The nature of friendship and of connectedness

In a recent conversation, someone said to me, "How can you feel connected to so many people? I mean you even talk to strangers in an airport. Isn't that kind of fake?" I have been thinking about that comment. And the answer is, "I don't know"...

You see, I do feel connected in a weird kind of way with people I know only casually. Yet, I am not what you would call social. Entertaining is not something we do often or easily. Though I am more used to being alone than in a crowd, still I am always interested in what is happening in others' lives. Part of what I miss about working is the daily chat among colleagues. (It's certainly not the pendulum swing of philosophies, nor is it the dark specter of financial disaster served up as a daily cautionary tale)

And friendships do change as lives do. If you are thrown into intimacy every day for a period of decades with someone, of course you grow to feel bonded with that person. Once that immediacy is severed, it is harder to find that link. And yet it is still there, just waiting like a smoldering ember to be kindled when you stir the fire.

I guess I view almost every personas a potential friend. Doesn't everyone have the same basic feelings and yearn for the same human connections that I do....It's the throwing the "pebble in the pond" metaphor that calls me. Eventually any small action that we do may ripple out and touch others. At church recently the word "Ubuntu" is posted on the wall of the sanctuary. I understand from our pastor that it means something like "as I participate, as I share, so I validate my existence."

As our lives get busier-with grandkids and jobs and the juggling of multiple responsibilities-friendships may take different shapes but I am still waiting for that best friend, I guess, who lives down the block and pops in at random times, ignoring the mess, to plop her elbows on my kitchen table and spend an hour or two chatting.

What about you?

Well, I have taken on the task of reading John Kremer’s 1001 Ways To Market Your Books For Authors and Publishers. It is a somewhat daunting undertaking (this is one big book!) It's a tough world out there when you are an author trying to sell your book to a world that wants scandal and double-digit discounts. My goal is to find ways to help "my" authors at Aberdeen Bay beat the odds and find their niche markets, create enough buzz to get noticed, and sell some books along the way. There are so many incredibly talented people out there. Just because they aren't named James Patterson nobody wants to read their books.

I hope to help change all that, one idea at a time.

The Gift Of Song

The gift of song’s
a gift from God.
It makes us happy
for a while.
It opens up
our hardened hearts
to make us sigh
or smile.

And when our voices
rise on high
it’s easy to forget:
our feet are still to this earth bound.
We’re not in Heaven yet.

Jill Cline

Of Spoiled Brats and the Depression

The thought struck me in the middle of a lovely conversation last year with Mrs. Donna Leightner, age 92, that I am a spoiled brat. Like others of my baby boomer generation, I have had a relatively easy existence. I don’t know the meaning of being hungry or of doing without in any real way.

Donna was telling me about the effects of the Great Depression on her and her family. She graduated from high school in 1934. Through her entire high school career, she lived in town with other families because the five miles from her father’s farm to town was too great a distance to transport her back and forth to school. Of course, there were no buses to pick her up at her door. He could not afford the gasoline nor the time taken away from his farm chores to accommodate his daughter. She, and other students like her, earned their keep by helping out their host families with household tasks throughout the year. She stayed with her own family on weekends.

Donna had one pair of shoes. She had to take care of them as they were for school and church and whatever else came her way. I am ashamed to say how many pairs of shoes I have….shoes for every occasion, tennis shoes, boots, flats , heels and sandals. They line the floor of my closet. The year of Donna’s graduation, students did not have caps and gowns, nor did they purchase class rings. The superintendent did announce that girls were expected to wear a white dress and white shoes to the event. Donna recalls that her heart sank. “How were my parents going to do that for me? They just didn’t have the money” she said. Her parents provided her with the dress and shoes. “For years I wondered what they gave up. But I felt like a princess. “

Donna said she did have nice clothes, in large part because her grandmother made them. Her grandmother was a gifted seamstress who remade hand-me-downs for Donna. “That’s just the way it was”, she remembers. “Everyone was in the same boat.”

Stories of my own Grandma saving string and plastic bags and margarine containers filled my mind. It drove her crazy if we walked out of a room without turning out the lights. She (and Donna) had known real hardship and they wanted to be prepared to combat it if it came again. They wanted to ward it off if they could.

