O beautiful for summer skies and waves of conversation

The Column: 06.16.21

Finally, a fine summer, which we Minnesotans appreciate, having endured winter’s attempts to depress us, and just when we were about to go into therapy and talk about how emotionally unavailable our dad was, summer came along and here I am on a sunny day with relatives on a porch enjoying a sweet slow conversation. I’m not so fond of sunshine, I’d prefer a dramatic thunderstorm; I grew up evangelical and I’m happiest when lightning bolts are flashing all around and none are hitting me. But a sunny day is okay.

The relatives are from Florida but they’re nice normal people, no yellow plaid pants, they’re vaccinated, they accept Joe Biden as president, and their kids love books and their dog snoozes on the floor, his head on my daughter’s lap. She’s been afraid of dogs since she was four. She trembles at the sight of one. A hundred times I’ve yelled at her, “It’s only a dog!” but her terror prevailed, and today, by force of will and the beauty of a summer day, she is snuggling with a dog. Her courage brings tears my eyes, pleasure overcoming dread.

It’s so peaceful and pleasant, so much like a summer night in my boyhood, Mother reading the Minneapolis Star, stories about heinous criminals, and Dad dozing through the Millers game on the radio, Red Mottlow the announcer waiting for a Miller home run so he can yell, “Goodbye, mama, that train is leaving the station, Whoooooooooooooo!” Dad didn’t wake up for a home run, only if you turned off the game. My job was to move the sprinkler around the lawn. The dog lay under the porch, panting. I was twelve. I imagined becoming a grown-up and I must say that adulthood has turned out well for me. I never got involved with Lyme disease or poison ivy, never did recreational drugs, and I got out of academia after a year of grad school. I met my wife in 1992, she was the sister of my sister’s high school classmate, so it was sort of an arranged marriage and it’s worked out well, according to me.

My family was circumspect and didn’t talk about love and romance. My parents were crazy about each other but it was the Depression and the courtship went on for years, Grandma needed Dad on the farm after Grandpa died, and one day, driving a double team of horses that spooked and galloped out of control, Dad almost broke his neck when the wagon crashed, and felt his own mortality and the romance became urgent and four months later she was pregnant and they ran off and got married. This wonderful story was kept secret all their lives. Nonetheless, I knew I came from people who loved each other, a profound blessing. I live in the shade of a romance made urgent by wild horses. It’s lovely to be with these young relatives who love each other, their young children deep in their books, my daughter with the dog’s head in her lap. We will ourselves to be happy. So many times my wife has approached her glum husband and put her arms around his neck and kissed the top of his head and thus she wills him to lighten up. And she does it so beautifully that I do. So many times bad feelings have been dispelled, not by talk but by this simple gesture.

This porch is a tiny island and we are aware that a fourth of America’s children are living in poverty, essential workers are abused, the burden of college debt is obscene. The list of injustices goes on and on. Changes need to be made and I believe they’ll come through the efforts of people who know the goodness of life, not from rage and fury. This gentle cadence of conversation, like water lapping on the shore. Life is good. Somebody should stand up on the Fourth of July and say so. We come from fallible human beings but they gave us this beautiful opening to happiness and let us take hold of it and celebrate America. We’re maybe not great at government but we excel at happiness and we produced baseball, the blues, barbecued ribs and the banana split, and when we feel down we can go look at the Badlands or the Grand Canyon. We’ve produced great poets and standup comedians and when the fat lady sings “land of the free,” let’s feel free to put an arm around each other.

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The Star-Spangled Banner from the 2012 Chorus America Conference