Though April showers may come your way
They bring the flowers that bloom in May
So if it’s raining, have no regrets
Because it isn’t raining rain, you know, it’s raining violets,
— Sung by Al Jolson
I pirated the above title from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.” I try to live consciously, as Thoreau advised, and think — really think — about every minute of my life. I don’t believe that life’s a straight-line process, but, rather, that it is circular. Looking over the panorama of my existence, I see connectivities of happenings, people, nature and the world around me. The contents of the deep pool that comprises my memory are like fish on a stringer: pull up one, another follows. I never know what one memory will lead to.
The symphony of life is not solely composed of complex, exhilarating, crashing, grand crescendos. The quiet passages are also lovely. My springtime is symbolized by flowers and the return of the wrens that my mother loved. Vicki’s bloodroot that Bill gave her is thriving. It warms my heart to think that her plant that originated from my mother’s is the third generation.
One day I took my first cup of coffee over to the greenhouse window and saw a pair of lovely mallard ducks — of all things! — under our feeder. Tail twitching, Pusscatkin added a new bird to her ornithological studies. “Let me at ‘em! Let me at ‘em!”
Bill had seen them a few days before. What is a pleasure for us irritates others. Every summer ducks lay eggs on the concrete deck of the Gruners’ swimming pool and poop in it.
I was afraid that the drake might get run over when he decided to parade down the middle of the street. Watching him brought back memories. One spring day, Mrs. Horn who lived down the street gave Wanda, Susie and me each a fuzzy little duckling. Mother put my duckie in the sill between a window and storm window. Their ducks were left outside, and the next morning my chums found only their bills and feet.
Ducky Daddles became a fearless, deep-voiced drake who tyrannized our yard. He chased neighborhood dogs away, plucked fur from my tomcat, and bit the legs of my nephews and nieces. The men who worked at the Poultry House loved Ducky. They’d shuffle their feet as they walked to work at the poultry house, and he’d run out and grab a pants leg. The man would drag him along, then slide his foot under him and gently propel him through the air. “That duck of your’n thinks it’s a dog!” One morning Mr. Paul Butcher, a Knightstown mortician who stopped to chat with Mother, was not pleased when Ducky ran his muddy bill up the leg of his natty gray suit. Mr. Birkett who owned the tile factory across the road, would laugh as he drove his truck extra slow so that Ducky could chase it. Alas, one night the car-chasing Ducky didn’t come home to sleep in the coal shed. Next morning, Mother found him out in the street where he’d been run over. We buried him under the Japonica bush.
As I wrote above, everything is connected in our minds. Sometimes people have unseen, quiet depths beneath the surface. When I thought about the flowers and the ducks, up popped Fred Garver to the surface of my memory pond. He was the husband of Susan, a friend with whom I taught at Howe many years ago. I can’t claim close friendship with Fred. However, he was a vivacious, never-saw-a-stranger person whom one doesn’t forget. Five hundred people attended his visitation. Fred was a man for all seasons: attorney and legislative expert. He loved history, the place where he grew up and the bluebells that carpet it every spring. He was an outdoorsman who hunted ducks. He told me, “it’s so beautiful that sometimes I don’t fire my gun!” wclarke@comcast.net