“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story,” wrote English humorist Terry Pratchett in A Hat Full of Sky. Following is the story of my morning walk this past Sunday.
It is 7:01 in the morning of a Wolf Moon two miles from my home. The temperature is 57 degrees — in the middle of January. I pass one of my favorite trees (below), which I call the “Andy” tree, after my father — a lone tree in the middle of an empty field.
The Wolf Moon is the first full moon of January, the beginning of breeding season for wolves, who may howl more often during this time. Traditionally, full moons are seen as a chance to start anew — a time to reflect on your choices and forge a new path. I am not forging a new path this morning, but heading to my Goose Pond “church.”
Wolf Moon at 7:17 a.m., 2.75 miles from my home.
Goose Pond 7:21 a.m., 3 miles from my home.
The sky is mostly dark and overcast by middle clouds. Will I be able to see the actual sun? I find the tree stump where I always sit and wait for the sunrise and this morning, am reminded of the opening of a story about my father that I’ve never finished. It’s entitled, “Granite Heart” and following are the opening paragraphs:
Marking the boundary of our backyard and two feet from a small birch tree was a salmon-and-gray-flecked granite boulder shaped like a human heart and as big as the compact refrigerator in our family’s Holiday Rambler camper. No one knew how it got there, and as hard as I pushed my right foot against the birch tree, the boulder at my back, it never budged. It never rolled down into the neighbor’s privacy boundary of boxwoods where I couldn’t see it.
Nearly every Sunday afternoon – at halftime of the 1 p.m. televised NFL football game — my father would saunter outside, sit on the boulder for about 15 minutes – his back to the house — and then disappear into the woods. He seemed about as wide as the boulder and from the upstairs dining room window — thanks to his crew cut — looked like a giant pineapple with a sheared-off crown.
Sometimes I wasn’t the only one watching my father. Cupping a mug of steaming Lipton tea, my mother would watch from the kitchen sink window. She told us that he spent so much time sitting on that boulder that he must be incubating something. I couldn’t imagine my father incubating and then hatching any living thing larger than the scores of guppies that he tended to in his basement aquarium.
Why can’t I finish that story, I wonder? Have I become my father, sitting here all alone? He could never finish anything, either. It is 7:33.
Fourteen minutes later, at 7:42, I capture this:
I post four photos (none of the ones featured here) on Facebook and head for home. My beloved friend, Charlotte, calls to thank me for a photo I sent to her for her birthday. I tell her about the weather front I see. I keep thoughts about my father to myself.
I take a photo of the weather front and Wolf Moon at 8:18:
Nine minutes later, while heading home and making the turn on Research Road that will take me past the “Andy” tree, I turn around to see where I’ve been. And there is the moon. “Fifty years ago, we stood together in front of the TV and watched man land on the moon,” I think. “Remember, Dad? That very moon. It’s still closer to me than you are.”
I think a lot about both my mother and father when I venture out into nature. I doubt very much that my father thought about any member of his family when he disappeared into the back woods when I was a kid. He walked to get away from it all, including his family.
He’s still walking away.
This post is beautiful, poignant and heartbreaking. Your aloneness and desire for a meaningful connection with your dad laid bare. Have you ever asked him about his ritual with sitting on the rock? You might lead in by telling him you have a similar but different ritual. What struck me the most was the last photo. In the first photo of the Andy tree, it stands alone. But in that last photo, there is another tree, offset a bit, right across the road. Their branches reach towards each other, but do not touch. The moon is between them.
After following your story, I clearly saw the last photo as you and your dad. I also saw that neither the Andy tree or yours is alone. It is all a matter of perspective, which I suspect is true with the anatomy of a sunrise as well.
Thanks for sharing this beauty, your insights and perspective.
Thank you, dear Beth. You comment is also beautiful, poignant and heartbreaking.
Just to clarify, and I apologize that it is not clear in my post, the “Andy” tree is neither of the trees in the last photo, but I’m touched by your description: “Their branches reach towards each other, but do not touch. The moon is between them.” I didn’t notice that when I took the photo — I concentrated on the seemingly endless road to reconciling with my father, knowing that it will be one-sided. He may, in his own way, be reaching, but we will never touch. It is a sad and heartbreaking reality.
Stay tuned to tomorrow’s post which will also be about my father. I can’t stop thinking about him.
PS: Miracle of miracles, this post arrived in my inbox directly from Spark & Spitfire, which almost never happens. Will wonders never cease?
Yes, miracle of miracles, indeed. My own notification showed up in my JUNK MAIL.
Let’s see if your notification for tomorrow’s post comes directly from Spark & Spitfire . . . I’m holding my breath.
Sharon Friend, Beth’s comment, “beautiful, poignant, and heartbreaking” says it all. I’ll just add the word “brilliant” as your persona shines so clearly in this piece. You say you’re not forging a new path, but I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t exactly what you are doing. You’re finding a new path to wholeness in your sunrise ventures, it seems to me, and you’re also opening up, more and more, I sense, to all the “aloneness” you have felt most of your life. You’re not waiting any longer for your father’s touch, but touching instead, holding profoundly, the ache of his absence and living into that ache with new awareness and strength.
Oh, Carol. Thank you. You’ve been a companion on my path for a very long time. I’d be in a ditch somewhere if it weren’t for beloveds like you and others.
Yes, I have felt that ache so acutely since the holidays which will forever be marked by my mother’s prolonged death. I need to warn you that that ache is most decidedly saturated with anger in tomorrow’s post. I hope expressing it helps me move past it, but it will not be an easy read.
Whenever I’ve thought of my father the past couple of weeks, the word, “fury,” has immediately come to mind. And to quote Mary Karr, that fury has bulk and geometry. I’m weary of aiming that fury at myself.