I haven’t thought of him for about 7 years but when I woke
up recently from a very nice nap I realized the dream I had was more about him
than the woman in it. In the mixed-up
land where dreams dwell and pieces of my life and his got flip-flopped, I figured
it out. I was back living in the country
house I rented almost two decades ago.
In the dream, I was living in his house alone and the woman in the house
across the lawn suddenly had relatives appear taking stuff and selling
campers. I spoke to one of them and
grabbed a dog by the collar and brought it home … and woke up from the dream
with my real dogs next to me.
But this
is how the story really went:
The first day I met him I felt as if God and Norman Rockwell
painted him into my life as my next door neighbor. His face was wrinkled and weathered from
outdoor life. He had an easy, partially toothless grin and a voice raspy from 70
years of smoking. He wore a plaid work
shirt and you could see the edge of a scoop-neck men’s tee shirt above the
second button. I never saw him in
anything other than jeans – perhaps workers’ Carharts once – and he walked
slightly bow-legged, perhaps from years astride a motorcycle or farming
equipment.
He began our first conversation mini-speech that went kind
of like this:
“Now. A lot of city folk think they kin move out to
th’ country and make it, but they just don’t have it in ‘em, what it takes to
survive ….”
You would’ve thought I was becoming a pioneer wife. I assured him that my eleven city years had
been preceded by birth and youth in very rural suburbs. I didn’t make more apology than that. Good farm manners teach you that if the word “Now”
followed by a period, they are fixin’ to tell you something worth knowing… like
our tutorial on noxious farm weeds.
He said he noted some nettles in the back brush.
“Now. I don’t care who y’are if you tangle with
stinging nettles, y’ll have a problem.
But if you look nearby y’ll see a small plant with orange/yellow flow’rs. Snap that stalk open and rub it on where the
nettles got you.”
And so it was.
Seasons later, on a cool October Saturday morning I was pulling tall
stalk weeds up behind the garage when some leaf merely brushed against my
inside fore arm. It’s hard to say which
I felt first, the itch or the pain. For
a moment I pondered Calamine lotion which arguably has never worked for me so I
dismissed it quickly as the arm began to feel warm and look slightly blotchy in
that area. Then I turned and looked
again at the tall weeds, noting their thin ragged-edge leaves and I said out loud: “Damn!
Stinging nettles!” I scanned the
area. My eyes fell upon the smaller
plant with aloe-like short stalks and pretty orange flowers. What if it made it worse? I slit the stalk with my thumbnail and
dripped the green juice on my arm, lightly spreading it with the stalk. Instant relief. I’m telling you. Instant.
Relief. Since then, I’ve looked for
this plant every time I’m in a wooded area because they are also fabulous on
mosquito bites.
Sometimes he and I would take our respective riding
lawnmowers out at the same time. We
would each do half of our grass, then stop in the middle for a chat. I remember the time he spoke about his wife
who had passed the previous year. I
barely knew her to say hello, she mostly would hop on their golf cart and drive
the other direction across a little bridge to their son and daughter-in-law’s
home next door to them. He said, “Y’know
she’s been gone a year now. It just don’t
feel the same.” There really was not
much more to it than that. The pain of
loss and a knowing that re-orienting to the new normal was not on the agenda
made it impossible for me to respond adequately other than: “I hear what you’re
saying. I’m sorry.”
I was always impressed with his ability to do the old style
gentleman proper introduction. I had
pretty much thought that was a lost art to our civilization. He introduced me to his grandson who was from
out of state serving in the military.
Then he volunteered their efforts to cut down a few tree limbs for me,
which they did. He was teaching the
young man something about being a good neighbor without making a federal case
out of it: he was just doing it. I know when the grandson went back to his
life across the states, my neighbor missed him something fierce. He said, “that crazy kid! You know he calls me every single morning on
his drive into work?!” It wasn’t a
complaint. He was basking in real
family-style love.
One of the things that his family did was have bonfires on
the lawn in the summer. He said to me, “You’ll
always be welcome at our fire.” That’s a
big deal. They would light a fire in the
evening and sit around in lawn chairs talking and laughing. I was always too busy with my own
preoccupations to take him up on the kindly, standing invite. But it was important that he said it. He was the patriarch and he had issued the
invite. The only time I lit a fire in my own yard was when I was burning ground
bees in their hole. I drenched a rag in
kerosene and stuffed it in one hole; and then went to find the second hole –
because bees always have an escape plan – that rag, which I would not light on
fire, was soaked in gasoline. You don’t
light gasoline because it has a short flash-point and will blow up at you. Kerosene, on the other hand, is a slow burn,
and you need to remember the lawn chair if you are going to do this
project. But mostly, “don’t try this at
home” applies to most city people in this situation…. Because they just can’t
survive the country, as I was told…
The day that I told him I was moving to the next town where
I had bought a house he was not without care.
His words said it all: “Just when
you find a good neighbor, they move out …”
He asked permission to hug me. Of
course. Always the gentleman. I assured him that I still wanted him to come
out to my annual Memorial Day barbecue.
You’d think I was 40 miles away instead of 5 from the look on his
face. But I moved out in June and then
drove by his house around Memorial Day to see if his truck was out front. For weeks, I drove by and then it struck me …
I went online to the obituaries. I
suspect he is sitting at a bonfire with his wife now … But for the record,
maybe I wasn’t the good neighbor. He
was.
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