Roger Barbee

By Roger Barbee

Driving out of the cemetery, my wife and I passed the worker’s truck. Parked a respectable distance from the grave site we had just left, it was loaded with the equipment and supplies needed for its work:  Shovels, rakes, and folded, green pads that were designed to imitate grass. An attached trailer carried a small backhoe. Soon, after all the friends, family, loved ones, and funeral home employees had left, the workers would drive the truck with its load down the hill to finish the covering of a life. This grave was like all the others in the cemetery, just newer; but also different because it was Paul’s, one of The Greatest Generation.

In 1998 Tom Brokaw published The Greatest Generation, an examination of American’s lives who were born between WW I and WW II. Paul was born in 1926, not many years after the Spanish Flu and WW I, and just in time for the Great Depression. Later, after graduating from high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and entered WW II.

The Greatest Generation is called that because they endured the hardships of the Great Depression, then a world at war.  But the lessons from the Great Depression and the war are what helped form the character of Americans like Paul. During the Great Depression they learned the value of a strong work ethic, being frugal, and “making do.” During the war they fought, died, sacrificed, and joined forces to defeat an evil so that the world would be a better place. Yet their struggles did not make them bitter or resentful but caring and loving and appreciative of each other and a stable life. All of them, soldiers, ship builders returned home and carried on with their live.  Their fight against the evil threatening the world was just what they had to do.

Paul and Jean were the first people we met at FBC of Mooresville. On our first visit, they welcomed us and on the second visit Jean told us, “We’re so glad you returned.” That was over three years ago, but I still recall their kind words and impeccable manner and dress. However, before many Sundays, they stopped attending church for health reasons, but their imprint had been made on my wife and me.

These were my thoughts yesterday as I listened to the minister, sang the songs, and heard the shared memories of a son-in-law. The small, well-dressed man we knew from Sunday Service had helped establish a local church. He had led a full, vibrant life in his beloved community, and he was loved dearly by his family and friends.  We had met him late in his  life, but as I watched his grandsons tearfully carry his flag-draped casket from the hearse to the grave, I was reminded that while I had met Paul late in his life, I was still fortunate to have known him at all because, even in those waning days, he exhibited courage, loyalty, and sacrifice. His experiences in a depression and war had marked him; however,  the mark was not a stain but a badge of honor. Brokaw used the adjective greatest, and that is fine. However, other adjectives such as magnificent, extraordinary, or grand well-describe Paul and his generation. But the adjective is of no matter because Paul and his are The Great Generation.

I suppose that by the time we had arrived home from the service, the workmen had finished their task and Paul had, as King David wrote, “gone the way of the world.” But he and all his generation-the soldiers, the planters of victory gardens, the ship builders, the children who collected metal for the war cause, and more-are honored by those of us who still value honesty, loyalty, sacrifice, and duty to a just cause. They are not “suckers” or “losers” as some think, but lives lived for a common good. They made our world safer and better. We owe them to continue their work.

By Roger Barbee

A local writer shared a story recently about his first year of playing organized football. He writes how miserable his first game as a 7^th grader was and that the coach kept him after practice to make him do extra drills as punishment because he failed to successfully block an opponent. As if that were not enough, two teammates who played in the backfield were waiting for him and used their superior physical powers to demonstrate what it felt like when tackled by the opponent he kept missing to block. And finally, at the entrance of the locker room stood two hefty linemen to teach him one more lesson. However, the writer went on to explain how he used those experiences for life lessons on getting along with people and being a team player. I am glad he manages to gauge the experience as he does.

However, I see so much wrong with the tale he shared. In no words does he write of his coach or teammates taking the time to teach him how to correct what he was doing wrong. He was just plummeted for his mistakes in blocking. The coach and players seem to be first-class bullies in my opinion.