Compare this tale of thrift to our modern day explosion of spending. Many young adults feel they NEED cell phones and laptops and SUV’s and plasma TVS and mini-mansions and they need them now, never mind that their income will not support all those luxuries. They buy them anyway and hop onto a ferris wheel of activity to pay them off. Are they happier?

Donna smiles at her memories and her eyes twinkle with pleasure. She recalls her family and her church and her singing with joy. She chats about her best friend in high school and their adventures which included rolling a car during an AWOL trip from school. She tells me that the bedroom set in the small room off her living room is the only one she has ever had. Married 69 years to Del who is gone now, she says, “We conferred about each purchase and we didn’t buy things we didn’t need.”

“I have been so blessed”, Donna laughs. And I get the feeling that indeed she has as she has blessed me with a look into a past that could teach us all a thing or two about courage and restraint and sorting out life’s priorities.

TRUE HOME

This world and all its beauty
Will some day fade away.
It’s just our temporary home-
Our dwelling place today.

God made us for far better.
He made our hearts to yearn.
There’s a pull from deep within us
And like a magnet, we return
To God who is our own true North
To God who guides our way
To God who’s made a place for us
On this earth we shall not stay.

I may marvel at a sunrise
As a moment out of time.
I may glory in the Autumn woods.
They are not truly mine.

I am just a lonely wanderer.
For a little while I’ll roam.
But I know Heaven is my future.
Earth’s not my own true home.

Cone Dog's Chase

My dad was a policeman, and I remember him saying that everyone had a bit of larceny in his or her heart.

Maybe that means every creature has a trace of killer instinct. I would never have thought it of Cone Dog, though.

On our recent morning walk, I saw a new side of him. That's for sure. Normally, Cone Dog is the gentlest of beasts. He is a Great Dane who trembles at Chihuahuas.

His collar says "Bad to the Bone," but it's just not true. He was rescued from an abusive situation, and it's as though he is always a bit unsure as to whether the world means him harm.

Anyway, Cone and I were rustling through the leaves on a back trail in the woods by the big swamp. Suddenly, a huge, fat gray squirrel was in our path, not 10 feet away.

"Squirrel," I yelled. Cone charged at it. The squirrel, roused no doubt from a morning dream of endless caches of walnuts, leaped up a big, dying ash tree.
Cone Dog and I stood at the bottom, gazing up. "Get that squirrel, Cone," I cried. Do you suppose the killer instinct is in me?

Three turkeys, hidden in the cattails, took off for quieter climes with a rush of feathers and a little irritated squawking. The squirrel decided at that moment to leap into a tree with more limbs.

Looking like one of those flying squirrels you see in the cartoons, it launched its body toward the second tree and missed the branch it was aiming for. Falling somewhere around 30 feet directly at us, it seemed, the squirrel hit the ground with a thud and took off running for the hills.

Cone Dog was right on its heels. They charged down the leafy lane, across the creek and were gone. Within five seconds, though, here they came back toward where I stood (with my camera still firmly placed in my pocket).

Cone Dog was cruising. The squirrel was looking like a gray blur. One good lunge, and I swear Cone could have had that little critter in his mouth. At the last moment, the squirrel had a good idea (for a change ) and leaped up the oak tree where Rick's deer blind is. Climbing to safety, it never looked back.

Cone Dog stood at the base of the tree, looking up, panting, his feet black with swamp muck, contemplating his missed opportunity.

A couple of times on our way home, I whispered "squirrel" to test his newfound sensitivity, and he definitely looked up. I guess the old, timid Cone Dog will not be replaced anytime soon with a raging stalker of squirrels.

But he did get a little taste of the chase.

The Power of Sound

Certain sounds can touch my heart
And bring me close to tears.
Associations that they bring
Still echo through the years.

The mournful wail of a southbound train
The barn’s metal roof as it sheds the rain
A hymn’s remembered harmony
when the tenor starts to rise
The rush of wind in treetops
as a dark storm fills the skies.


