Parents,
step-parents, and grandparents, we have come to an age where the greater length
of the path lies behind us. It is a strange realization, one that prompts me to
tell you a story. Isn’t that what old folks do? Tell stories to the young ones?
Here’s mine, and I make no excuse for its rambling nature or scanty conclusion.
A
couple of decades ago, David and I made an expedition to the other side of
Michigan, “the sunrise side,” where both his parents were born. Out in the
countryside beyond Tawas we found his father’s old one-room school. We explored
on foot the nearby area where his grandfather’s farm had been, though no trace
of it remained. A short drive away, we found his grandparents’ graves in a
little country cemetery.
By
chance, also, in a restaurant on the shore of Lake Huron , we ran into one of
his distant cousins, a bald man with the unforgettable name Waldemar. He was
sitting in a booth next to ours, and when the waitress addressed him by name,
David said, “I wonder if that could be my cousin Waldemar.” It was,
conversation ensued, and in the end Waldemar gave us directions to the homes of
a couple more cousins on nearby farms. All these cousins, I should say, were of
the first-cousin- once-removed or second-cousin relation.
The
first old farmer we tracked down, Howard, lived with his wife at the end of a
tree-lined dirt road in a most picturesque setting. Their farmyard featured
among its outbuildings an old log barn like nothing I’d ever seen before, and
to the north of that barn, concealed by a pretty line of trees, was a charming
small brook. Howard and his wife make us welcome, and Howard climbed up into the loft of a newer barn to retrieve a piece of furniture put
aside for David years before, a rustic twig table made by David’s paternal
grandmother, who died before he was born. (We still have that table. You all
have seen it.) I always thought we might return to Howard’s farm, so steeped in
family history. We never have, but we sometimes speak of it, and David tells me
stories of going there as a little boy, stories of fish-head skulls nailed to a
shed wall, of driving a horse-drawn sulky (is there another kind?) down the dirt road when a wheel came off – but those
are not my stories, not what I want to tell you today.
The
other old farmer, Herman, a man well into his 80s, lived at the end of a long
driveway going straight south off the east-west two-lane highway. Herman’s
house and outbuildings sat out in the open, exposed to the sky like farms on
the central Illinois prairie. We were not invited into the house but kept standing outside to talk with Herman, who stood on the stoop, just outside the doorway,
his wife standing behind him, inside the door, silent. Herman might have
invited us in (or he might not), but he was on his way out, hot on the trail ,
he told us, of a neighbor’s spotted pony he wanted to buy, and so we took our
leave.
Our
memory of Herman and the spotted pony entertained us for years. We would laugh
and shake our heads and ask each other what that old man in his 80s thought he
needed with a spotted pony! Lately we understand better and no longer laugh,
although we still smile.
And
this is what I want to tell you. It will probably come as quite a surprise, and
you may have trouble believing it’s true. No one , no matter how old, ever
gets over wanting that spotted pony.
David
watches the special features that come with movies on DVDs , telling me, “I
learned a lot,” as if he will be directing a movie in the near future, and I
read farming magazines as if I’ll very soon be bringing worn-out soil back to fertility
and breeding livestock. When we travel together, we
assess strange towns and wild landscapes as if we might start new lives there.
We picture to ourselves and to one another the wilderness cabins where our novels
will be conceived and birthed. In conversations in strange motels we imagine the furniture
re-arranged, paintings and bookshelves added, picturing a whole life we might
put together in that one room. You have no idea how many parallel lives
we have going!
No
doubt you see us as completely settled into our chosen grooves, the dreamy
painter and bookseller, content to be what we are and as we are for the rest of
our lives, not at all busy launching new careers or building new houses or
setting off for distant parts of the country. (Maybe even another country! A houseboat on the Seine!) Not
very likely, is it? After all, how much energy do we have to make serious
changes, to make new beginnings? How much savings do we have socked away for
acquisition and startups?
We’re
not deluded, young ones. We know what’s real and what’s feasible, and we
do not regret the lives we have made. At the same time, our fantasies continue
to blossom in ways that would astound you. It’s a jungle in there, fertile and
crowded with possibilities of all kinds, and in that largely shared
space – because a shared life is built on conversation -the two of us are still young and vibrant and full of dreams.
You
cannot fully grasp what I’m trying to tell you, never having been as old
as we are now, but I thought I should give you at least this little hint. It will better
explain, perhaps, my excitement over that old scythe from the farm auction and
David’s satisfaction in buying the bright-orange rowing scull. In his mind, he is skimming over Lake Leelanau, you see, and in mine I am mowing our back meadow
by hand, like one of Tolstoy’s peasants. And it goes way beyond that! In imagination we are writing and directing movies together and applauding one
another’s published novels. Every road we drive down leads through towns and
past houses we look at with an eye to their possibilities for us. Can we see
ourselves there? Could we make a life there? What would that life look like? He envisions a smooth, empty road in front of his Hayabusa as he cruises at 100 mph, and I become the world's oldest jockey on my lightning-fast Apaloosa.
Our
projects at home may appear small to you these days – insignificant and barely
there. You may puzzle over my modest pile of old bricks and David’s four stout
wooden posts and wonder, if you even notice them, what we hope to make of such
small beginnings. Ah, but if you could only see our future with our minds’
eyes!
Spotted
ponies! Spotted ponies by the thousands, still out there on the horizon,
thundering along the ridge, raising clouds of dust!
11/1/2015
