Here we are, Thanksgiving time, entering the holidays. Holy days. And the two darkest months of the year: November 21 through January 21.
My father turned 89 as we walked through that door. He said it was a hard birthday for him when we talked on the phone. Then he said goodbye and went out to his shop where he makes things to give away. Been doing it all his life. Right now he’s making scoops -- you know, implements to scoop stuff up with. I have one I treasure that he made early in his scoop-making career maybe 10 years ago, beautifully varnished. He sent me another from his most recent batch, this one from the heart of a redwood tree with only a light coating of mineral oil, “nothing toxic” he scrawled on the note that came with it.
He’s the kind of person you would want to have along if you set sail in the Mayflower headed for who knows what, just wilderness. No homes with running water and electricity waiting to shelter you when you arrived. No stores to go buy pots and pans and scoops to scoop oats out of a barrel. No oats. No barrels. No schools for the children, no constables to keep the peace, no armies to keep the enemies at bay. No enemies, at least not until you arrive and show what you intend to do with land somebody else already occupies.
I’ve been with him, more or less, for two-thirds of his journey. I don’t think he knows yet how much of his life plays out in mine, how his deliberate, daily passages to the shop are replicated in my daily moves to the computer, or how his projects find their way into my columns. I think 89 is hard for him because he senses the end of his pilgrimage approaching, the clock ticking as relentlessly as he is, making scoops. One of the hardest things for me to imagine when that time comes is how lonely his shop is going to be. It struck me yesterday that I’m quite sure his table saw will never run again, like the grandfather clock in the song, when that time comes.
Yesterday I finished typing a manuscript for the book I’m editing, written 22 years ago by Father Bill Wood, a Jesuit. I called him earlier this year at the retirement center where he’d gone to live and finish the book he’d started more than 22 years ago, which the manuscript briefly summarizes. This piece is brilliant, full of light, a fusion of theology and ecology applied to the relation of agriculture and the common good. In it, he takes a stand on where the church should be in the discussion. But when I sent the freshly typed file to his email address, it came back undeliverable. The prospect that Bill Wood has completed his pilgrimage on this earth and gone to join the eternal community gives me pause.
But not too long a pause, because I don’t know that I’ll see 89, or even 69. None of us knows, do we? All we know is that, at the moment, we’re on this pilgrimage, heading off for who knows what, pure wilderness in some ways, frightening and beautiful all at the same time. Every day, give thanks for another shot at an idea, another morning in the shop, another chance to make something to give away. Give thanks for those people who have gone before, clearing the brush and paving the way, and for those still here, helping carry the load. And give thanks for this Wholeness that holds it all together, us included.
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Trudy Wischemann is a
writer in reading mode who lives gratefully in Lindsay. You can send her your pilgrimage stories c/o
P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.
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