Stormy Signs

An “Olympia Snowe for Senate” sign bounced off my hood as I waited at an intersection in Portland, Maine. Blustery winds blew leaves and campaign signs all around the city. I ran over one declaring “Baldacci for Governor” as the wind skittered it across the road and under my tires. A “Curley for Congress” sign twisted on one of its two wire legs after a gust tore the other from the earth. Weather and politics were in tumult.

A huge maple uprooted and crashed through the roof of a house next to my daughter’s on Wellington Street. I was there for the christening of Alexander John Kimble, my second grandson. The Kimbles and the McLaughlins gathered to witness the oldest Christian rite for this newest member of both our families. I remembered learning in catechism class a half century ago that Baptism cleansed us from original sin - that stain left on us after Adam and Eve disobeyed God. It seemed fitting that our purpose was to acknowledge our place and Alex’s in the spiritual world - that realm older than electoral politics and even nature itself, both of which were in turmoil that day.

How will it be for Alex as he grows up in his world, I wondered, and how will his be different from the world I’ve known? Will he be challenged as a Catholic American? Will he have to defend his heritage against Islamic onslaught? Will his generation fight to preserve it?

Entering the church later, I saw dead leaves which had blown into the narthex and were strewn around the floor. My son-in-law, Nate, had chosen his brother, Michael Kimble, as Alex’s Godfather and I recalled the Baptism scene in Coppola’s film “The Godfather.” Michael Corleone was asked “Do you renounce Satan? And all his works?” Coppola cut away after each question to scenes of Corleone’s rivals being violently slain. I remembered the brittle clouds of leaves blowing and swirling through the streets outside, and thought of the way directors used such scenes to portend evil forces prowling about. Are there sinister forces lurking in our world? President Bush claims an “Axis of Evil” threatens us and he’s ridiculed by “progressive” Democrats like those who dominate politics in Portland, Maine and in the rest of the red states. They consider such talk unenlightened at best and the president himself a simpleton. They see this election as a referendum on Bush’s vision of what threatens us.

If Republicans retain Congress next week, President Bush may take it as a vote of confidence and be more aggressive against the jihadists ordered to “kill Americans - anywhere, anyhow.” If Democrats win control, they could cut off funding for the war as they did in Vietnam thirty years ago. The Democratic left believes President Bush’s aggressive policies have not reduced terrorism but produced more. They would pull out and “Give Peace a Chance,” because, as their bumper stickers say, “War is Not The Answer.” They don’t realize that war is only the extension of politics when diplomacy fails. You either win or you lose - and we cannot afford to lose. It may not seem like a holy war for blue state “progressives” who snicker at such talk, but there can be no doubt that our enemies see it that way. They’re on a mission from God, to quote from another movie - the “Blues Brothers” - but their mission isn’t the least bit funny.

I’ve been surprised recently by how many otherwise intelligent people speculate that the World Trade Center towers were not brought down by Muslim terrorists, but by controlled demolition charges planted in the buildings by US government officials. They’re ready to believe the Bush Administration knew in advance about the attacks and allowed them as a reason to go to war. I thought only the lunatic fringe could conceive of such things, but I’ve been wrong. Such notions are more widespread than I would ever have believed possible. It’s sad to realize how divided we are in the face of our enemies. I fear sometimes the “United States” is becoming a misnomer and it may take a nuclear attack next time to make us realize the danger we face.

The storms of war will likely intensify whatever the outcome next week. If we pull out of Iraq, Islamofascists will see it as yet another victory over the infidels, the “Great Satan.” That’s how they see us by the way, in case you haven’t heard.

It’s fitting that my grandson’s Baptism prepares him for the next world as well as this one. I fear the political signs I saw flying around on that stormy Sunday could well be an omen of upheaval, political and religious. The world Alex Kimble was christened into will be not likely be peaceful.

Breaking Routine

My routine had been broken. I broke it. In spite of all I had to do, I persuaded my wife to explore part of the Maine coast with me. In spite of all she had to do, she accompanied me. We did it my way - without a specific plan about where we were going to stay for the two nights we’d be gone from our bed. The general destination was Bath and the peninsula to the south. The weather was great as I drove down every road, walked through every cemetery and read every historic marker. She found eight sand dollars on the beach. Of the two restaurants in which we ate dinner, one was okay and the other was first-rate.

We returned Sunday. Instead of beginning my column while watching the Patriots’ game as would have been my habit in the fall, I caught up on some of the caretaking work, figuring I still had Monday, Columbus Day, to write. When I sat on the porch with my laptop, however, it wasn’t flowing. I hadn’t enough time to process all that I’d seen and done and there was no logical sequence to what was emerging as my fingers manipulated the keyboard. Maybe I wouldn’t submit anything this week.

Sometimes it helped if I got up and did something else because when I sat back down, it would flow. I went into the kitchen and made some spaghetti sauce in the crock pot and returned to my laptop, but it didn’t work. My grandson was on the porch with me playing quietly with some construction toys while his mother worked a 12-hour shift at Bridgton Hospital. He smelled the sauce and asked when dinner would be ready. My wife was puttering around her flower garden below us and the sun was getting ready to set over Kearsarge Mountain to the west. Brilliant golden rays backlit her silver hair as she moved about. The maples below the field were bright yellow and red, and with every little puff of breeze, hundreds of leaves drifted gently down from the three big ash trees around her garden. It was quiet enough that I could hear a little crackle as each leaf as it came down on others already fallen.

