Arlington

     The following is an excerpt from the book I am currently finishing entitled “Walking My Father’s Fields”.  It will be completed and available in the Autumn of 2010.  As my family has been preparing for Memorial Day I thought it appropriate to share this story with you.  

      ”I was 10 when we visited Arlington National Cemetery.  Of course I’d been to a cemetery before, there was Oak Hill in San Jose, California where Grandpa Johnson was buried, which true to it’s name was covered in beautiful spreading oak trees; and there was the old Indian Burial Grounds behind our house in Northern California where the headstone of a Native American soldier killed in World War I stood alongside small metal markers engraved with names and nothing else.  I walked to that cemetery often to run my fingers over the stone, the carved cross on the front, the aged granite and the old bullet holes left by restless teenagers from years past.  The burial ground never spooked me, though the kids at the school would tell stories of wailing Indian ghosts and restless spirits.  To me it was hallowed ground, a peaceful spot where I would sit in the warm summer sunshine of the Southern Cascades.  It wasn’t a well kept place by modern standards.  The graves had collapsed into themselves, leaving indentations in the earth where the grass was flattened by sleeping deer.  The wildflowers grew whichever way they wanted and the manzanita crept closer every year creating a bower beneath which the dead could sleep.  It never bothered me, the wild, natural demeanor of the burial grounds, it actually seemed fitting somehow. 

I don’t know that I thought great thoughts while sitting there on that rocky red soil; it was just a pleasant place to sit after climbing the hill behind Kabyai Court.  As my brothers can attest, my thoughts didn’t range much beyond playing with my friend J.J. or which book I’d read last, or what picture I was drawing.  I had a happy little world, I was secure in my home, had plenty to eat, and my parents loved each other and me.  They had instilled in me a love for the world around me and for the soil beneath my feet.  I remembered working in the garden with them back on the “Apple Ranch”, picking apples from beneath the trees for the cider press, watching Mom bake bread or make cheese in the crock pot.  A hundred different memories made up my love for the land at that time in my life, and all of them were pleasant.

Arlington changed that for me.

We had just come from visiting my brother Kris at Fort Jackson in South Carolina where he was stationed for basic training, Fort Polk in Louisiana to see my brother Kirk and had spent a day at Gettysburg as well.  The thoughts of the war between brothers and my own brothers in the Army were fresh in my mind as we drove through those gates and saw Arlington for the first time.

It was such a marked difference from the little burial ground in Lakehead, with its perfectly straight rows and well groomed grass.  It was a crisp autumn day, not hot, not cold, just cool and perfect.  I watched from the window as we passed the white headstones, row upon row like a perfectly planted field of corn or a well tended orchard.  Straight lines and diagonals crossing over themselves again and again.  The number of headstones astounded me.  Like the wheat fields of Kansas and the corn fields of Iowa, I was amazed by the sheer size and perfection of the placement.

We had come for no other reason than just to see it.  We didn’t bring a wreath for anyone.  We didn’t look for any one person or weep over a solitary grave.  We had come to see the place where our American dead had been given a place of honor.    

“Our dead”; that is how I thought of them.  In all my memories of Arlington that is probably what stands out the most; the sense of common ownership.  These fallen heroes, from the unknown soldiers to John F. Kennedy, were mine.   This was the American hallowed ground, no bower of manzanita or wildflowers growing at will just rigid formality and an ideal perfection.  We had no family that I knew of buried in that ground, but I felt the kinship nonetheless.

I stood beside my mother as she watched, tears running down her face, as the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier took place.  It was beautiful, the solemnity with which the guards took their place beside fallen comrades, the absolute firmness with which they stood at their post.  It was seeing that young man stand there so straight and strong that changed something within me, my perception of the land began to shift and memories of my time on the Ranch began to rearrange within my heart.

Here stood a young man, handsome and true in his dress uniform, next to the grave of another young man who had once stood straight and true as well.  I had a very good imagination as a child and I could easily see that soldier who as the tomb says was “known only to God” lying lifeless on a jungle floor, or on a lonely beach, or in a ravaged forest.  I imagined another child like me waiting for a father or a brother who would never come home.  What would it be like to never know?  How would it change your life?

I stood there and remembered the love in my Grandfather’s voice when he spoke of my brothers who were serving, or who had served in the military.  He was such a patriotic person, a man who saw his citizenship as a responsibility rather than a right, a sacred obligation.  Something was working in me as I stood there, something profound and deep that I didn’t have words to express.

We left the cemetery and traveled to the Mall in Washington D.C.  We went to the top of the Washington monument, we saw the Smithsonian museums, and we went to the Wall.

