster, took an interest in me. Loaned
me some of his books. He knew what I most wanted was books about doctoring
and he got ole Doc Watson who had studied some back east to loan me his
books too. Papa did not like to see me reading them. He couldn't rightly
make out how they were gonna do me any good, and he said I far better off
not to get ideas in my head about things that could not be. Papa said I
didn't need to know to read any better than enough to know I was not
getting cheated, didn't need to write much more than to make my name, and
didn't need any more figures than it took to figure what I would get for my
efforts and what I owed the general store. He said what schooling I had
would do that much if I stayed beside him and learned the common sense of
it. I would be a farmer, he said, same as him and his daddy before him and
before that even. And I best be getting used to the work of it and
learning what I could. No time for foolishness. Papa didn't see the use
in school.
I managed to slip off out to the barn some nights with a candle Mama
eased me and do my reading then. Sometimes when Papa was off to town or
over to the neighbors, she would rush in and help me with my chores, and so
I got an hour or so to myself. I don't know that Mama understood, but Mama
knew I had a hunger and she knew I was different from Papa.
If Papa ever wanted to be anything but a farmer I don't know what it
was. Seems like something about it was right for him, for I am not sure I
ever saw him truly unhappy about it. In fact, weary as he was, he seemed
right satisfied. Seems like sometimes I could see him feeling something
more when he picked up the soil in his bare hands, or he looked up at the
sky. Seems like sometimes there was something soft in his eyes, and
sometimes something like fire. Seems like he felt something I could not
see, and I could not feel. Seems like, but then Papa never really let you
know what he might be thinking. I can't imagine Papa with a dream, but
maybe he had one anyhow. Maybe he had one, same as me, just different.
The closest thing I ever heard to poetry come out of Papa's mouth was one
morning just as the sun rose when he looked out over his fields, at the
morning light tingeing the tops of his crops with a hint of gold, the mist
on the hills behind them. He saw it and he listened. Then he said the
reason the birds were singing was cause they had seen all that he had
worked for, and it was good.
Come the spring of my sixteenth year, I figured to do something about
it. I broached it to Mama first off. I think that was the first time I
ever realized Mama was getting old. She was working her bread dough, and
she put her hand up to brush a wisp of hair out of her face. Some of the
flour caught in her brown hair and it was then I noticed it was not just
the bit of flour making white of it. She sighed when she heard what it was
I had to say, and she turned after a while to look at me straight on. The
sun slanted in the window, lighting up one side of her face and leaving the
rest in shadow, and it was then I saw that the shadows were not smooth, but
played soft little wavering whispers on the planes of her face.
"I held my breath till you was ten," she said, "When a youngin reaches ten,
likely he will live. Then I held my breath till this day. And it has come."
I left the next morning at daybreak with a bit of ham and johnny cake
wrapped up in a leather pouch. I headed for the place Doc Watson had told
me to go. There was a loft there waiting for me, and chores to do for my
board, and a school where I could learn what I wanted to know. In a few
years he said, I could come back to him if I wanted, as he was feeling
winter in the summer now deep in his bones and there would be a place. I
would not work no easier than Papa, he said, just different. If that was
what I wanted. It was.
I left behind me a carving of a bird for Papa. I carved its mouth open,
like it was singing. I hoped he would remember the morning he spoke
something like poetry, and understand.
Copyright ©2001janPhilpot
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Thanks, jan)
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