Raking Mom’s Backyard

I sit in my backyard. I now have time to relax and reflect, as well as spend time with my nine-year-old granddaughter. It is a reprieve from a house full of iPads and cell phones and clickers, from kids’ shows alien to my black and white, Three Stooges and King Kong childhood. A Dogwood has shed its berries in one corner; a Maple tree shows signs of autumn at the other end.

I am a lover of words and appreciate them well aligned. In aggregate, a great novel best exemplifies the successful flowering of language, but the memorable also occurs in song. Jerry Jeff Walker’s The Artist conveyed the goal of every poet, novelist, or songwriter when he sang, “We really write to understand, more about ourselves, if we’re lucky maybe then, we’ll touch somebody else …”

And the best ones do.

Guy Clark aligned them well in his ode to aging, Bag of Bones, when he sang, “life’s a tune you whistle in the dark, when you get it right, you get a little spark and the sun comes up, and it all dawns on you …” His wife Susanna reached out in her own song, We Were Kind of Crazy Then, with, “Songs on my guitar, you said were like flowers for your scars …”

Jimmy Buffett, too often characterized as simply a good time, five o’clock somewhere tropical troubadour, was a brilliant wordsmith. From his song Mademoiselle we hear that, “stars are out and shining, hear the south wind sighing it’ll be okay, let the breeze caress you, violin undress your heart ...” But no Buffett line has touched me more than, “he went from sailing ships to raking mom’s backyard …”

His song The Captain and the Kid begins, “I never used to miss the chance, to climb upon his knee, listen to the many tales, of life upon the sea …” The artist considered this song a personal favorite, written about his recently passed grandfather. An appreciation of the man’s life and the inevitable passage of time, the heartbreaking raking line lands with devastating emotional clarity, establishing Buffett’s own lyrical ode to aging.

The best lines are not just brilliantly arrayed words, but those which connect with important aspects of our own lives. The grandfather on whose knee I climbed upon was a brilliant man, a Harvard graduate and inventor. He filed the patent for the blinking lights you see on airplanes. His many tales included service in 1916 on the Mexican border, chasing Pancho Villa as a member of Bedford’s National Guard unit, called to service under General “Black Jack” Pershing. He told me of Texas, of chasing lizards through the desert; he recalled the heat. He told me of working as an engineer on newly developed submarines during World War One while his brother, at the same time, flew in newly developed airplanes. “We couldn’t be further apart!” he laughed.

Brilliantly arrayed words can themselves become part of one’s personal experience. I once sat in a Vancouver hotel lounge with Jeff Reinebold, then head coach of the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers. When Jimmy Buffett arose in conversation, I declared my favorite line was “he went from sailing ships to raking mom’s backyard,” and Reinebold immediately leapt to his feet and grasped my hand in ardent agreement, the songwriter’s words cementing instant friendship.

Today I sit in my backyard with my granddaughter. While playing games of chess – whose reward is an M&M placed on top of each rook – and a form of handball – whose reward for somewhat loosely imagined successes is more M&Ms – I play my music. When The Captain and the Kid comes on, I begin sharing many tales of thirty-five years traveling the country and world. We enjoy the afternoon, and when she eventually occupies herself with our cat, I survey the yard and again notice autumn’s toll.

My other grandfather was a violinist in the Wellesley Orchestra. His most memorable flowering of language occurred one afternoon as I assisted in his backyard garden. While securing string bean seedlings to poles, he struggled from his knees, turned and said, “Donny, I keep telling people not to grow old, but nobody seems to listen.”

Maple leaves beckon. I head for the garage to grab the rake.