A book page softly turning
A robin’s springtime call
The hum of voices praying
Caden’s footsteps in the hall

Womens’ laughter round the table
Gentle Cone Dog’s welcome bark
Crisp footfalls crunching down the lane
And whispers in the dark.

Each goose’s throaty signal
With winter in its cry
The click of a camera’s shutter
Or Troy’s contented sigh.

Warm crackling from a cozy fire
The dinner bell’s deep ring
The whoosh of skis as they cross white snow
The peepers’cries in spring.

A single trumpet at the grave
The warning whoop of a crane
The plop of wet on new green leaves
And my gardens blessed with rain.

The scratch of a pen as words touch page
My mother’s birthday call
Caden’s piping “Nanoo”
The thunk as bat meets ball.

Oh, Proust may say its taste
that sets our memories free
Freeing up the distant past
And blessing you and me.

And painters tout the power
Of sensing with our eyes
But sounds , for me, are stronger
They call my heart to rise.

COUNTRY CEMETERIES

While working on a photographic collage recently, I uncovered pictures that I took a decade ago. One 8 by 10, in black and white, shows a broken marble tombstone in an old country graveyard. The name and dates are hard to read. The stone is nearly cracked in two and is lying on the ground at an angle.

I remember the day. A walk with a neighbor overland through cornfields to a now abandoned family burying ground. At the time, the marker caught my eye and tugged at my heart. To this day, I am intrigued by strolling among marble reminders of lives that were. It makes me think about my own life. It had a beginning. It, too, will have an end. There’s no such thing as forever. Sometimes we forget that.

No matter how beautiful the carving. Regardless of the quality of the sculpture. Even if we wish it were not so. One day our life on earth will be done and we will lie beneath our own cold stone. Not long after, our names, too will be largely forgotten.

Sometimes this thought makes me unbearably sad. Once, walking in Concord in a little cemetery on a long-ago Saturday morning, I saw dates that indicated the grave of a small child. That seemed to me to be a life whose flame was too soon extinguished.

At other times the stones are reminders. “Life is precious”. “Don’t wish away today.” “Tomorrow is not guaranteed.” They whisper. When I hear these admonitions, I try to appreciate the beauty in the mundane and look around to see all that this life can offer if I will but take the time to notice.

Once upon a time every family farm had its own burial ground like the one where we walked. The benevolent souls of departed relatives might have been as near as the back wood lot. To me that would be far preferable than being plunked at the end of a row in some manicured city cemetery. I’d far rather take my final rest at the end of the lane beneath the giant oak tree or in the woodsy clearing near the artesian springs where the ground is red clay.

It doesn’t matter much, I suppose. I doubt it’s like OUR TOWN where the ghosts of the dead chat to each other in the still of the night. When we die, reminders of our sojourn here won’t mean much, I believe, as we “fly away” to a new life.

"THE ARCHES" BOOK-THE LITTLE TOWN THAT DID

This is a local story of perseverance and service and community-mindedness. The citizens of Post-WWII Springport, Michigan volunteered their money and their labor to build a community building/gym that was the talk of Jackson County. Their effort took two years.

Farmers donated trees from their wood lots and sawed them on a mill at the building site. Working with their own tractors and trucks, local teachers and businessmen, doctors and gas station owners hauled gravel and dug footings and mixed concrete and laid block. They did their own wiring and they set the roof of the building with massive arches that came from Wisconsin in halves on the train, each weighing 3,600 pounds. The local women fed the volunteers who worked mainly on Sundays.

The book includes indices of all who donated money, all who donated labor and all the women who brought food to feed the workers.

http://springportschools.net/NEW/arches.html- for ordering info

OR

http://www.aberdeenbay.com/published.aspx

Philosophy

No day we live’s a guarantee.
No future’s ours to plan.
We’re all just lonely wanderers.
We do the best we can.

Choose love instead of hatred.
Choose peace instead of war.
Choose beauty over ugliness.
Or what’s our living for?

MOSQUITOES

They're drawn like tiny bomers
to the breath that I exhale.
They buzz around me in a cloud.
Their one thought? To impale.

