Blowin’ In: Going Home
- iIrish Admin
- November 3, 2024
- Edited 2 months ago
Table of Contents
By Susan Mangan
“Maybe the way back will make sense of the coming.”
(Foster by Claire Keegan)
Lined with old black walnut trees, a rocky road leads to my uncle’s house on his century farm. As a girl I loved to listen to the sound of the stones as they crunched beneath the wheels of our Ford station wagon. I knew that my aunt and uncle could hear their visitors arriving.
Soon, beagles would begin barking, calves would low, and cats would scatter for shelter beneath the boughs of juniper bushes. I knew that this path led home.
My heart has always been a place divided. My father grew up amid the streets of Chicago, while my mother dreamt of the city when she rose before dawn to collect eggs from disgruntled hens and ease warm milk from the soft udders of appreciative cows.
I can see my mother sitting on a walnut milking stool, jeans rolled up, stained bobby socks drooping over tattered saddle shoes. I can feel her soft breath humming melodies as she pressed her head, gently, against the solid belly of her favorite cow.
As a girl, I always wanted to live on the farm. Petulantly, I would ask my mother, “Why did you ever leave the farm? I could be living there now.”
My mother simply replied, “Then you wouldn’t be you.”
Unknowingly, my mother posed an existential question within her response that I ponder to this day: How do I fit in this world?
I like to think the answer lies in the path of my journey; however, the truth does not announce itself as clearly as the stones that rise to meet my uncle’s farmhouse.
The Secret Ingredient
I cannot simply stoop down to gather black walnuts and bake them into my grandmother’s iced orange cookies. The secret ingredient is not always that obvious.
Like the tumble of spices that freckle orchard apples beneath the fragile layers of a buttery lattice, I cannot pinpoint the exact chemistry between heart and home, self and other. I can, however, follow the scent of peace.
Nose raised high, alert to the fresh mineral sting of salt and sand, I am as content to dip my toes in the cold Atlantic waters that stroke Irish strands, as I am to walk in well-worn shoes along the streets of Chicago, equally at peace with the acrid smell of the city.
I am glad to have a gift for contemplation because I see the answer to my heart’s question in changing winds and moody skies. Truth, like the element of air, whirls and swoops amid towering skyscrapers, golden stalks of autumn corn, ruffling the feathered head of a sandhill crane hidden behind the reeds that stretch along Crooked Lake.
The dutiful peck of a red-headed woodpecker as she extracts late autumn sap from the stump of our damson plum tree fills my heart with awe. Open-mouthed, I witness a peaceful tableau of animals who come to feast on the last of the winter squash and the dried stalks of beans that cling to the faded trellis.
The Meaning of Life
I extract the meaning of life from the squirrels and blue jays that hop congenially about the clover and wild strawberries that cloak our back garden. I admire their peaceful co-existence at my suburban table, one that is rooted in organic soil. William Butler Yeats writes that peace lies in the “deep heart’s core.”
Perhaps I am a child of farm and city, of lake and sea, the ease of suburb, the rush of rising winds. Perhaps the lattice is not fragile and fragmented, but solidly layered, a symmetrical crust of familiarity bringing peace into my heart.
My lessons began with my parents; the roads that carried them from childhood to adulthood, to marriage and parenthood, from the bloom of first love, to their final home on earth.My parents taught me that home lies not in the place, but in the chambers of the heart. That love is not qualified by that which is the same but lies in the unique beauty of other.
Buried beneath a drooping pine that barely filters golden light, soft winds serenade my mom and dad. As I said my last goodbye and turned to leave my parents at their final resting place, I looked at my loved ones. I sensed the same heaviness and sorrow that I felt as a girl when it was time to return home to the city and leave my home on the farm.
Though I was no longer that child running down the black walnut lane, my uncle saw my need for comfort, for answers. In his country wisdom, he pulled me aside to remind me that my mother always wanted to be buried back on the prairie.
My father, I suppose, was a lot like me. He recognized that our journeys become one inextricable tumble of spice and soil, a swirl of elements linked by love. We can be a lily in a pond, a bale of hay in a field, a bright mural on an urban wall, but the heart will always find its way home.
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Read more of Sue’s Blowin’ In columns HERE!
Susan Mangan
**Susan holds a Master’s Degree in English from John Carroll University and a Master’s Degree in Education from Baldwin-Wallace University. She may be contacted at [email protected].
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