rainy day charleston

awendaw

brodiaea

lyme rickety

You are standing there again where you stood as a bright-eyed boy so long ago
In front of the hardscrabble poultry farmhouse where you grew up during the Great Depression.
You are about to begin the next chapter in your life.
You have come to get centered and we come along to see and learn.

It is what the mathematicians call a “zero trip” for you returning here.
All the vectors of direction and distance to all the places you have ever been
In the seventy some years from then to now all add up to zero.
But such a wealth of experience, knowledge and wisdom has filled you along the way!

You were here before your great lifelong happiness with your true love now gone from us.
You are here again, collecting yourself to persevere and continue on without her.

So here is this place out in the back woods where today the dirt road is in mud season ooze
Like it was then when your father took his family to scratch with the chickens
And eke out a marginal existence desperate for better times to return.
And we see that even today the current inhabitants are struggling to make ends meet.

It was hard having only a potbelly stove for heat against the harsh New Hampshire winter.
It was scary having a house fire started by a kerosene lamp in that rickety house in Lyme.
It was difficult with a finishing school mother fallen on hard times
And a frustrated father needing financing to build his great inventions.

But there were sweet happy memories here for you, too,
The kind of delights a boy will find no matter what troubles the adult world.

We see the two room schoolhouse and hear about climbing snowdrifts to walk there,
Less than 20 students all told, one room first to fourth grade, one fourth to eighth.
But you did get an excellent education somehow,
I think by reading everything you could get your hands on.

It ended in tragedy, your father despairing and taking his life,
Leaving your mother alone to keep a roof over your head and food in the pantry,
Moving to town for work, placing you in a “real” high school where you would meet your true love,
Because every crisis is an opportunity, one door closes and another door opens.

I think for that boy each day was a gift with joys to be found for the looking.
May you embrace that child as your companion and comfort in the days ahead.