When I was a 10^th grader (high school was 10-12 grades), I so  wanted to play football. One hot, August practice of 1961 the coach had be line up to catch punts. The  first one that came  to me somehow landed in my arms and as the rumbling herd approached me I threw the ball to a coach. I was then moved to the sideline to watch. Later, as we were all taking showers, a senior named Dale yelled at me in a mocking tone, “There’s I don’t want the ball Barbee.” No soap or water could remove that stinging stain. Somehow I remained on the team only managing to hold blocking dummies during practices.

That winter I joined the wrestling team and was the 13^th member of a team of twelve varsity wrestlers. I wrestled some “preliminary” matches and won some but lost many. Twelve wrestlers received varsity letters; I got the experience.

But there was the baseball team in the spring. In tryouts I was in the batter’s box taking my swings to show the coach that I could hit. I  kept trying to hit the ball, but it kept being somewhere my bat was not. Then Jimmy the varsity catcher said, “Don’t try so hard.” What kid would not follow the words of a varsity player, but it was to no avail, and I was cut from the team.

The next year, my 11^th grade year, I knew my career as a football player was suspect and after one of the summer scrimmages I was one of a small group cut from the team. But an assistant coach, Bob Mauldin, told me as I was turning in my gear that he needed me on the wrestling team. Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis the year before he had been away on duty, but this year he was back. And he “needed me.”

Winter came and so did wrestling season. But by then I was madly in love with a  girl and at an early practice I told the team captain David that I was quitting the team to get a job for money to woo my new love. Like Coach Mauldin earlier that school year, David talked with me telling me how much the team needed me. Those words again!

The writer’s story last week  brought these memories back. My experience was not, fortunately, like his except for Dale, the older player who ridiculed me instead of helping me. I fear that too many older players are like Dale, but I am so glad that Jimmy the catcher, Coach Mauldin, and David our  team captain were kind. I did not play on the baseball team as I said, but I still hear Jimmy’s words of encouragement, not scorn. Coach Mauldin and David needed me, so I stayed  and as Robert Frost writes, “ And that has made all the difference.”

By Roger Barbee

                                                Prufrock on Landis Road

Driving along Landis Road to my mother’s funeral, I noticed the rich fields of recently planted corn and grasses. The young corn stood green and strong, and the grasses awaited their first cutting to be used for winter feed. A rich spring of new life and growth flanked the road as Mary Ann and I drove to the church. The juxtaposition of the emerging life and our destination reminded me of Hebrews 6:1-3.

At certain stages, we can’t wait to grow older. I imagine that every pre-teen anticipates the imagined magic of charging into the teen years. For other reasons, turning eighteen and twenty-one are wished for. But after those milestones, growing older is dreaded. We edge into the 30’s but turning forty is often seen much like a tolling of bells, and the decades after are viewed as a finality. Prufrock is so uncertain of these years that all he could muster is his questions of “Shall I…?” or “Do I dare…?”

The writer to the Hebrews tells us to leave the elementary teaching behind and “be borne onwards to full maturity.” (Barclay translation) But it seems to me that as a culture mostly claiming Christianity, we keep in the same elementary zones of our comfort. We keep plowing the same ground, not expanding our fields and perhaps killing what has sprouted beneath us. And I think our fear of changing and moving comes from our sense of  control over the “same old thing” and “the way it’s always been done”, or “things ain’t like they used to be.” That last one is often offered as a reason not to change or as a whine about a new situation or way. You know what? Things are not as they used to be because those words reflect our memory which is at best suspect and likely tainted by our biases. When a suggestion is made to change the tables and chairs in a room, firm stances are taken in opposition. We resist any change to our comfort zones, thus stifling any growth to maturity or perfection in our Christianity. As Clarence Jordan writes, “Fear is the polio of the soul which prevents us from walking by faith.”

