There is Much to Be Said for Absence . . . - July 22 2021

 

There is Much to Be Said for Absence . . .

July 22 2021

To call it a “country home” was grandiose.

Sure, we'd made it a home

like any house that becomes a part of you.

And it was in the woods

at a bend in the river

at the end of a rutted road.

But with electricity

a dug well.

A vintage fridge, and narrow bunk beds.

Mismatched chairs

around an old formica table.

Cast-offs, and thrift store furniture,

knick-knacks from the Sally Ann.

And at its beating heart

the floor-to-ceiling fireplace

made of pink and grey stone.

Hearth and home, as they say.

It was here we played house

escaped from the world.

No TV or radio,

no internet

even if we wanted it.

Just the books we brought, and some old mildewed tomes.

As well as some yellowing magazines

in a tall mouldering pile.

The usual reliable standbys

no one could bear to part with.

Time

still breathless about

a handsome new President

the Soviets in Cuba.

Life

with glossy full-page spreads

of civil rights riots

protesters shedding blood.

And National Geographic

patronizing Africa

with quaint grass huts

and naked black breasts.

People reduced

to anthropology.

We were never rich,

despite how sniffy

“summer house” sounds.

Where we sweated weeding the garden

were bitten by ravenous bugs

got burned in August sun.

But where you could drink straight from the river

and the fish were always fresh.

Simple pleasures, and good company

and quarantined from events.

And if not a little worse

then the news would be much the same

when we eventually returned.

Because the world went on without us

as it always does

and our ignorance was bliss.

There is much to be said for absence,

for changing what you can

and not bothering with the rest.

For happily doing the dishes,

which were chipped Melmac plates

and glasses made of jam jars.

For tending to your vegetable patch

and weed-whacking the lawn.

For playing catch with the dog.

For being present

and holding your tongue

and listening at the water's edge,

sitting side-by-side

hand-in-hand

as the sun slowly sets.

They're variously called cabins, camps, cottages, chalets, and shacks. Which all make “country home” and “summer house” sound awfully pretentious; even when they're not. But all are ways to escape current events, the pressure of time, and high expectations. I realize that this poem is rather sepia-toned and romanticized for a cynic like me. But sometimes, that's what comes to you. Actually, it was inspired by this piece from Garrison Keillor and Friends, his regular internet column. The reference in question comes at the beginning, but I'll include the whole thing.

My Mystification on the Connecticut Coast (7.21.21)

A quiet week at my wife’s family’s summer house on the Connecticut River, which sounds fancy but is a cottage full of furniture bought at yard sales. And there, this week, I make a big discovery: even after twenty-six years of marriage, I hadn’t realized the depth of her love of gardening. It was hot and she spent hours weeding a flower bed, three wheelbarrows’ worth, and came back to the porch happy and dripping with sweat.

When I met her in 1992, she was a freelance violinist in Manhattan, a Minnesotan trapped in semi-poverty by her love of classical music. We had a three-hour lunch, I fell in love. Nothing was said about yardwork. But here she was, in 2021, giddy after hours of weeding in the hot sun, the very thing I hated most growing up and so became a writer in order to avoid. I edit; I don’t weed.

The misery of weeding was what led to slavery. In the South, they couldn’t bear to work in the fields in that heat so they bought people in chains and beat them up. Slaveholders were people just like us who liked to be comfortable and that meant making other people hoe the cotton. You realize this on a hot day. The difference between us and the South is that it didn’t stay hot long enough in Minnesota for us to think of hauling people in in chains, but we would’ve done it, given time. But the beauty of love is that it leads you down a long path of discovery whereby you come to understand another person, and here was my love, sweat pouring off her, feeling exhilarated about weeding.

She felt like going to the theater that evening so we drove to Old Saybrook and went to a show at The Kate, a little theater named for Katharine Hepburn who had lived nearby. It was a comedy by the Ephron sisters, “Love, Loss & What I Wore,” and I noted, sitting down, that I was one of a handful of men in the room, fewer than a jury, and the thing got underway, and I sat silent, surrounded by laughing women. A lot of jokes about the emotional ties of various outfits. I met Nora Ephron once, walking along Broadway at 79th Street, and we stood and talked and I was struck by what a kind soul this famous funny woman was. So I’m disposed in her favor. But I didn’t laugh.

About halfway in, the play gets onto the subject of bras and boobs and here the real hysteria set in. Women screeching and shrieking at jokes that, had a man said one at a dinner table, he would’ve been shamed and maybe sent to his room. My wife, who is my judge and jury when it comes to comedy, was laughing. Boobs, the problem of flat-chestedness, the search for the perfect bra: all hilarious to the women around me, material for which a man would be heartily condemned as juvenile.

I got in deep manure once with a limerick I recited on the radio, which I still think is one of my best.

There was an old lady named Jude Who, imagining her solitude, In warm weather chose To take off her clothes And walk around town in the nude And old men and rubes Would stare at her boobs And think thoughts licentious and lewd She was eighty, Miss Judy, And not a great beauty But O how she lightened the mood.

The emails were brutal, I was accused of “objectification” and a childish fascination with breasts that’s been linked to sexual violence, but here was a roomful of Connecticut matrons laughing their heads off.

I think it was the hot weather that affected them. We are all sinners in extreme heat. You lie awake at night listening to mosquitoes and in the morning there’s no milk for your coffee and something snaps and you put on your mask and go to the store and — Sacré bleu! there’s a pistol in your hand! — and you tell the lady to open up the cash drawer. But this is a small town, and she says, “Oh go home and soak your head, Keillor. You don’t impress me with that little peashooter. Go back to bed and get out on the other side.” An old writer on the brink of felony is saved by the kindness of a neighbor. I’m sure it happens all the time.