A Toast to Helen

I snapped the photograph above as I sipped my evening Scotch in my hot tub.   In the photo, I am raising a toast to Helen, my daughter, who made it through a raucous night while Superstorm Sandy slapped her apartment building and the rest of the East Coast silly. 

This afternoon, after braving the night with floodwater, wind, and no power in her New York apartment, Helen hiked to a friend’s domicile (with restored power) to spend the rest of the week.  She has been through her share of tragedy already.  She lost her mother, the only adult family she had remaining on this continent, less than two years ago.  She lost a husband to cancer only six months after they wed.  She was a witness to nine-eleven the first time she lived in New York City.  She survived me as her step-father.

So much for a young woman to endure.   

--Mitchell Hegman

Unquiet, Part II

Wheeling in from the Atlantic Ocean and wide enough to shred the coastal cities of several states with a single landfall, Hurricane Sandy has struck the Eastern Seaboard.  Not just any storm—maybe the biggest one of a lifetime—Sandy is an Arctic jet stream wrapped around a tropical storm.

A superstorm. 

Striking land in concurrence with high tide and with sustained winds near 90 miles-per-hour, the advancing rains and storm surges have already shut down airports and caused thousands of flights to cancel.  Wall Street suspended stock trading.  Both presidential campaigns cancelled events today and possibly for longer, little more than a week before the election.

On Greenwich Street, just off the Upper Bay in New York City, my daughter huddles in her apartment, waiting for the storm to punch through.  Her text to me earlier was this: “Yeah, I’ll be fine, everything shut down so just holed up in my apartment!”  

One of her last text messages: “Well power finally out.  4-5 ft of water flooding the street in front of my building.  Pretty safe in my apt though!

Really?

--Mitchell Hegman

Unquiet

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

Quiet, Part III

Only near absolute zero do the earth, stones, and frozen waters become quiet--their molecules finally subdued.  At all temperatures before that, in all places, in the warm daylight and in the cool darkness, these things jangle and whirr.

For now, at this temperature, all things sing.

Are you listening?

--Mitchell Hegman

Quiet, Part II

In the quiet of an empty room, where a child allows imaginary playthings to gather, an adult may imagine armies amassing against him.

--Mitchell Hegman

Quiet

Is the absolute quiet of a deep woods night the same as the absolute quiet of a single empty room?

--Mitchell Hegman

Shadow II

You should only be afraid of your own shadow if it is brandishing a knife and you are not.

--Mitchell Hegman