Years ago when I turned sixty, a friend told me that feeling the years of the decade would not come until I was sixty-two or three. She was correct. When I turned sixty-three, I felt the years of being in that decade of life. However, since my accident at fifty-five, I have learned to appreciate the years and what they represent contrary to our secular culture which teaches us to fear what is constantly around us—death. Today is May 15, 2019, a fine spring day on Lake Norman. I see birds flying to nesting boxes to feed the young. Each trip to the box by a parent represents a death which occurs so that a life may grow. It is all a cycle that we have come to fear because of our false sense of control. Our culture convinces us that creams and such will help forestall ageing so much that corporations flourish. Wrinkles and grey are marks of defeat, not marks of growing towards maturity and perfection as Christians and citizens.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us how to grow and mature as Christians.  Robert Ruark in The Old Man and the Boy, a memoir full of secular wisdom, quotes his grandfather saying, “That’s why I like November. November is  a man past fifty who reckons he’ll live to be seventy or so, which is old enough for anybody—which means he’ll make it through November and December, with a better-than-average chance of seeing New Year’s.”

 As a seventy-three-year-old, I hope for a few more years like these I live now because I  feel that I have come to appreciate living a life of obedience and finally, after years of lost living, I am on a right path. I now understand the words of Karle Wilson Baker who writes in Let Me Grow Lovely these words:

“Let me grow lovely, growing old—

            So many fine things do:

Laces, and ivory, and gold,

And silks need not be new;

And there is healing in old trees,

Old streets a glamour hold;

Why may not I, as well as these,

Grow lovely, growing old?”

            Prufrock feared his coming middle age. Yet, as Christians we need not allow fear to be a polio that prevents our walk. Wrinkles and grey are marks of age, medals of well lived lives in His service.

By Roger Barbee

One Drop

            My drop, measured by inches, was short. I had fallen only about eighteen inches, so that was good. The bad was that I was sitting on the wet pavement of the parking lot of my building as heavy drops of  rain pelted everything in the dark, late night. I could not see my wheelchair because my sloppy transfer, instead of landing me in the seat,  had pushed it backwards and it now rested somewhere behind me.  The heavy, thick rain continued to drop in  a steady rhythm as I tried to think of a plan: Tired from a long day and too much alcohol, I  sat on the wet pavement that now carried a steady flow of water, drop after drop of rain adding to my self-imposed misery.  I tried to push the muddle from my brain and think of a way to regain my position in the driver’s seat, but all I managed was to become more soaked from my head to my legs.

            It was then that I saw him crossing the street. He approached me but no drop of rain touched him or his gleaming white shirt. He grew closer, and I noticed the contrast of his dark, brown hands with the bright, white cuffs of his shirt. It was then that I remembered him from Douglas Airport in Charlotte and how he had pushed me and my heavy bag up a carpeted ramp when I was having trouble navigating in a crowd. Now walking past me in the dark lot, he retrieved my wheelchair and placed it behind me. Those same brown hands now lifted me onto my soaked wheelchair seat. As I was putting my feet on the footrest of my wheelchair, I heard him say in the same voice from Charlotte, “You should take better care of yourself.”  Then he was gone like a fallen drop of rain.

            In Charlotte my heavy bag was about to drop from my lap as I tried to navigate a carpeted ramp in a rushing push of travelers. In the wet parking lot, my drop was again due to my excess and poor planning: Too much stuff in a too big bag, too much work, too much alcohol. But he came. Twice he rescued me from self-imposed trouble.

            He has not appeared since. Perhaps because I have heeded his words to take better care of myself or whatever, I have not seen him, but I know he is present, ready to save me from my next drop.

By Roger Barbee

            At the peak of Dream City Church’s roof sits a gleaming cross, that symbol of Christianity. The mission statement of Dream City Church is: “At Dream City Church, our mission is to lead people into a fully-devoted relationship with Jesus Christ by loving people, cultivating community, and inspiring hope.” On June 12, 2020 the church released this statement:  “Dream City Church confirms it will be renting its facilities to Turning Point Action for their Phoenix event. Turning Point Action contacted Dream City regarding use of its facilities for a student event. Dream City prayerfully considered and then agreed. Turning Point Action subsequently informed Dream City that the President planned to speak at the event. Dream City’s facility rental does not constitute endorsement of the opinions of its renters. Each facility rental is a means to generate funds so that Dream City may continue to carry out its outreach vision – to reach the hurting and needy in the community for Jesus Christ.”

