I get in these moods occasionally that remind me a little of Solomon’s ‘life is meaningless’ passages from Ecclesiastes crossed with a good story from NPR’s This American Life crossed with a Hallmark movie. I called it an existential funkphoria today which is stupid, but I’m going with it. The existential funk/sentimentality hangs out with love and some other good feelings and the ‘what might have beens’ tag along like a third wheel.
It makes me happy to be sad sometimes. I’m happy that I can still feel things and that my heart isn’t hard. That’s why you cry when some people die. You loved them, so the sadness at losing them balances the love. I remember thanking God that I was sad when my Grandma Myrtle died. I was pretty messed up in my head at that time and questioning myself quite a bit and I was happy to realize that I could still feel something real. That’s why I was happy about being a little upset today too, I think. There is always light with darkness.
I took my Super Mom on a road trip from somewhere near the Wisconsin border to St. Cloud for breakfast. Why is it exciting to drive 75 miles for breakfast? Several reasons. I got to spend hours in conversation with my Mom while driving through some sentimental and beautiful countryside and there was a pretty great breakfast at The Place waiting at the other end. (If you haven’t been to The Place in St. Cloud for breakfast, I recommend it. The outside is kind of creepy, the inside is refurbished with a side dish of gritty, and the food is great. If you like potato pancakes, bring several friends who also enjoy them because you won’t even come close to finishing one by yourself.)
Why is my Mom super? Many reasons. My favorite reason is that she was given a year and a half to live about thirty years ago. That didn’t work out for the doctor who is probably dead now himself, but it worked out great for the rest of us. There is also the fact that my Mom is probably the nicest person I’ve ever known. And, she’s funny and has good stories. But, I’ve told you about her before and this post is about funkphoria, dangit!
It’s always sentimental for me to drive through North Branch and think of all the people and memories from that town. I still see the town of 1,200 people from the late 1970’s that I moved to in second grade underneath the one that’s slowly digesting any remnant of it. On the way home, we drove past both of the houses that our family lived in while we resided in North Branch. Cornfields and pastures now grow houses. Those crappy little seedlings that the neighbor planted and my parents laughed at are now towering evergreens that block the view of the farm behind our old house as much as the housing development built in their field does. The Nelson’s round barn is gone, so that view would be diminished anyway. My Mom pointed to a tree in our old yard and said “Mr. Blakeslee planted that tree himself.” I think I was supposed to be impressed, but I have no memory of the man even though the development is named after him. I drove past houses where people named Andy, Rich, Brian, Danise, Steve, Butch, Kurt, Mike, Dell, Dale, and many others grew up. I know “You can never go home”, right? Right.
I was a little shocked and confused by how much the sight of one particular dead tree upset me. I attached a picture of it to this post and you can see the reflection of my Mom in the glass. That was my favorite climbing tree when people had things like that. I climbed so many that I had a favorite is another thought I had. I drove by that today too. It’s dead now and slowly crumbling like that past. Like all of our pasts. It’s now about 1/3 of its grandest size. That tree had a split trunk with a big hole in the middle of it facing straight upward where dumb squirrels sometimes hung out until they realize they were getting wet or that there was a dumb kid climbing the tree. I almost fell out of that tree a few times because I would spook a squirrel out of that hole and it would scare the poop out of me too. The hole was a perfect hand hold for climbing higher, but I never dared to reach blindly for it for fear of getting rabies or at least a nasty bite or scratch.
I hid up there one time when a bunch of young boys, including me, were having a fireworks war. When my brother walked by stealthily hunting me, I lit a pack of fire crackers and tossed them down at him. (This was quite a feat of dexterity because the older boys took the lighters and us younger boys had only matchbooks. Also, I was about fifteen feet up a large tree.) As they sailed perfectly down the back of his shirt, I realized two things: One, this was probably my last day above ground. And, two, I had a very short window of time during the ensuing chaos to get down out of this tree and run. I got down quickly, I ran very quickly, and I somehow managed to avoid being murdered. It was a day of miracles, apparently.
There was another tree in our yard that had a bird’s nest in it every year in the same place. I would climb it and check the nest for eggs. Later, I would climb it and look at the mother bird as she sat completely still on the eggs in the hope that I wouldn’t see her. In my childish way, I thought she was my friend and I talked to her for extended periods and told her about things that bothered me or that I was upset about. I guess this was the therapy tree. I also talked to the neighbor’s cow, so there’s that. Multiple therapists. The bird monologues all ended one summer when the male bird, who I must have mistimed for many years, expressed his dislike of my discussions with his lady. He chased me out of the tree and continued to chase me and my friend Nick across the yard and into the little shed that would eventually become our pig barn. It was really hot in there, but he swooped at us whenever we tried to come out, so we stayed in there sweating for a long time. Eventually, we made a run for the house and I remember yelling for my Mom to open the door. Bird therapy over. At least I still had the cow. (Side note: The cow was eventually slaughtered and the fence became a great lesson on the raw power of electricity when my friend dared me to pee on it. If you ever have the opportunity to discourage a child from doing this, please do so.)
I fell out of the big tree one summer evening around dusk while I was climbing by myself. I landed on an exposed root flat on my back and the wind was crushed out of me. There was a blinding pain that almost made me pass out and I thought that I had broken my back. I started crying out of pain and fear and I was afraid to move. If I tried to move and I couldn’t, it would be true, I guess. I laid there for a long time until it was getting dark and cold. My Mom called for me like Moms used to do. I tried to call back, but my voice was weak and full of tears and fear and she couldn’t hear me. She was too far away. So, I moved and I found that my legs worked. Maybe I had only been badly injured and not paralyzed, I thought. I slowly walked up to the house and I told her about the fall and my back and she rubbed it a few circles and said that she was sure I’d be fine. I’m still not sure about that.
The tree was a pretty good defensive position and I hid up there now and then to avoid a beating. My main tormentor didn’t like to climb trees, thankfully. He would stand under me and threaten to climb up there and get me. Then he would tell me all of the terrible things he was going to do to me when I came down. My patience generally won out and I usually made it to the house.
I also hid in the tree from the bad things that were going on in my house. I cried up there. I tried not to hear the things that were going on in the house when I was up there. I tried to hide up there while my name was being yelled and threats were being offered warning me to get back in the house. In the end, I always had to go back inside.
So, why did seeing the dead tree bother me so much? I’ve driven by that house a handful of times in the decades since graduation and noticed the tree. I remembered it and some of the stories surrounding it, but it never upset me. Was it the fact that it was dead now and decaying? It honestly confuses me.
Solomon said that everything aside from serving God is meaningless, vanity, and grasping for the wind. I guess he was in a bit of a funk at that point too. I don’t claim to completely understand the meaning of Solomon’s words, but as we get older I know we think about the meaning of our lives and in our lives, if any. I didn’t have a lot of meaning in my life in those days, but I had that tree, a bird, the neighbor’s cow, and a friend that knew what was going on. It’s weird, I know, but I have to think that’s why seeing that dead tree shook me a bit. I think I’d feel the same way if I heard that long-ago friend had died even though I haven’t really talked to him since middle school. They were all something good in the world at that time. There is always light with darkness.
DTyesthatDT 