Taking Measure

I woke early this morning, pulled myself upright, and sat there in my bed against stack of pillows supported by the headboard. For a very long time I remained in pure silence, gazing at a few random stars through my half-open window, thinking about yesterday, and all of the very dear people, the sea of sweet faces, who came to celebrate the life of my wife—our oldest and newest friends together. One of the faces came to me and said, “This is for you as much as Uyen. This is a testament to you, Mitch.” Until then, I never really considered that. I cannot fully explain, but this—today—feels like a new place where I must begin again without my best friend. Something important occurred yesterday.

Eventually, the sun scaled the far side of the mountains, flushing the cloudless sky orange, then white, finally, blue. Sometime later, the drone of a single motor boat Dopplered from one end of the lake to the other without pause, as if taking measure of the entire expanse. Long after that, the family presently sharing my house began to stir in all the rooms surrounding. A footfall here. Voices there, sounding like stones rolling along the bottom of a river. Cups kissing countertops. Plate clattering against plate.

At a younger age—for many years, actually—I suffered through depression. I bumped along the floor of this life, a maudlin little man. I have since taught myself how to avoid depression by devotedly focusing of all things mundane. I wipe the sides of the kitchen sink twice each day. I line my shoes along the wall in pairs. I stop to pat the head of each cat whenever I find one sitting atop a chair or standing at my feet. I vigorously brush my teeth and try to shave the one whisker John, at work, teases me about missing. I bring work home with me so I can always remain busy. I am not depressed. I am, instead, stuck at some numb point between happy and unhappy. I feel almost as if I have been captured in a clear jar for keeping. I have only my own name and rote habits left for default operation. I am pleased to have my house coming to life around me. I am. I do appreciate all of the dear people. I love them. But if that early morning boat was taking measure, I somehow feel just outside the results.

--Mitchell Hegman

Baseball

As a general rule, I do not appreciate watching team sporting events. Football and soccer leave me particularly deadened. The last full game of football I watched was the first year the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl. I don’t recall the exact year, but I do remember my sister transforming into a fountain of tears and joy at the moment of victory. I cannot explain what I don’t get about these sporting events because, well, I don’t get it.

Except baseball.

I like watching baseball. My grandmother loved the game. I learned what I know of the game form her. I sometimes watched games on television with my grandmother. On occasion, I accompanied her to Legion ballgames in Helena. Granny loved those games where everything went awry, say, when every available pitcher put on the mound got clobbered out of the park by the batters and the coach, in desperation, shoved infielders and outfielders up there and let them toss an inning or two of wild pitches. Typically, the fielders did pretty well because the batters stood there in fear of their lives. My grandmother enjoyed a colorful player and the goofy rituals performed by some batters when they stepped up to the plate—the bat-swishers and spitters and three-time dirt-stampers.

Last night, I went to a Helena Brewers, Pioneer League game with all of my visiting family. Natural to this season, the Brewers should have just phoned-in a loss and saved the embarrassment, but even with that, I enjoyed the game. With baseball, I know what I like. For one thing, I appreciate the high level of fan participation—not only the standard heckling and stomping, but the fact that you can, as did my niece, catch a foul ball and take it home. I appreciate that every player has a specific identity by position played. They are equal part individual and team player. Baseball is also a game of distinct sounds. The umpires growling strike calls. The swack of a fastball finding the catcher’s mitt. The crack of a well-hit ball to the outfield. The fish-dropped-to-the-floor sound of a batter getting hit by a pitch. Last night, I even imagined the sound of my grandmother’s voice at times, cursing a player or umpire for their infractions.

I am not crazy about a baseball game. I would never consider a season pass. But I enjoy baseball enough game that I might attend one on occasion, and anything that takes me back to my grandmother is good.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Quote

"Though an old man, I am but a young gardener."

--Thomas Jefferson

Church

A close-up picture of the St. John Church near Boulder, Montana. I mean really, really close! I took the photo in yesterday's fading sun.

--Mitchell Hegman

On This Side

June, one of my coworkers, today informed me that she had a dream about one of my cats. “The fuzzy one,” in her words. She was similarly “fuzzy” on exact details. I had to tell that if the dream was something about him pooping in the bottom of the whirl-tub in my master bath—that was no dream. I actually had to clean that up on this side of her sleep early this morning.

--Mitchell Hegman

Huckleberries

I drove into the stone and tree mountainscapes yesterday to pick huckleberries with Bill and Miles. I tell anyone uncertain, but curious, about picking huckleberries that the most important thing to know is that huckleberries refuse to grow in an ugly place. No exception to that yesterday. We climbed high into the Rockies and began picking in a wide and handsome bowl, sparsely populated with tall pines and awash with pink-to-red fireweed and yellow brush-stokes of stickseed. The berries, unfortunately, were mostly green and not plentiful on the whole, so we began to slowly unwind down from the high elevations on a road the clings to the mountainsides like a crack on the side of a porcelain cup, always looking for berries.

We stopped often to scout the vividly green steeps and swales. I thought about my wife as we either rolled past or stopped to pick berries at familiar landmarks. When first diagnosed with terminal cancer, a bit over four months back, both of us agreed that we would be in the mountains together for this. Our agreement did not, as they say, hold water. In spite of that, I still found myself looking for holes and flats where Uyen, who could barely walk on bad days, might be eased into a productive swath of huckleberries. For the last ten years of her life, nothing brought more joy and excitement to Uyen than picking huckleberries. My habit, after settling her into a “honey hole” was to orbit all around, picking, keeping watch for grizzly bears, all the while calling out my location.

Yesterday, each time we stopped to scour the understory and half-light breaks in forest cover, I allowed myself to quietly scramble deep into the timber and deadfall. I struggled to keep myself from looking back.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sunrise, August 11, 2011