I recall digging in the empty field directly behind
my grandmother’s house one late afternoon as a boy of something near seven or
eight. After digging down about a foot
or so, I sat there amid the round riverwash stones, blue dirt, and upended
roots of bunchgrass listening to the unquiet of the small town moiling around
me. I heard automobiles main-streeting
east and west. The lead smelter, huffing
and clanking, carried across to rail ribbons and the creek. A dog barked from a seemingly blanket-covered
distance.
I sat there and thought about forever in the
over-simplistic way only a child can manage.
This morning, as I sat outside in my hot tub, I
thought of that long-ago day. And I
closed eyes to hear the new unquiet—the unquiet within me. I am aging, aching, and frequently unsure if
I am capable of the sincerity and decency of my childhood. All of my relationships with others are now
qualified by one bad experience or another.
From here, I no longer hear the automobiles
main-streeting in either direction. That
field is now covered by a parking lot. The smelter long-ago dismantled and the local
jobs shipped overseas.
The grass remains upturned.
--Mitchell
Hegman
It is said that there are only two things constant in life: death and taxes. I say there's one other and that's change. Whether we like it or not change happens even if imperceptibly so. Desert sands shift with the wind and ice glaciers gradually melt and move.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing we can do to cope with change is to embrace it and see the good it eventually reveals. If an unquiet exists, there is a quiet. And there can be no darkness if there is no light.