            Both the Dream City Church’s mission statement and cross on its roof are symbols unless supported by action. The cross is an empty symbol when left on a roof or steeple or when worn around a neck. Until it is brought to the midst of humanity and used for good, it remains an empty symbol. The same applies to the quoted mission statement professing love, cultivation, and inspiration. All three of those words are useless when used as nouns and in order to do the work of Jesus, they must become verbs. Action is required.

            In its statement explaining the rental to Turning Point Action, the church states that it “prayerfully considered” before agreeing to rent its space to TPA. Only after agreeing was the church told President Trump would be speaking at the event. But the church only rents its space to generate funds to carry out its outreach vision.

            All of this may cause Christians to believe that Dream City Church will “prayerfully consider” any request to rent its space because the generated funds will help it in its mission of loving, cultivating, and inspiring. And we are assured that “Dream City’s facility rental does not constitute endorsement of the opinions of its renters” which is good because the TPA crowd and its main speaker roiled the sanctuary with racist chants.

            I have gone online to the church’s website but have yet, on the afternoon following the event, to see a  posted apology for what occurred in its sanctuary.  Until I do, I will believe that Dream City Church is pleased with its thirty pieces of silver and the rants full of hate. And the dream that that hate engenders.

Roger Barbee

Joy of the Ordinary

 The review of One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle was more of a notice in my mind than a review,  but it was enough for me. I immediately ordered the book, and since its arrival I have read and re-read and pondered Doyle’s shared wonder expressed in this collection of essays. Until my encounter with this book, I had never heard of Doyle, a prolific writer who shares the amazing, yet everyday beauty in what he experiences. Doyle, who died of brain cancer way too soon, shares life’s blessings that he finds in a Memorial Day parade, a youth soccer game, birds, pants, Jones Beach, a song for nurses, his first kiss, a bullet, and more experiences that we all know and have experienced. That is the beauty of his book: He takes us inside ourselves through the common experiences we all share and peels back the worry and anxiety to reveal the joy.

One Long River of Song is a needed read today. Published in December 2019 one year before the COVID-19 pandemic, Doyle somehow tells us how to manage this unknown time we face. In the essay A Song for Nurses he writes: “And let us pray not only for the extraordinary smiling armies of nurses among us; let us pray to be like them, sinewy and tender, gracious and honest, avatars of love.” If there are any better words telling us how to manage in May 2020, I don’t know them. In the essay Memorial Day he remembers a Memorial Day parade from his youth and how his father, a veteran of WW II, always “declines politely every year when he is asked [to walk in the parade wearing his uniform]. Doyle goes on to write that his father says  “uniforms can easily confer false authority and encourage hollow bravado….” Like General Lee, Doyle’s father knew the horror of war and knew to put the uniform away after it had been worn “because the job had to be done,” so it was time to put all that away.

Any parent who has stood on the sidelines of a youth soccer game, watching the herd of five-year-old children move along like gazing gazelles with the slowly moving ball, will identify with The Praying Mantis Moment. Doyle shares how during a game in which his six-year-old twins were playing on a golden October afternoon, all the three-foot-tall players on the field formed a circle on the field. The ball rolled away, the teenage referee and some parents hurried to the circle for fear of an injury. But, the crowd of players began walking with a girl who, while holding a praying mantis in her hands, escorted the insect to a safer place. Doyle writes of this October moment as one of the most genuine he had ever experienced in watching sports.

In Illuminos Doyle writes “It seems to me that angels and bodhisattvas are everywhere available for consultation if only we can see them  clear; they are unadorned, and joyous, and patient, and radiant, and luminous, and not disguised or hidden or filtered in any way whatsoever, so that if you see them clearly, which happens occasionally even to the most blinkered and frightened of us, you realize immediately who they are, beings of great and humble illumination dressed in the skins of new and dewy beings, and you realize, with a catch in your throat, that they are your teachers and they are agents of an unimaginable love, and they are your cousins and companions in awe, …” This long quotationis not as much as I want to quote, but it is important, especially in our climate today, because in it Brian Doyle shows the joy  in so much of the ordinary we live each day. When we refuse to look and hear the glory of God’s world, we become one of the “blinkered and frightened” that Doyle writes about. Read the words of one man, who knew sorrow personally, but chose not to be blinkered or frightened by what he had to cross. Read this book and “be blessed beyond the reach of language.”

