I suppose I had one of those moments that has been described to me
through the years by mature acquaintances; moments of sudden and heavy
nostalgia for times gone by and people I've known.
Since
my wife and I sleep and wake at different times, we have gotten used to
our individual patterns. She doesn't wake when I stub my toe and
mutter an exclamation in the darkness of our bedroom at 4am, I'm able to
sleep through the radio to which she listens until after midnight.
Sometime
last night, some version of this song must have been played. My
mother, who was born in Scotland and always found this tune, its
history, and its protean lyrics to be quintessentially American, used to
play it on our piano and sing in that musical Glaswegian accent. The ancient American side of my family liked it, too. When I
woke this morning, after stubbing my toe, I had a wave of longing for
days gone by.
I grew up far away from the genteel New
England towns in which I've lived and worked for the last thirty
years. If not so far away in geography, certainly in terms of culture.
Comparatively, the southern Ohio of the late 1950's may as well have
been the frontier. Given that I was raised by, in part, actual Indians
makes these memories all the more obtuse given the circumstances of my
adulthood.
Anyway, I woke today missing my
grandparents, the two from my very old, American family that predates the
Revolution and mass migration of Europeans, and the two who arrived in
the United States in the 1920's. I miss my late parents, and the
mentors I've had, all but one of whom has died in the past few years.
So many, many with whom I can only speak now through memory.
I
miss the wild woods and trails of The Big Flat; those clean,
fish-filled streams; the calls of fowl and other fauna. I miss having
nothing expected of me other than to respect my parents, have good table
manners, never to swear in public, and pray in church once a week.
But,
as I can now see Old Mortality off on the horizon, still far away but
close enough to give me a hearty wave from time to time, I miss
listening to all of those people laughing and talking. All those
accents, from hillbilly to Tayside; all those stories, from places far
away and from places just across the field; all that love.
Oh,
well. I have to get back to work, now. There are stewardship letters
to write and church records to update; there are people who want me to
visit them without having to tell me they want me to visit them. There
are all of mundane realities of life away from those woods and those
people.
I will be humming this all day, though.