I hunch my shoulders, bless my hat
and hide each inch of skin.
Yet, undeterred, they circle
and seek a pathway in.

WALKING THE LABYRINTH

The soft circles draw my feet.
The path is forgiving.

My breathing slows.
The journey is my focus,
Rather than the destination.

Like onion layers, my worries peel away,
And, in the rose-shaped center, there
My open mind itself is prayer.

Old Barns Becoming Memories

The old red barn across the street from us is a pile of rubble now . At first it was just listing to the side. One day the roof gave way. Now it is caving in upon itself. Soon it will be just a sodden mass of weathered boards where once a functional structure stood proudly.

It’s a real shame. I fear the old wooden barns, beautiful buildings in their own right, are going the way of the barn owl. They are getting scarcer and scarcer as the years roll on.

These barns are treasures. The Michigan Barn Preservation Network calls them “economic resources and symbols of our agricultural heritage”. I believe there is no more attractive image than a well-kept, freshly painted barn, surrounded by white fences, stolidly occupying the space between planted fields and wooded hedgerows and housing the various farm implements necessary to work the land.

I also find it ludicrous that we cannot insure our own barn for enough money to rebuild even a tiny corner of it. Of course, in reality, a pole barn is more efficient. It can store more stuff. It is easier to maintain. But it lacks the charm of the hand-hewn beams, the solid oak floor, and the multi-roomed layout of a barn built near the turn of last century.

I love to stand inside our barn on a rainy day and hear the sound of raindrops on the steel roof. My husband has room for all his projects in its spacious basement layout. Up above, we can store garden supplies and weights and rabbit cages, old doors and outgrown bicycles, and still have room to pull the tractor in. In the summer, the swallows return and build their mud nests under the high eaves.

I have so many vivid memories of that barn, including:
-Climbing up the wood ladder some forty feet to see fireworks out the top window
-Sitting with the kids watching Rocket, the calf, be born
-Watching tiny reddish piglets snuggle under the heat lamp
-Playing Ping Pong in the hay mow
-Staying away from the mean rooster who was prone to attack you as your head emerged when you climbed the basement stairs
-Filling up the loft with square hay bales while visiting cousins helped
-Holding my breath as Rick dangled aloft and ripped off two layers of shingles
-Using the South wall as a huge screen for Kara’s wedding powerpoint

Though our own barn is no longer filled with the soft breath of animals, it remains as a tribute to another way of life-a time when a small farmer, owner of a couple of hundred acres, willing to work hard, could earn a decent living from the land for the family.

A butterfly stops for a moment on a toppling concrete tombstone
In a country graveyard
On a dappled Sunday afternoon.

The span of human life is so-
We live and wither and fade away

So too do the markers that call others to remember.

But our faith holds strong
In life or death,
We are a part of a family of believers…

We know that, saved by grace,
We will find more in the life beyond.
The best is yet to come.

The Call

How could I hear Your call, Lord?
I think quiet’s a vacuum
and nervously fill it
with bodiless voices
or TV dramas.
I read a book,
or mop a floor,
or weed a flower bed-
avoiding the calm center,
fearing the time
when my mind opens.

But, tonight, I sit alone.
The wind stirs my hair.
A blue jay’s flight threads
the grey design of treeless branches.
To the North, the sun sets the maples ablaze.

In this peace, Lord,
will You call me?
How will I answer?

SIREN REMINDS US OF OUR LINKS

The sound of a siren is more unsettling when you live in the country. I remember living in Tucson, Arizona for years. You heard an ambulance and you got out of its way. Or you saw a fire truck and you got over on the shoulder of the road. Then you drove on and you never gave it another thought.

That’s just not the case when you live where I live now. The thing is- odds are when you hear that wailing sound, it is going to involve someone that you know. Or at least someone that someone you know knows. And it makes a big difference.

I never hear a siren and feel unaffected. I usually stop and say a prayer. Just a word of concern. A request for safety. There’s a different kind of feeling about it. One that is hard to describe.

