2/4/16 - A Kitchawank Essay: TWO STONES can a MAN MAKE (Sept. 2012)

  

“Hi Dad, hi Mom” he said, and then he walked a few steps to the side and said “hello my beloved”. The hemlock trees surrounding him, stirred awake by the wind, were shedding their needles on his sweating head as well as the ground without distinction. The needle and leaf strewn ground was sponge like under his weight.

Dressed in his work-worn jeans, an old beat up tee shirt, and scared and dusty work boots, he stood before the two bluestone memorial plaques. One was dedicated to his parents, and one was dedicated to his recently deceased wife. Each stone plaque of one inch thick bluestone, measured about one and a half feet wide and one foot high. They had been adhered with all-weather caulking to a large rock at the end of the yellow square hiking trail. The rock stood on top of a small knoll and seemed a fitting place for his loved ones. He had created many different hiking trails through his forested acres of land. Each trail was marked with a different colored plastic marker: Diamond shapes for the vertical trails up the hill side or mountain side, depending upon how one felt about the topography; the square shapes were used to indicate lateral or easier traverses.

His mother had died of a cancer when he was in his mid-twenties and she was buried a few states away. He seldom visited her grave due to the distance. He doubted that he could even find it in the cemetery. But now she was here with him … sandblasted into the bluestone slab. 

He reflected upon how things might have been different in his life had she lived and been able to give him her wise council during his first marriage. While she had not been educated beyond the sixth grade, she had a lot of wisdom, as most mothers do. Perhaps she could have helped him save his first marriage, which unfortunately, ended in divorce.

His father, on the other hand, had just recently passed away at the age of ninety-five. He was a first- generation Italian with a strict, by-the-belt, discipline upbringing. He would tell his son stories about his mother making pasta and his father making wine. He would also tell his son about the times he was punished with the belt for staying out too late at night … he must have been a “hell raiser” in his youth. As the son reflected upon his father’s stories, his father was the best he could have been considering his upbringing and sixth grade education. The father did his job, brought in the money and left the house for his wife to manage.

Unfortunately, as he looked down upon the engraved memorial plaque he did not consider that he, the son, was the best father he could have been either. It could be supposed that he could blame the fact that he lost his mother’s wisdom early on in life, and that his father raised him with the belt strap for discipline. Or perhaps he could simply admit he had not been smart enough to break the “old-world” cycle of home life. In retrospect, he was not the husband and father he felt he should have been for his first wife and children. 

His first wife was a good woman, a good mother but they had grown apart after twenty-six years. It was an amicable parting of the ways, for the most part. The children were grown, some had moved out, and some were in college. He moved out of the family’s house, and for a few years, roomed with two other guys in another house, and in another town. He left everything behind except his truck, some tools, a few pieces of furniture and his computer. But most of all, he left behind his first true love that had been tarnished beyond repair.

As the flies and gnats buzzed his now perspiring body he thought about his first marriage and how he took on the role of bread-winner, house repair man, car mechanic … bring it to daddy and he will fix it. Everyone was managed and cared for. Managed. Sounds like a boss … and in a very real sense, he was. Yes there was love in the house. He loved his wife and children, but he never told his children of his love in words … only in his deeds. Not until later in life when the children had lives of their own did he realize he needed to say the words “I love you” … and when he did … they didn’t say the words back. Perhaps they didn’t hear them enough when they were young and growing up. But now he said them often to his children, and especially his grandchildren. In recent years however, once in a while, when he spoke these words to his children, he would hear them echoed back. He was making progress … he didn’t want them saying “I love you” to a burial marker without hearing them first with his own ears.

Standing at the knoll, ignoring the flies, gnats and falling needles, he saw how he had the two memorial stone plaques engraved in the old-world Italian style naming convention. Father’s name inscribed as the family name, but his mother’s name was engraved with her maiden name. 

