Mom sent me a picture recently around my birthday. I remember, if not resemble, this kid. A somewhat jagged hairline to match a somewhat jagged smile. A brown clip-on bow tie only slightly smaller than the early seventies gigantic collar whose tips reach even lower than the point of the tie.
Of course, the shirt is patterned. I forget with what? Perhaps ducks or dogs or florals. The ochre-colored bell-bottomed polyesters are nearly as classic as the Buster Brown leather shoes. It’s a school picture. It could be the last one that I was clueless enough about my fashion sense to be sporting a genuine smile.
Over a half century and a few years later I wonder at the spark I see in my eye and how much five decades have tried their best to dampen it.
Reality and responsibility have a way of doing that. This is one of the reasons that I love living in Ely on the edge of the forest and the wilderness.
We seem to have a fighting chance at discovering and realizing the things that truly matter here. Through economic hardship, difficult weather, polarizing seasons, land that can be lived off but needs to be survived, land that provides ranges wild and free on its own, wildlife, wild snow, wild wind and wildfire and wild rain, we weather the storm. If we’re lucky, it respects us and we respect it. If we’re lucky, instead of pulling the wool over our eyes, it brightens the spark within them.
There’s a lot to do here, just to keep up with the transitions and that weather alone. Maintenance. To maintain. It’s not simply enough to build something new, to create something where there once was nothing. It needs to be cared for, kept up and protected through the years.
Otherwise, the brickmold behind your storm door that has been battered and bent multiple times by the high winds when you left it open a moment too long, well, yah know, that molding that never benefited from more than primer, it rots. On the surface it looks mostly just left of weathered if not shiny, but underneath what was new just fourteen years ago has lost all of its spark underneath. But… for nearly five months, some years, we can walk on water.
We’re going to get cooler and we’re going to get warmer as Halloween approaches. By trick-or-treat night the flurries are likely to be flying if only temporarily, but the project list will still have to be ticked off, the needsbutton- ups still buttoned up. We’re under the gun so to speak.
Busy isn’t bad and no matter the season, Minnesota has taught this boy that all the best dreams are ones that take their fair share of hard work to finish. My glasses aren’t as thick these days, in fact my eyesight is better now than it was then. I see more clearly in many ways, but I’m happy to say that despite a healthy dose of reality and responsibility, my jaunty grin can still match that crooked hairline.
I know what I dreamed of then and what crunching autumn leaves under those Buster Browns sounded like, what kicking through piles and jumping in raked mountains of orange and yellow and red and brown until they buried you under laughter and the pure joy of fall felt like.
I remember knocking on doors with rubber hands and the muffled mutterings of “trick-or-treat” behind a sweat lined rubber mask felt like. The anticipation of Almond Joys over Mounds and Reese’s Pieces over M&Ms. An occasional light blue or pink colored homemade popcorn ball that would be tossed at home for fear of something unheard of possibly hidden inside. My costume consistently covered up with a parka to keep out the cold and the rain.
Dressing up. Pretending. Embracing the spooky before winter has a chance to truly haunt us. We manufacture our tricks and we treat ourselves to a few realized dreams bright enough to scare away the scales that fall over the eyes of some others less fortunate.
In this class picture, I stood out on the page (smile). Perhaps, that is not the least of the reasons why I never fit into a cookie cutter hole. It is with the utmost respect and honesty that I thank my mom for this. You knew where creativity and make-believe could take a wordsmith and dreamer. He just needed the right outfit.