The people in those fire trucks and ambulances are often people you know too. Some are volunteers. You just might know the victims as well . When my nephew and his girlfriend, who were visiting from Tucson several summers ago ,got into a bad four-wheeler accident, we were so shaken up by his misfortune. Still we were glad to see the speed with which help was dispatched once we called 911. Neighbors stopped in to see if they could help. Turns out he had to be airlifted to Borgess-and the whole incident was handled by people from our area. Folks asked about him with some regularity for the rest of the summer. He had to have a pin in his femur but is doing fine now.

In the country community, people just seem more willing to help and to get involved. When our neighbors’ house burned a couple of years ago, folks donated money and furniture and a place for them to stay. I guess it’s just more clear to everyone in the country community, that the sound of a siren indicates that real people are apt to be hurting and in need. And yes, there just might be something that you could do to help out.

It’s like the poet says “No man is an island”. Or more to the point- “Never ask for whom the bell ( siren) tolls (wails ). It tolls for thee. “ –My apologies to John Donne.

The country is still our choice

Thirty-two years ago, Rick and I packed our bags, and moved across the country from Arizona to Michigan, discarding our city ways for the country life. It was, overall, a good choice. We came to the country without jobs and bought our small farm on M-99. We had no equipment, minimal farm experience, not much money and two little kids under the age of five. Visions of Mother Earth News danced in our heads. I guess you would call us optimists.

We chose the country as the place we wanted to raise our family, and though our kids are all grown-up now, it’s still where we want to live. Like any other major life style choice, country living has brought us both happiness and tears. I admit I had visions of a Walt Disney farm, a place where white fences would edge perfectly groomed green lawns. A place where proud red barns would house pink, smiling, odorless pigs. A place where orderly fields of corn would dry swiftly and be sent to market at a comfortable profit. The alternate reality included unpaid bills, duct-taped fences, many meals of deer, long hours weeding and canning, and finally facing the music….you just can’t make a full-time living on a 200 acre farm.

Still there’s no better life. The highs have included : walking in a wooded fairyland after an ice storm, planting spruce and white pines with the entire family, smugly surveying shelves of our own home-canned produce, and hiking with the dogs along the old rail bed in the late Fall afternoons. The lows were there as well. Having to put Honey ( our ancient milk cow ) down when she could not give birth to her calf, finding aphids in the soybeans, hydraulic leaks in our old John Deere tractor, and one memorable winter losing $25.00 on each hog we sold at market.

These days I have retired from my job as a librarian. Half of our farm land is planted to Michigan oak savanna. We mow more. Our animals are dogs. But the country life continues to enchant us. We heat with wood and Rick cuts a year or two ahead as he logs out the hedge rows and our wood lot. We have dug a small pond (mostly used for dog washing ) and we cultivate a small garden. We love the small-town feel of Springport-and we consider going to the big town of Jackson adequate entertainment most weeks. The country life still suits us.

Grandparent Love

A friend of mine recently sent me an email announcement of her new grandson's birth. In response, I tried to include, along with my congratulations, the magic of this new relationship that she is about to experience. Words simply fall short.

I recently spent a week with my own grandsons, Caden, almost five, and Troy, almost two, this past month and , because I am a long-distance grandma, the memories we made will have to last me several months until I can see them again. This fact probably makes me more conscious of each experience as time passes so swiftly away.

Each time I bury my nose in Troy's chubby neck rolls, or tuck Caden in for a nap after reading him a story or two, I catalog the experience and file it away, so that, when I am back in Michigan, with only pictures and videos of them for company, I can call out the sweetness and re-experience the connection across the miles.

Being a grandparent is just a kind of pure love that brings out the best in us, I think. When I see Rick cradle Troy so lovingly, his weathered cheek against Troy's smooth one, I fall in love with both of them all over again. When Caden says to me, "Hey Nanoo, let's play Go Fish or let's play in the sandbox or let's shoot baskets", I am ready no matter what he wants to do. It does not matter if we blast away at robots on his Chicken Little Game, or if we share oatmeal for breakfast. We can build with Lincoln Logs or pretend fight with plastic dinosaur puppets. We can mix the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies or practice his batting with his Chicago Cubs bat and ball. We can take a walk or fight with Star Wars Light Sabers or snuggle on the bed and share his new favorite video: Pinocchio. We can make up silly rhymes or invent words with his refrigerator magnet alphabet or chat while he takes a bath. What we do is irrelevant-but when his eyes twinkle up at me and he says "I LOVE you, Nanoo" my heart is filled with happiness.