The father was Italian and the mother was Polish and he, obviously, was a mixture of both, but mostly he considered himself Italian … a hot Italian, perhaps like his father. He had discovered that he was conceived, out of wedlock, one passionate evening on her family couch. A quick wedding was planned. In those days people didn’t have children before they were married. So there were three people in the wedding photo, but only two were obvious.

He walked over to his parent’s memorial plaque and gently kissed his father’s engraved name and then his mother’s name in the engraved stone. His eyes swelled with tears. He did miss them. They were the best parents they could have been having been brought up in their time period. They were both first-generation immigrants, both had the old-world upbringing, both hard working and dedicated.

The second plaque had his name and birth date, and not being clairvoyant, there was no deceased date. His sister and he were best friends, and she always joked that she would write in his date using a magic marker pen. The second name below his, also in the old-world Italian naming convention, was his second wife. She had died of cancer and heart failure the year before. As he bent and kissed her engraved name he could not hold back the tears. He fell back and leaned against a small hemlock tree and cried. The rough tree bark cutting into his back. He felt so cheated in his life to have lost her after only twenty years of marriage. What a bummer!

He had met his second wife at a musical gathering or hootenanny in New Haven Connecticut. She played guitar and he, at that time, played the mandolin. They made music together for a while and then made a different kind of music. When his divorce was finalized, he moved in with her, and they set up house. They were the best of lovers not being afraid to experiment with their intimacies, sensualities and lovemaking. 

Then they became best friends. Strange. Now you might think that it would be the other way around. But, best friends share everything, give and receive counsel, cry on each other’s shoulder and are buddies. That’s not always the case with married people. Some marriages are two people living in the same house, sharing the same check book, and sharing the same bed … well usually anyways. 

The yellow square trail traversed his forested property of mixed trees from one end to the other. Just recently he had added this small extension to the knoll with the two stone plaques. When he first discovered this knoll many years ago he thought it might be a good place for spiritual and self reflection. After his father passed, he knew how he would use the knoll and the triangular shaped rock sitting atop the knoll. He had cleared the area of scrub brush, cleared the overhanding tree branches and cleaned up the dead branches on the ground. It became his personal shrine to the people he loved and who had passed over.

Alone now, for almost a year, he often hiked his trails. This knoll was usually the first or last stop along the way. Hiking exercised the body and entertained the bugs and gnats. It gave them something to do while avoiding being eaten by something bigger. Here was something they could eat, and if cunning enough, would not be “passed over” with a swat of the hand. He reflected, with a solid whap of his hand on a deer fly, is there a bug heaven? Well, we are all God’s creations. If there was a bug heaven, were they in the same place as humans? Were his loved ones being “bugged” by bugs? Profound thoughts for a hiker … eh?  Some theologians might argue that only humans have a soul, and without a soul there is no “heaven”. And what is “heaven” anyways? Oh well, he wasn’t going there any time soon … he hoped.

As he walked among the pine, elm and maple trees he reflected that he was just leaving his three quarter century mark of life. He had always exercised, and while he had been a heavy drinker in the past, he was now being a lot more responsible about alcohol. He also ate well and had dropped his weight to a respectable one hundred and seventy-six pounds. Standing at about five foot and ten inches, he felt good. His body was lean and was decently muscled for someone his age. At least the women he had dated didn’t seem to mind it when he took his shirt off. 

He had a new life ahead of him and had chosen to be a bit more responsible for maintaining a good body and a sound mind  … what was left of it anyways. He always joked about walking from one room to another to get a pencil and paper to write a note, and by the time he got there, he forgot what he was going to write down. Getting old sucks, but it is better than the alternative.

The yellow square trail intersected the red square trail and he turned left up the hill. Tears having dried, he regained his hiking stride. He liked having his parents and wife nearby. Each of them, in their own way, and in their own time, had contributed to his life. Contributed to his being a person and contributed to his continued growth as a man. 

Thanks mom and dad. Thank you to his beloved wife. Two stone plaques, freshly kissed with love, holding years of lessons and memories."