It’s an amazing monument really, similar to Arlington in its aesthetic principles. Its sheer size, its clean lines, the black granite rather than the white, and the names.  So many names.  It is a symbol of the impact that the Vietnam War had on the whole country.  I grew up in Northern California where the necessity of the war was still hotly debated nearly a decade after it ended on street corners, in the post office lobby or in grocery store aisles.  The Wall represented it all, the volume of names told of how many American families were touched by the war, the black granite seemed to hold a wealth of grief for those who fought because their country said they needed to, for those who fought because they felt it was the right thing to do, for those who didn’t want to fight at all but had the courage to try and make the best of a bad situation.

I watched my mother weep again as she placed her hand against the cold granite and read names out loud.  They weren’t names she knew, she wasn’t looking for a specific person.  Once again the names were “our dead”.  These names were the common property of all Americans, the grief in the cold stone a common grief. 

As I stood there, surrounded by the memory of life and death the feelings that had begun to shift inside me at Arlington settled into a new shape, a new understanding and nothing was common anymore.  I recalled a conversation I had overheard between two men back home, their anger at the waste of life in the war, the pointless deaths of so many soldiers.  I remembered their words and it made me angry. 

Like my mother I placed my hand against the granite, cold and dark and I felt in my heart the truth that came out of my mouth that day “Your life was not a waste, your death was not pointless.  I’m here, I’m free, and I remember.”

For the first time in my life I understood why my parents loved the land so much, why they prayed over crops and wept over lost farm animals.  I had never fully understood before that day that the peace we enjoyed on our farm, the pleasant memories of warm hay in the summer and spicy apples in the fall had a price, and that these young men were among the numbers who had paid it.  The men and women that slept beneath the green fields at Arlington had paid it; the youths whose blood had reddened the meadow at Gettysburg had paid it, my own brothers were enlisted and would pay for our peace with their time and lives if necessary.

Every name on that wall mattered; every name on those white stones at Arlington mattered.  Not one sacrifice was a waste, not one life lost was unappreciated.  I stood there in the cool autumn sunshine and my love for the land deepened.  My appreciation for the ability to watch the seasons, the sowing and reaping, increased.  I have never forgotten it. 

This book is in part my letter of thanks, my witness to the families of our dead, that they are remembered, loved and appreciated, that their sacrifice has not gone unknown.  That even the soldiers whose names are known only to God have a place in my heart. 

.It is because of them that I am free to walk my Father’s fields.”

The Sound of Hope

There is a piano in my living room. I realize this is not earth-shattering information to most, after all there are  a lot of piano’s in a lot of living rooms around the world; but after living sans piano for the past 2 1/2 years it is very exciting for me. I grew up with a piano in the house. My mother started taking lessons when she was 8 from a neighbor’s newly married son. At first she practiced her notes and scales on a little paper keyboard that she would lay out on the dining room table. I can just see her; brow furrowed in concentration, tongue caught between her teeth, and her tiny fingers pressing steadfastly onto keys that would never emit any sound. I know her well enough to know that the lack of sound would not have deterred her from the goal of good musicianship. My grandparents saw her dedication to her goal and bought her a used piano from Mrs. Gates, a neighbor down the street. It was a lovely old upright piano built in 1920 in the art deco style. My mother played everyday on it and learned to play well. I remember being awed as a child when she would sit down at the piano and play, every note perfect, a song that she had memorized as a child. I can remember her, dressed in her work clothes and apron (my mom is NEVER without her apron) a dusting rag and can of Pledge in her hand, trailing her fingers along the notes as she dusted. Then she would set her dust cloth aside, pull out the piano bench, sit down and play a piece of music that would brush aside any hint of drudgery or discouragement. In those moments with her music there was simply the joy of beautiful sound. Her piano lived at my house until we left “The Perfect Farm” and moved to Utah and then Colorado. Now it is back at her house, being cared for and played by all those who come to visit. My mom never discourages anyone from playing the piano. I never heard “leave that piano alone!” cross her lips, even when speaking to the youngsters who didn’t know how to play. She encourages everyone to try their hand at making beautiful music.

I have not been entirely without music for the last few years of course. I have a beautiful antique pump organ that has filled our home with lovely sounds from time to time. Bit I find that I don’t sit down to the pump organ the way I used to sit down to the piano. I have been learning to play the harp and have found great joy in that, but it’s difficult to carve out time to learn something new at this stage in my life. There have been many days in the past couple of years when I have longed for the sweet, simple feeling of my fingers placed on the ivory keys, creating something of beauty.

I started looking for a piano as soon as we knew we were moving to Oregon City. I searched craigslist, I searched online, I checked any second-hand shop that had an online option. We packed, we moved, I started painting our new place and making it “mine” with decorations, and I had a wall already picked out for where a piano would go. I kept searching for a piano that would fit in my budget and finally I found one. In fact, the price came in considerably under my budget. A woman had it listed for $50 so I called her and set up an appointment to take a look at it.