Troy took a little bit of time to get to know Rick and me as we had not seen him for several months. But now his cheery smile will flash our way and he will sidle over and lift his chubby arms skyward, wanting to be picked up. He will trustingly put his soft little hand in mine and head off for a walk in the refuge where his dad works. He will relax back into my lap and chatter away, generating long sentences of words most of which I don't fully understand.

In a conversation with a neighbor, my son Eric said "They didn't really come to see US." That's not entirely true but the grandparent connection is probably the strongest draw... There's just nothing like it.

It's like you have no agenda. You don't really have to mold and discipline and worry about grammar and manners and grades and friends....you just have to be there. To be ready to focus your full attention on whatever story they want to share, whatever question they want to ask, whatever game they want to play. And, in the process, you can almost forget that you are a not -so -young person on the far side of middle age, and your heart can fill once again with the magic of childhood, reflected in their clear blue eyes.

SUMMER OF THE SOUL

SUMMER OF THE SOUL

In the frigid cold of winter
When the snow is swirling, wild…
When your heart itself is shivering
When you wish it would turn mild.

You may feel like turning inward
Like just curling in a ball;
Feel like sighing and bemoaning
The white snowflakes as they fall.

Instead you must look outward
With soft hope and a prayer
Contemplate the world around you
And celebrate what’s there.

Send yourself some yellow roses
Plant green thyme upon your sill
Sow alyssum seed in rich, dark soil
Let the cold do what it will.

Look for sunshine on the snow bank
Look for joy within your soul
Let faith and peace take root within
Eternal summer be your goal.

-Jill Cline

In remembrance of Goofy

Goofy is gone.

We held off the decision long as we could. But the inevitable deterioration of age became too great. Her pretty brown eyes grew clouded with cataracts. Her formerly strong back legs lost muscle tone. Whereas she once leaped vertically like an NBA star (Great Dane style) , the day had come when she struggled to rise at all.

And then she began to fall, and she needed help to stand again. She lost weight. Tumors appeared on her chest and her ribs showed despite the huge amount of food she ate.

I kept thinking, once spring is here, she will feel better, but at last we faced the truth. She was not going to get better. She was past thirteen and she was tired and hurting.

We called the vet who came to the house. We all petted Goof and talked to her and fed her peanut butter sandwiches and told her that it was okay, she could go on without us. I held her head on my knee and stroked her face. “Good girl, Goofy,” I said softly as the needle slipped into her vein.

She gave a little sigh and closed her white eyelashes for the last time. I felt her grow still and cold.

The house feels so empty now. The living room looks huge. Goof’s pillows and blankets are gone from in front of the woodburner. She used to lie so close to it that her toenails would occasionally turn off the blower.

We buried her with two blankets and several pillows, in the asparagus row where she used to hide among the feathery ferns and peer out into the main garden to watch me weed. I don’t suppose another dog will ever love me so unconditionally.


Kara said that Goofy could hear my car coming south on M-99 and it is true that she would always be at the door as I came in each afternoon. That is when her day began too.

I will remember: how she barked whenever Rick put his arm around me, how eager she was to go for a walk on any occasion, how she ran like a carousel horse with a funny little prancing gait, how she loved peanut butter, how she backed onto my lap and sat down when I sat on the couch, how she leaned against me wanting a scratch, how she would head butt you softly if you forgot her presence, and how beautiful she was…a Harlequin with black and gray and white markings and a feminine head and the sweetest disposition.

Thirteen years before, Kara and I scooped her out of a litter of black brothers and sisters. She buried her little pink nose in my neck and from that day on, she was my faithful friend and companion.

She’s gone ahead now. I can imagine her waiting on the Rainbow Bridge for my footstep. For how can heaven be heaven without Goof’s joyous welcoming bark?