Seeing this, my grandson forgot his appetite and said, “Let’s go out and catch them!” His eyes were so bright I couldn’t say “No. I have to write this column,” though it was almost on my tongue. Instead, I said, “Yeah, let’s go!” We ran back through the house and out, trying to reach the leaves before they hit the ground but we were too late. He was disappointed, but I said, “Wait. They’ll start falling again as soon as the air moves.” Soon, trees on the hillside below began to move slightly and another cascade of ash leaves drifted down on us, some in clumps of three or four. We scurried about catching as many as we could. For a few minutes at least, he brought out the six-year-old boy in me which had been cooped up too long.

So much wonder showed on his face in the horizontal autumn sun that I went back inside for my camera. The laptop was still on the chair, but I went back out to record images instead of words. As he scampered and rolled around the leaf-covered grass, I clicked over a hundred. He was so caught up that no self-consciousness entered his countenance as I attempted to preserve the moments. Then I used the laptop to take in pictures instead of putting out words. The sun had set below Kearsarge. The horizon and clouds above were backlit and darkness creeped in as I examined each image on the screen. There wasn’t a bad one in the bunch and I burned a CD for his mother.

Routines are good when it comes to eating and sleeping, but breaking patterns can be good for us too and I have the pictures to prove it, each worth a thousand proverbial words.

Hot Tub Chronicle

Published 11-27-05

Sitting in the hot tub, I can see mountains and stars above them. Coyotes howl and yip in the swamp below, probably chasing down a deer, perhaps one wounded by a hunter earlier today. Occasional headlights show through bare hardwoods along the Shave Hill Road a half mile off and from Route 113 in Chatham further away to the northwest. My wife’s large, unintelligent dog growls at the distant sounds. There’s something charming about being immersed in hot water outside on a cold evening with snow all around. It’s best when there are no lights on in the house behind me and nothing to hear but distant, muted sounds that would not be audible but for the cold quiet around me.

Blinking lights of four passenger jets move slowly from star to star, two going southeast and two northeast. I imagine passengers crowded in those narrow seats and stewardesses pushing carts between them high above the dark mountains. Seems like a lot of planes to be over my lonely portion of northern New England at once; maybe because it’s the night after Thanksgiving and people are heading home. Though it’s quiet now, it was bustling in the house behind me the night before, as my grown children and their partners were here for turkey dinner. My daughter Sarah and her husband, Nate, announced they were expecting their first child - my second grandchild - next August. Life goes on. Bearing children is a sign of hope. Hope is good. I think it’s a girl. We’ll see.

With a barely-audible drone, one jet disappeared in the trees to my left as another appeared over the mountains ten miles away. The worn-down mountains have been there for hundreds of millions of years. Coyotes arrived nine or ten thousand years ago after the ice melted and humans around the same time, but jets have been flying over these parts for only about fifty years. I visualized people in the plane because I’m out in the quiet night alone with nothing else to think about, but it’s doubtful any of them are aware of me. Nobody knows what I’m doing except my wife, who scampered into the house trailing steam a few minutes earlier to sauté the asparagus and portobella mushrooms to go with baked scallops we’d already prepared.

I don’t bring the phone out to the hot tub and don’t play music either. I leave the jets off and I’m alone in the dark with nature, distant jets, a glass of shiraz and my own thoughts. Even a barking dog can sound charming if it’s a half-mile away or more away. In that melieu, it’s surprising what comes to mind. When the kids were little and we had animals, it was my job to feed and water them morning and evening. It wasn’t easy to leave my seat near the wood stove in the old house and trudge out behind the barn to break ice out of plastic buckets and add fresh water, but the animals were always grateful. Though I wouldn’t have walked back there in the cold if I didn’t have to, it was nice to feel the quiet and see the Milky Way above, smell the cold forest and animals, feel the air numb my cheeks and watch the moon rise over the pines to the east. I’d usually enjoy it for a few minutes before going back in. Sitting in the hot tub reminded me of all that. It was much the same except for the smells. Vaporous chorine scent replaced the fragrance of woods, but it wasn’t unpleasant, bringing back as it did memories of my mother doing laundry in the basement of my childhood home. The bleach smell was on clean sheets I’d lay down on Saturday nights after my bath - fond memories I didn’t know were still somewhere in my memory.

For fifteen years, my wife has wanted a hot tub but the idea of sitting in steamy water with other people didn’t appeal to me. It seemed like a yuppie thing. For two years in Massachusetts I was technically a yuppie - Young, Urban and Professional, but I didn’t live the stereotype. However, now that I’ve lived in rural northern New England for twenty-eight years and grown to middle age, I guess I’m a MARPie - Middle-Aged, Rural Professional and I’m not the only one around here. I don’t know yet what the stereotype for a MARPie is supposed to be because I just invented the acronym, but this one likes relaxing in a hot tub. Next time I’m out there, I intend to ponder the MARPie stereotype for part II of the Hot Tub Chronicles.