Samhain Triumvirate

HALLOWEEN

My 5th Grade Art Project ~ Halloween 1967

"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!"
~ Elizabeth Akers Allen ~
I was so pleased to re - discover this 50 - year - old (!) painting over the summer, rolled up in a closet at my parents' house. My friend Len humorously pointed out that perhaps it survived because "Somehow you knew as a child to always use acid-free archival paper, inks, and glues for all of your projects." On a serious note, my oldest brother Dave pointed out that "Interestingly your only concession to Halloween is the pumpkin in the lower right" and my own children were wondering why on earth their mom used to be such a morbid kid! What about candy, costumes, and jack - o - lanterns? I guess even at age 10, I intuited a sense of foreboding as the year wound itself down.

For a couple of months now, I have been haunted by Len's direful pre - seasonal warning:

"Two days ago I acknowledged the end of summer; Fall, with its ominous name, has been looming and lurking. With our backs turned, with our eyes fixed on new books, in the delusion of days without meetings or grading papers, suddenly the Fall leaps out and can't be shaken off any more. I posted the syllabuses to my course site. The books for my 'Representations of Exile' class are stacked on my desk (this time Conrad, Danticat, Cristina Garcia, Nabokov, Sebald, and Viet Thanh Nguyen). For the rest of the night: free reading."

Len's ode to Fall (ominous yet seductive) reminded me of many a paragraph in The Street of Crocodiles, eerie and lyrical. For example:

"Oh the skies of those days, skies of luminous signals and meteors, covered by the calculations of astronomers, copied a thousand times, numbered, marked with the watermarks of algebra! With faces blue from the glory of those nights, we wandered through space pulsating from the explosions of distant suns, in a sidereal brightness . . . The houses, wide open at night during that time, remained empty in the light of violently flickering lamps. The curtains blew out far into the night and the rows of rooms stood in an all - embracing, incessant draft, which shot through them in violent, relentless alarm." (Bruno Schulz, 155 - 56)

If the approaching autumn season seems too sinister, I find that a little lace -- black or white or some of each -- helps to soften the worrisome edges. For over twenty - years now, a delicate lace ghost has appeared to gently haunt us in honor of the previous residents of our various historical homes. Every year, as the October light works its magic, my mother and my friend Victoria never fail to inquire, "Is the ghost up yet?" My sweet sister Di had some kind words for this year's emanation: "That is the fanciest ghost I have ever seen. When I get home I will dig out my tablecloths and see what I can do!"

ALL SAINTS

ALL SOULS

Black Cat ~ Black Lace

Artistic Flair

I asked my sister Peggy if she remembered
taking this Bleak Mid - Winter photo from the back porch
of our house in Clover Meadows (St. Charles County, Missouri)
probably 50 years ago, in January 1968.

She said: I kind of remember this picture.
The tilted camera was my attempt at artistic flair!

**********************************

A few others shared their memories as well:
Our little brother Aaron: "Definitely remember this view. Beyond the telephone pole was our baseball diamond. But who left the tracks in the snow????"

Our little sister Diane: "Aaron, it was probably a dog or a deer?"

Our neighbor Debbie: "That sure brings back childhood memories . . . from back when there were hardly any other houses around!

And I reminded Aaron: "Remember when you fired your BB Gun into that telephone pole and the BB ricocheted right into the lens of your glasses? Whew! Those glasses saved your eyesight! It's the moral of the BB Gun Christmas Story movie, as everyone keeps telling Ralphie: "You'll put your eye out!"

Playing in the backyard ~ 1968
Diane, Kitti, Aaron, Bruce

20 years later ~ Summer 1988
Diane, with her children Aaron & Jessica,
showing Uncle Gerry the garden.

This photo was taken, looking in the same direction as Peg's artistic winter scene. The telephone pole is gone, but would be somewhere right behind Gerry. The old farmhouse has been replaced by a large contemporary barn. Even this was 30 years ago, so no doubt a current picture would differ yet again.

Diane's son Aaron (named after his Uncle Aaron; the shy one above, peeking out from behind his mom) shared a perspective from the second generation of kids to grow up in the same house:

"The view there has changed quite a bit. That side is about the same but just down Central School Rd is Home Depot, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, and a million other places. We have some friends who live on the other side of Central School Rd, in the neighborhood next to Rolling Meadows. It’s funny to be over there visiting, so close to where I spent the first 8 years of my life (1982 - 1990)."

Stars, Moons, Phosphorescence

Falling asleep and waking up to the intense light of this month's full moon made me think of my sister Diane's pre - Christmas epiphany. Back in mid - December, she wrote:

"Early this morning I took our garbage to the curb. Our subdivision is very dark, as we have no street lights and the lots are big. Other neighbors are hard to see. It was raining a little, and I almost changed my mind about going in the dark. But when I opened the front door to look out, I saw a big bright star. It was only a decoration on my neighbor's house, but it shone down on my driveway just enough so I could tell where to walk. Taking that walk so reminded me of that long ago walk taken by Kings to see our Savior. God bless your day."

Reading her description of the bright Christmas star, even if it was "only a decoration," brought to mind my favorite quote from the movie Apollo 13, when the television reporter asks Jim Lovell (as portrayed by Tom Hanks) if there is "a specific instance in an airplane emergency when you can recall fear?"

Both Lovell's revelation and my sister's epiphany give me goosebumps. Reading their words, I feel exhilarated and humbled at the same time.

Lovell:"Uh well, I'll tell ya, I remember this one time - I'm in a Banshee at night in combat conditions, so there's no running lights on the carrier. It was the Shrangri-La, and we were in the Sea of Japan and my radar had jammed, and my homing signal was gone... because somebody in Japan was actually using the same frequency. And so it was - it was leading me away from where I was supposed to be. And I'm lookin' down at a big, black ocean, so I flip on my map light, and then suddenly: zap. Everything shorts out right there in my cockpit. All my instruments are gone. My lights are gone. And I can't even tell now what my altitude is. I know I'm running out of fuel, so I'm thinking about ditching in the ocean. And I, I look down there, and then in the darkness there's this uh, there's this green trail. It's like a long carpet that's just laid out right beneath me. And it was the algae, right? It was that phosphorescent stuff that gets churned up in the wake of a big ship. And it was - it was - it was leading me home. You know? If my cockpit lights hadn't shorted out, there's no way I'd ever been able to see that. So uh, you, uh, never know . . . what . . . what events are to transpire to get you home" (ellipses in original text).


Awhile back (see "How to Keep On Hoping"), I mentioned a favorite passage from E. L. Doctorow, quoted by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, describing a similar phenomenon: " 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you are going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you" (18).

That's what stars are for . . . and moons . . . and headlights . . . and phosphorescence . . .

P.S. A friend writes:
Tonight, the first full moon
after the winter solstice.
The "Wolf Moon" or the "Old Moon."
A beautiful full moon over Lee's Summit
as we roasted marshmallows.