Nostalgia

This is the side lawn of the house in which I grew up, and in which my parents lived for 40 years. The grass covers what used to be the garden. It was at least half an acre and the four of us kids spent what felt like endless hours weeding tomatoes, peas, and squash. We often had several chicks following us up and down the rows, eager for us to point out grubs and beetles for them to gobble up. The occasional rotten tomato would be hurled at a sibling, only to start a rotten vegetable war that would end in a real stink. Our dog, Ceasar, would lie off in the shade of an old pear tree that looked like it was dying when we moved in, but that gave off bushels of pears every year. It was an idylic time and place.



It was also a place where the seasons were vivid and easily discerned, unlike my current climate. The maple tree across the road by the garage and barn--the one I planted the week I went off to college--always had the most gorgeous red and gold leaves every fall. In the spring I would walk down the road and turn right, following the hedge row all the way around the bend to the spot I could enter the forest by a hickory tree. There at the base of it was a cluster of white flowers called Dutchmen's Breeches. There were pink trillium, adders tongue, violets, and marsh mallows. But only at certain weeks of the year. I was delighted to have figured out the timing of nature so I could go looking for these yearly friends. But the fall season was best of all. I would put on my coat after dark and slip outside to the distant corner of the property where my pet boulder was inset in the side of a slope. Sitting on that rock, I used to talk to God and look up at the stars for what seemed like hours. But of course, the chilly air would go through my coat and I'd be driven back inside.
All I have here to announce fall is a slight chill in the air every morning this week. Not that I'm ungrateful for it--it's been horribly hot this summer--but I miss my leaves and the crispness and mystery of very cold evening autumn air.


More than the cold air, I miss hearing the sounds of migrating Canada Geese. Because our home was up on a hill surrounded by corn fields and right under the migration path, we could hear geese bedding down in the fields every night from all directions. Their soft night sounds in the distance was a lullabye to me wafting through my open bedroom window at night for many years. Seeing the black geese fly through the sky, picking out the Snow Geese and even the occasional swans, was something we used to do when we weren't counting to see how many were flying in one V-shape gaggle. On some evenings the sky was almost black with them--clouds and clouds of them settling in the field adjacent to the house. We could hear them honking excitedly as though they were comparing flight conditions over the last 12 hours.



When the air is cool in the morning and evening, I think back to that wonderful place. It is evenings like this that I miss New York more than I can say. It was another time and another place--one that I loved so many things about. I remember all my adolescent prayers to get me out of there and think of all that life has taught me since sitting there on my boulder. The words that I used to quote, albeit with teenage drama, sitting there in the darkness, face upturned to the sky, ring true and have meaning now as never before:

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

(From To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant)