Got Francis?

We are generally indifferent gardeners here at the Sippican Cottage. We’re not good at it, but we try, as with so many things in life. But we wisely do not try to sled uphill anymore. We take what nature will give us, and plant the things that are likely to pan out despite our lack of ministrations, or perhaps more accurately because of them. We’ve killed a lot of plants learning how.

I see our neighbors at war with the landscape, as so many people are when they tend to their lawns and gardens. They seem to have a sort of vestigal farmer tail that makes them crave straight lines and flat things where none are needed. I understand parterres and so forth, and enjoy them in formal settings in the country or a little urban dooryard, but if you live out in the suburbs, or even further out, a fetish for that sort of severe neatness –a sort of craving for landscaping linoleum– is bizarre and incongruous.

The deer disabuse us of of any idea of planting things of value out in the landscape that will strike them as a sort of salad bar. We take the curse from the join of our house to the ground with the usual easy shrubs and perrenials, now nicely grown and needing only tending, not intensive care. And way out in the landscape, as far as you can go before is gets too wild, we placed St.Francis to stand at the edge of our wilderness and cast his blessing before and behind.

Our little son has gotten it into his own head to go each outdoor day to the edge of his world and put an offering in Francis’ bowl. He has nothing, so he finds what he needs in nature to give it back.

As do we.

Tommy Walnuts

I don’t know how many times I trudged up that hill with his lunch. Mother said he was kind to us when we needed it, so we need to look after him now that’s he’s alone. Me, I just do what I’m told.

I didn’t know what to call him. He looked even older than he was, and he was nothing and nobody to me. He sensed it. He seemed to know everything although he never went out.

“Everyone calls me Tommy Walnuts.”

OK, then. I’d sit in the milky sunshine next to the cobwebby window and watch him eat, while the cats – his cats?- the cats did figure eights through his legs. In all the time I was ever there I never saw him show the slightest interest in those creatures, but they hung by him like he was their mother. It was like he was the sun they orbited.

He never spoke while he ate. He’d murmur or grunt if you asked him a question, but shoot you a sort of withering look that made you refrain from asking another. When he was done, he’d take out a tin of tobacco and make himself a cigarette, and he’d smoke and he’d turn his eye towards yours, and it was like a signal that you could ask him something. He never asked me anything, except: How is your mother?

I can’t explain what that man knew, because he seemed to know everything. I’d go to school and the nuns would try to pound the numbers and the words and some sense into my head. It took a lot of hammering; at least at first. But then I had a mission. I wanted to ask this man something he did not know. I’d read at recess and at home and I’d sit in the library like a girl and scan the pages looking for the thing Tommy Walnuts would not know. I couldn’t find it.

How long is the Great Wall of China? How do you calculate the hypotenuse of a right triangle? Who was the third vice-president of the United States? Did you know the Titanic had a sister ship?

“Two,” he said, and send me home to scour the shelves again.

One day he looked rough. He always looked old and beat, but he seemed sick. He coughed a lot when he smoked.

“Are you all right?”

“I am always the same. Makes no difference. Ask your questions.”

“How did you end up all alone here?”

He took a long drag on the cigarette. He looked around the empty room like a man on a stage surveying the audience before delivering his line. It was the first time he had ever even paused before answering me. I heard the clock tick, and the soft indistinct sound of a cat purring under his chair. A car sizzled past on the wet pavement outside.

He looked at me differently than before. I was sorry I had asked that. I’d gone too far. I was losing so I upset the board.

“I’m not alone. You are here.”

Tommy Walnuts knew everything.

One Moment, Please

There are moments.

It is a mundane little warren of amusements. Decidedly low tech, immune to any real throngs, no hint of pigs at a trough while waiting for your turn. It was clean and plain. It was inexpensive and deservedly so. It reminded me of so many businesses I’d seen that had not taken off yet; still the vision of a man or woman or two, future uncertain, working for every dollar and cadging every guest the hard way. If you’d ever been to Disneyland in Anaheim a long time ago you’d know what I mean. Just a carnival with flat tires. I remember when they announced they’d try making a go of it in the swamp in Florida, and it was even money if it would be there in five years. I don’t think you could get even money where we were yesterday.

But there is a sort of wearisomeness to having a blast now. The movies are like a visual beating; the rides at an amusement park are a kind of Bataan Death March of fun to wait for your turn, and then simply a test of your will to hold down your lunch; the cost of everything puts too much pressure on you to enjoy yourself or you’re a fool. How are you going to enjoy yourself worrying about enjoying yourself? There’s no leisure in it. It’s pointless to look for it there.

I stood on the Merry-Go-Round, next to my toddler, and the gentle sine wave of his horse’s circuit put me in a kind of dream. The sun was in his cockpit, and the wind touched our faces as gently as any lover. The lake reflected the sky and the little blue train came by on its leisurely meander through the dormant cranberry bogs on its way to the little station. My boy waved to it like it was his friend.

I was supposed to be bored, I guess. There was nothing there to interest an adult that they didn’t bring. But I assure you I would have stood there next to that fiberglass horse on the brass pole with the little twist to it, and the silent, beaming boy on it, until the sun went dark forever and the stars fell in on themselves.

But dad, there’s lemonade over there.

It’s A Barnum And Bailey World

Actually, it’s a Thomas The Tank Engine world today. I get to take my little boy to ride on a cheesy full size Thomas this morning. He plays endlessly with the little things, and we are trying to picture his reaction to seeing a huge version of his hero. The only sure thing is the 75 yard berth he’ll give to the fellow dressed up as “Sir Topham Hatt.” I’ve seen how that dynamic plays out with Santa Claus.

The big one will come, too, of course, and make a halfhearted attempt to affect a certain 11 year old world-weariness about the proceedings, and pretend he’d rather be slaughtering aliens than riding on a train. But I see right through that; I’m his father. He’ll ask me if we can go again when it’s over.

There seems to be a tradition nowadays that Father’s Day is a day for a guy to sort of rest on his laurels, and take a day off from being Dad.

Why the hell would I want that?

By The Shores Of The Satmornfunniehaha

The lesson, as always, is never say: “Let me have it” to anybody for any reason.
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Now mow the lawn.