By Roger Barbee

            For a Christmas present, Mary Ann gave me a book titled The Upward Path, which was published in 1920.  It is a small, blue book with just 250 pages of text, but each page is packed with information still useful today.  In the Foreword, the editors write: “It is the hope that this little book will find a large welcome in all sections of the country and will bring good cheer and encouragement to the young readers who have so largely the fortunes of their race in their own hands.” The “good cheer and encouragement” the editors wish for comes from the essays, stories, poems, myths, life-stories, and histories that follow in the book’s pages.

            As I read the collection compiled by the editors, I recognized such names as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, Charles W. Chesnutt, and James Weldon Johnson. However, there were many I had never heard of, and I was glad for the Notes section which holds a short biography of each writer. While it was a pleasure to read their short biographies, it was a joy to read what they had written for this small volume. Topics of every nature had been written about. I sense that because The Great War had just ended, the editors included many stories of bravery exhibited by American soldiers in the horrible trenches of France or Belgium. Tales of animals abound as do stories of schools and the acquiring of an education. The lives of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln are held up as examples of how to live. One myth written by Fenton Johnson, The Black Fairy, is an explanation of how Africans came to the United States and like many selections, it is beautifully illustrated by Laura Wheeler. The selection, Behind a Georgia Mule, is a delightful tale of how a mule wins out over James Weldon Johnson showing how a seemingly lower animal can outsmart a man. Each selection has wisdom of living as its base, and one of my favorites is a four-line poem written by Cordelia Ray titled Charity:

                                                I saw a maiden, fairest of the fair,

                                                With every grace bedight beyond compare.

                                                Said I, “What doest thou, pray, tell to me!”

                                                “I see the good in others,” said she.

            Since reading the little book, I have thought of it and talked of it with Mary Ann. As a teacher of English, I have pondered its selections and intent. As a reader, I have learned from it. The editors had a definite audience in mind and a purpose that is elegantly expressed in the words “bring good cheer and encouragement to the young readers….” Yes, the audience is the young blacks of the 1920s in America, but as I read and thought, I saw how the idea and intent behind the little blue book could be used for young readers today? I wondered, “Can we not find literature today that will teach valuable life lessons while bringing “good cheer and encouragement”?

            When I choose a story, poem, novel, play, or other genre of literature to teach, I examine its potential for inspiring readers. That does not mean that a reading need be “happy”, but that it gives an honest look at the human spirit. That is what the little, blue book does—it shows how the human spirit can overcome obstacles—world war, slavery, lack of education, or any number of trials that are faced and then defeated by the characters in the book.

            So much of accepted reading today, it seems to me, is trite, overly violent, sappy, poorly written, or just not that good. Too many characters in novels and stories read today are one dimensional. Seldom do we ask students to face a demanding task such as learning how to give a text a close reading or to learn to explicate a poem. We seem content to accept that any reading is good reading, and I think that attitude does our youngsters a dis-service. When we accept graphic novels as equal to Beowulf or use a serial of modern vampire novels as equal to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein we lie to our students and ourselves. Just as some foods are better for us than others, so it is with literature.

            We should, in my mind, do as well today for our young readers as did the little, blue book for its readers.

By Roger Barbee

            In April of 1963 as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. languished in the Birmingham jail, eight local clergymen published a letter in local newspapers in which they denounced Dr. King as “an outside agitator”, and they ended their appeal with these words: “We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.” Their advertisement prompted Dr. King to pen his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” in which he explained why waiting for racial justice any longer was not an option.

