Been thinking about…The song of the lost

Just beyond the line of trees, there is a party of name tags and appropriate khakis, a promise of new beginnings and polite conversation, celebratory cookies and cool air, all a ward against the hot summer sun. Over on the other side of the ridge, rocky crow’s nest of heat and sweat and curious tourist passerby, tent of tomatoes and watermelon, of meandering conversations and coffee and cedar shade that chases the heat as it hangs heavy on this crust of the earth. “Hottest summer yet,” as the conversation goes, although the heat records from 1920-something apparently have yet to be broken. And yet between, the median sunlight casts dark shadows beneath the obligatory yew shrubs, sun that feels its way down pale stucco walls where the world changes, again and over.

A woman stands against the shade, staring. From the distance one can only guess the reason for the moment but her aura is all but unmistakable. Bad news, shock perhaps. A small, few rectangle buildings on rocky earth, the repository of a million memories, of lives lived and lives lingering, forgotten. We build these facilities across America, the places where we go when our families cannot or will not care for us any longer. America has long been the land of gained opportunity, of youth, of youthful empire. So many signers of the Declaration of Independence were so young, even by today’s standards, a break against staid aristocracy. We know them for their grand statues and grand paintings, most commissioned far later than when they were challenging empire and risking their necks as only young men can do.

And in time, America became the realm of fast muscle cars and sunsets that never end and cowboys who never grow old. We are inculcated in the idea of forever young, an easy enough job when, as the young grow old, we sequester them from the rest of society, left to slowly ebb away until nothing remains but an easily overlooked obit in newspaper print that, too, fades away too fast. We worship youth.

And still the woman stands in my recent memory. Not young, not yet old. Someone for whom she cares is within those walls. And that someone has received bad news. Perhaps that someone has already passed. A bibliography and an archive forever lost. A small bit of America’s soul winked out but nobody knows, nobody cares, nobody sees. The world goes on, inexorably, except in this small patch of bright, hot sun and black shade creeping beneath the obligatory yew shrubs. The moment passes, I drive on, my own world still moving forward.

Once one’s world has once stopped, it becomes easier to see the moments, to sense the tear in the fabric of time and the caelum. The heart hurts. The rest of the world will continue spinning onward, and time will pass. In my hurry, I know I cannot see all the hurts, catch the tears. There is something akin to guilt in the relief that, this time, the loss is not mine. This August, of this year, has been a tumultuous one of heat and heart and high feelings. The maple leaves shiver and turn over again, showing silver bellies in hopes of rain. Rain comes, briefly, but the heat does not die as the sun fades.

I pull a styrofoam container from the freezer and grab a fork. A slice of homemade Key lime cheesecake, frozen so I can eat it in installments, perhaps futile bulwark against consuming too much sugar. This summer is cutting season and I’m already, tentatively, cautiously, leaner than I have been in so many years.

But the heat has been intense, and I’ve sweated out most of my electrolytes and sugar anyway. A demitasse of black espresso and forkful of cheesecake and I pause. Frozen, the lime taste is strangely familiar and again, I’m standing in another time and place. Not only did we rarely eat out when I was a boy, we rarely got store-bought treats. Our mom wasn’t some homemaker purist but she was thrifty, refusing to buy something she could make at home for less money. Frozen desserts were not part of her budget, but with one exception —

Twice a year, she would clean and wax the hardwood floors. Waxing was a big, multi-part job and to get everything done in one day? Well, there wasn’t also time to cook supper so we got frozen pizza and the most amazing frozen lemon pie that the then-modern grocery store’s freezer section could provide. I still can see the sheen of the newly waxed floors, feel the breeze as the late summer wind moved the curtains, smell the hardwood floor wax. The house never looked better than after waxing day, smelling clean and pungent and slightly akin to turpentine and soap. The pie never lasted long and I’ve been quietly hunting for a replacement for a good 10 or 12 years. This Key lime is richer, much better than the one that was likely made in some food factory in Chicago or Indianapolis or Ohio, but there is something unmistakably similar and I am grateful.

Tomorrow is nearly here again and it will be hot. There will be schedules and work and more tomatoes and more watermelon to load and a festival to build and little time to watch the sun’s chariot as it works its way again across the sky. But for now, here, in one small moment again, the world hurts and celebrates and turns, quietly, just as it has always done and perhaps always will. And far down in the holler, a pygmy rattlesnake wriggles its way across the blacktop, belly warm against the still-hot, black crossroads.