Yule and the Samain Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Boiler. Hot Water. Well. Septic. Pipes. Electricity. Generator. Walls. Windows. Roofs. Floors. Driveway. Skylights. Solar panels. Great Sol. Orion. Andromeda. Polaris. Ursa Major. Vega. Rigel. The Moon and its phases. Shadow Mountain.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Kavannah: Persistence and love
One brief shining: Oh so long ago those days of old army jackets (cue the irony), work boots, jeans, work shirts, long hair and beards, joints and acid, Hell no we won’t go, Hey, Hey, ho, ho, LBJ he’s got to go, sweaty nights with the woman I met at that day’s rally, the Doors in the background playing Riders in the Storm.
I suppose, sometime, is that enough equivocation, I might-a little more-write my own memoir of the 60’s, the war against the war. Another planet, another universe. Laid against Peter Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel. Those long red ties. Government as clown car. Cram all the horn honkers, the confetti cannonaderes, the yellow and blue and red frizzy haired ones in that you can. Then one more.
Central Indiana, where I spent my 60’s, though not my sixties, was not the pulsing epicenter of the movement though the 1968 Democratic convention happened not far away. Even so we did our part. Dressed up like all the other individualists marching together across the country. Listened to the same bands. Held fast to the same dreams. Not the Children’s Crusade, but similar. Older. Young adults.
Easy to cast a cynical eye back to those days. Say the obvious things about white privilege, a poor person’s war (aren’t they all?), the way we were. Yet my life turned away from the American establishment (remember the establishment?) for good. Turned toward justice as a life work. So much else. So much else. But not today.
No. Today I want to acknowledge another powerful event that shaped my post 1980’s life: the arrival, 43 years ago this night, of my son and his wicker basket partner, Willie. I’ve repeated the story often of the iced up fuel line in our orange VW Bug, sidelining us on the way home. And Angel, the Latino, rescuing me and towing me home, and as he came inside so I could thank him properly, an Angel became the first outsider to see my son in his new home.
Suddenly. A parent. That day earlier Raeone and I were a childless couple in our early thirties. At midnight on December 15th, that same day, we were parents. No nine months of preparation. Of course there was anticipation, but no pregnancy.
My son weighed 4 lbs and 4 ounces. He was so tiny. We both wondered if he would survive the first day with parents as clueless as we felt. Well. I talked with him yesterday. He’s made it 43 years past that night at Minneapolis/St. Paul International. I guess I can breathe now.