In 2006 and ’07, Joe Bageant, a resident of Winchester, wrote Deer Hunting with Jesus. Several  years ago when a good friend loaned me his copy, he said, “If you want to understand many people of the Shenandoah Valley, read this book.” I did, and I have just finished my second reading of this fine examination of class in America.

Bageant, who is deceased, returned to his native Winchester, Virginia in 1999 after a thirty-year absence. He moved to the North End where he had grown up, and he found it as it was in his youth–”the most hard-core of the town’s working-class neighborhoods, where you are more likely to find the $20,000-a-year laborer and the $14,000-a-year fast-food worker.”  He continues, “It didn’t take too many visits to the old neighborhood tavern or to the shabby church I attended as a child to discover that here in this neighborhood in the richest nation on earth folks are having a hard go of it. And it is getting harder.” With that, he began listening to what he referred to as “my people”, and they trusted him to tell their stories with empathy, not pity, and brutally honesty as when he writes, “…my people are a little seedier than most;…” He quickly sees that the preferred avenues of escape for his people are alcohol, Jesus, or overeating.

Writing before “the crash” of 2008, Bageant sends a warning as he writes about American Serfs, Republicans by Default, The Deep-Fried, Double-Wide -Lifestyle, and more. He goes to the guts of the working class of the North End where two in five of residents have no high school diploma. He writes of his childhood friend who carries seven credit cards in order to “build up my credit” so that he can buy a double-wide trailer that will decrease in value before he parks it on a rented lot. He writes of “Dottie”, his favorite karaoke singer who lives in Romney, West Virginia. Disabled, Dot lives on her Social Security Disability Insurance, uses an oxygen tank and wheelchair, and is forceful in the way she deals with her doctors. She tells Bageant, “I learned that damned towel-head doctor of mine has only four years of college someplace in South America.” Bageant goes on to explain, “No doubt you [the reader] are wincing at the racist term towelhead.  But people do talk that way, and if we use it as an excuse not to listen, we rule out listening to half of America.”

For me, those words about Dot’s vocabulary are the message of Deer Hunting with Jesus, which is sub-titled, Dispatches from America’s Class Wars. He is telling us, long before Trump and his evil appeared, that there is an entire class of people who are poorly educated, poorly prepared with soft skills, have poor health, possess no or little health insurance, and have children which will continue the cycle of their lives.  Bageant pulls no punches in faulting political leaders locally and nationally,  mortgage companies, our health care system, and others for the condition of “my people.” But, most of all he blames their poor education for their plight. Having escaped the North End, he attended college, fought in Vietnam, traveled, and wrote before returning home. He knows the value of education and knows that a good one will give “his people” a door to walk through.

But Bageant could have been writing of the eight clergymen of Birmingham that I quoted above. We still have people like them who want to proceed slowly in any cause, especially in the area of racial equality. We still have subtle and overt racist.  We still have Dots. Right here among us we have extremes, and it seems to me that we must find a way to hear what is being said from those extremes.  

Bageant sees the lack of education as the biggest obstacle for “his people.” But, the clergymen from 1963, by their plea, show a lack of education concerning what Dr. King was trying to achieve. If they had had a better education concerning the plight of blacks in the Jim Crow South, they would not have written their pathetic letter. If they had had an education on this topic, they would have developed understanding and empathy. Yet they, like Dot, are voices that need to be heard because they tell us what we need to change. We cannot use their language as an excuse to not listen to them.

On the surface we are an educated society. We have degrees. Yet, too often we refuse to educate ourselves regarding topics or issues we find uncomfortable. I often think of Robert Kennedy who in May, 1963 asked James Baldwin to organize a meeting at his New York City apartment with black and white activists.  The meeting lasted about two hours as the invited guests attempted to explain to Kennedy the plight of blacks and other disenfranchised people. The meeting did not go well, but Kennedy must have heard some things because he soon became a champion for all disenfranchised Americans. He got himself an education concerning racial inequalities in America, and he began working  for change. But he first had to sit in that meeting, hearing words that undoubtedly made him uncomfortable.

