Rock Pondering, 2024

I’m ready to be home until I sit by the lake. I sit in the breezing under the towering, sweet smelling trees with their concert of fluttering leaves and their sign language clapping in agreement of this glorious day.

I breathe in the clarity. I delight in the trilling birdsong and I rest in the beauty of my I AM. 

Rock Pond did not go as I had hoped though I did not realize I had hoped for anything until it was over. 

It seems I had been hoping for resolution and rest; a sort of satisfaction in the letting go and the taking up of the shared memories of my exceptional people with my exceptional people.

I had hoped that I might put at ease my inner stirring for meaning by the leaving behind ofà commemorations for each of them.

I had hoped to embrace Mr. Emerson’s apt eulogy and speak it into the breezing of this pond of childhood memories:

 “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. 

This is to have succeeded.” 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

But I was only one of many and a public speaker I have never been so I will sit here and redeem those hopes.

I arrived late having chosen Robert Frost’s Road not taken. My body betraying me with each labored breath and rib entanglement, though I did find many natural wonders along the way 

I would have liked more time to wander and feel and be. To look for Mr. Rabbit’s home as I did so long ago with 5 year old Scott and place his plaque above it in gratitude for his life. 

To find the large rock I decided was the pond’s namesake and watch, again, as Ross and Todd? set up an overnight fishing line they would never retrieve. 

To come alongside my Mama and observe with horror as she removed each porcupine quill from docile Muffin who knew his only salvation would come from her hands. 

To look up and see my Dad with his blue bucket hat and walking stick. I imagine now how he most assuredly had a depth and richness of an inner life he shared only in the quoting of his beloved artists and writers. It would please him that Sally and I took the road less taken to get here even if it did cause worry and panic among the ranks.

Here’s to you, Daddie Man, you were never an island though I often wonder if you thought you were. I am so pleased to have joined in the bringing of your continent, your community, back to this place, again in gratitude for your life and the life of our boys.

Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson who made it all possible.

And here’s to us: 

Braudt’s, Callahan’s, Carbonaro’s, Heimerle’s, Herrmann’s, Hoover’s, Knox, Kuras’ and Robinson’s.

It is good to be under the towering, sweet breezy covering of our family tree.

AMRB/JCIM

July, 2024