We drove out to her house to see it and while I was falling in love with it’s aged wood and upright build she told me the story of the piano.  I have to pause here and just say that everything should have a story, stories are what give our lives “life” and it’s my firm belief that we need to tell more of our stories.

The piano was built in 1911 by Stark in Chicago, Illinois. Now what it did and to whom it belonged for the first years of it’s existence are still a mystery, but by the mid-1960’s it had made it’s way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the town of Philadelphia there lived a young mother who loved to play the piano and volunteered her time and talent at her local church playing for worship services, children’s meetings, and anywhere else a hymn was requested. She was well loved by her fellow parishioners and when she contracted Polio they were as heartbroken, devastated, and worried as she was. What would become of her? What of her children? Where could she go for help? She and her husband looked far and wide for a place to get help and treatments for her Polio, searching for ways to stop the progression of the disease. It was decided at long last that they would go to Ohio, where they had found help.   Her fellow churchgoers were sad to see them leave, but were hopeful that she would find the help she needed and see an improvement in her health right away.   Together they pooled their funds and purchased for her a used piano, the old 1911 upright, as a gift of hope; a symbol of all that she had shared with them and of what they hoped she would be able to share in the future. Time passed, treatments were tried, but the Polio was stronger than the medical professionals she saw and in the end this young mother, who loved music and service lost the ability to offer either of those two things. The disease ravaged her body until she was left as a quadriplegic, dependant upon everyone else around her for her every need.

She could have given up at this point. She could have thought “I’m of no use to anyone, therefore my life is useless.” But she didn’t think that, she knew in her heart that it was a lie, and so in her own quiet way she continued to serve and to love in whatever way she could, be it conversations, encouragement, and sometimes just a listening ear. With nothing left to her but the power of words, both heard and spoken, she inspired her daughter to love music just as much as she did. And so her daughter learned to play. While her mother listened and cheered her on this daughter worked her way through learning notes, then cords, then beautiful classical masterpieces. She didn’t seek to be a concert pianist, but she emulated her mother’s teachings and went on to play for her church, for her friends, and still most of all…for her mother.

Her mother passed away a decade ago, after a long life of offering love, encouragement, words of comfort, praise, and joy to all she met. I’m sorry that I didn’t have a chance to meet her myself. Her daughter went through several moves across the country and she and the piano ended up in Portland, Oregon. She finally replaced the old piano with a newer one of her own and lent the old 1911 Starck to a friend, who ended up needing to make a move herself out to North Carolina. She knew she wouldn’t have room for the piano and so she got permission to sell it, the daughter had reached a point in her own healing from her mothers death to let it go; after all she already had the most important things her mother had given her; her life, her love of music, her joy in service.

I loved the piano from the moment I saw it, when I heard that story I loved it even more. It could be said that the hope that inspired the gift of the piano was in vain. After all it didn’t work did it? All those prayers, all that hope and she still ended up crippled by Polio didn’t she?  But I’d say that’s wrong. It’s an inevitable part of living; life deals out crummy cards from time to time. It’s just a product of mortality, of being a resident of planet Earth, of simply being human. We may not be able to control all of the events that happen in our lives, but without a doubt we are in complete control of our response to them, of our own feelings and emotions. In all of her despair, discouragement, and fear this young mother never lost the love of beauty inherent in her nature. When she could no longer create it with her own hands she cultivated it in the heart of her daughter. That alone is an amazing gift. What benefit would the music be if no one but the musician appreciated the melody? What benefit would the painting or photograph be if the artist were the only one who really comprehended the beauty? To give another person the gift of appreciation of the finer things in life is priceless, and the young mother didn’t need legs, feet, arms, or hands to give it. All she needed was a generous heart and a loving spirit.

She may not have been able to play the sounds of hope, but she could still hear them.

I’ve been thinking of her today, and of my own mother, and reflecting on my own children as I prepare for Mother’s Day tomorrow. I wonder…what will my children take with them when they finally leave the nest?  Have I taught them to see the beauty that is all around them? Have I taught them well enough not only how to tend the gardens we grow, but how to bask in their beauty as well?  Have I stood in the field’s with them to just soak up the sunshine, not to pull weeds? Sometimes when our hands are still able to work, we forget to set the work aside and make time to simply enjoy the garden. I believe I’ll take that time today, maybe go to the seashore and dance in the surf, or drive to the mountains and look out over our beautiful valley, or roast marshmallows over the little fire ring my sons built.

But first…I think I’ll go play them a song and let the sound of it fill our home with hope.