Like Kennedy, we must listen to each other—the plodders, activists, the uneducated, the educated-all must be heard. In doing so we will work to create a country of purple by blending our red and blue. If we refuse to, we will have a divided house and lose it all.

By Roger Barbee

Going out our front door, my wife encountered the rat snake on our stoop, at the hinge side of our entrance. She, being an admirer of snakes, quietly closed the door and came to share his presence with me. Every muscle under its black skin was tense from her presence, and there seemed to be a bulge in his middle that suggested a recent meal. We watch it move across our threshold and climb a corner of our house.

Next to the front door in a corner is a plant stand holding a bright red geranium. It is such a well-tended and full plant that a pair of Carolina wrens have taken residency of it. But the presence of the rat snake brought them out immediately and a Savannah sparrow helped as it held a position near the plant like a Kestrel hunting over a field. One of the wrens held a morsel in its beak and darted near the nest then out of reach. The other flew in circles above the scene, and the snake held its ground in the corner of our house. My wife and I, believers in the rules of nature, left the scene, knowing that “Nature’s beautiful way” would prevail. But as I  went inside our house, I was hopeful for the wrens and that the rat snake was just passing through.

As much as my wife and I  enjoy our garden, many pine trees, and the birds and other animals that share them with us, we accept death as part of this life. We realize that we will sometimes find a fledgling that has fallen from its nest high in one of our pine trees—especially after a storm. Some plants that we hope to see bloom do not do well and die or just limp along like the clematis planted two years ago. The bright and cheerful winter pansies will wilt under the June sun. But no matter of all the lessons I have learned in the garden, I wanted the wrens’ nest to remain intact.

For the remainder of the day after the snake appeared, I would wander out to the front door area. I stayed far away but best positioned myself to see if the snake was in the plant. I did not see or hear the birds, nor did I see the snake in the plant or anywhere in our yard. Because of the lack of animals, I assumed that the nest had been violated, the snake and wrens leaving it to compost and feed the geranium; another death/life cycle in a garden. Our front entrance held the silence of a grave.

Gardens can be plotted on paper or in the brain, with the location of various plants thought out for a variety of reasons. Plants can be planted, nourished, and even pampered. Most will thrive, some will not. However, the outcome of the planned garden’s flowering will offer a home to a variety of animals. Most, like the birds, will be seen and heard. Some, like the snakes, will not be seen often. But all will be present and contributors to their local ecology.

This morning when I went to the front yard to ride my stationary handcycle, I was thinking of other things as I turned the corner from our back garden. But regardless of my other thoughts, the notes of the Carolina wren sitting on the back of a garden chair near our front door cheered my spirits. The pair were here. The loud notes announced their territorial presence.

I did not venture toward our front door area, but paused and listened to the morning concert of one small bird telling the world that this morning it was here like its ancestors and for the moment, what else mattered?

By Roger Barbee

The word Father is used most often as a noun, as in Ralph is my father. It is also used in religious references. However, the word is most interesting to me when used as a verb, as in I will father my children. It also can be used in a participle,  as in “To father a child is a joy, but it requires commitment.

On this Friday before the celebrated day of Father’s Day, I think of my experience as a father of five children, and, while I was active in the noun usage of the word, I missed much in the verb usage. As I examine my role all those years ago as a father, I see my presence, but not my participation. Yes, I performed all the standard tasks of fatherhood—I worked and provided the necessary material things for them. But I was like a shadow, I think, in their lives. I could be seen, but I had no or little substance.

I will not delve into the reasons for how I fathered you, but I ask each of you to learn from my wrongs. Here are a few thoughts:  Share time with your children because it and love are what you can give them;  Keep external pressures away from your fathering;  Be a guide on the path of your children by showing them a good way but not the only way; Find a safe escape away from your children for your anger and frustration; Understand that they may not remember your words, but will remember how they made them feel;  When they talk, listen as if everything depends on it; To guide is better than to push; Make their home a safe place.

Father as a verb, not a stale noun.