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May
14
with cathedrals in mind
Filed Under Postcards
“A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock
when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.”
so says Antoine de Saint-Exupery
wherever granite stops on its way down hill is where it will remain. that’s what the guide told us as we toured the quarry in barre, vermont last summer, riding in the bus beneath precariously perched hunks of discarded granite. i have a special affinity for rocks and especially for rock quarries due in no small part to the fact that for a while, my daddy worked as a superintendent at a rock quarry. today, on his birthday, i mined memories of his life . . .
“if bullfrogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their fannies” is something i heard from his lips. heard it a lot as i tended to be one of Those Children who used the phrase “what if” frequently. “overused” daddy might say, given his desire to take care of me in part by keeping my proverbial feet planted in the reality of the present and promote personal responsibility and accountability.
“i don’t give a rat’s ass” is something else he was known to say on occasion. me, i’ve shortened it to “d’gara.”
it’s not the big rocks of his life that i remember most - not how he was mayor and county commissioner. not how he designed and built golf courses after leaving the quarry. not how he was one of a handful of people who could walk in unannounced on the governor. no, it’s the little pebble-sized things that stick with me. like the morning he woke up me and tenderly situated his little girl in front of the television because he knew i wanted to watch the spaceship launch. like the hours he’d spend sitting in the swing with my two chiclets as they napped the afternoon away using him as a pillow. like the time he i arranged an after-school field trip to the rock quarry for the staff of the 5th grade newspaper i’d recently started. daddy loaded us into the back of his pickup truck and gave us The Grand Tour, patiently answering all our my questions.
like the night he DIDN’T meet my then-future husband. see, daddy converted a shop into his train house where he puttered with his impressive collection of toy trains. if he didn’t like the guy i was dating, he’d disappear into his train house and stay there until after i was back home and in bed. somehow i happened to tell andy that story BEFORE he met daddy. told him then forgot all about it. well, wouldn’t you just know that the night andy came to meet the family, it was pouring down rain. POURING, i tell you. now say what you will, my daddy had enough sense to stay out of the rain, and that night he chose to do just that. he stayed in the train house and completely missed the opportunity to meet the man who became my husband. the man who (eventually) joked about the fact that my daddy had preconceived notions about him.
when his teenage brother was killed in a tractor accident, daddy became the only surviving son of a mother who abandoned him, choosing to spend the rest of her life mourning the son she lost instead of cherishing the son who remained and a father who, by all accounts, lavished onto his first granddaughter (that would be yours truly) all the attention and adoration he withheld from his son. perhaps that’s why daddy loved to tell the story about the night i was hammering nails into the floor in my granddaddy’s room. we lived in the house with grandmother and granddaddy to help take care of my stroke-addled grandmother. after supper every night, i retired with granddaddy to his room. (i mean, really: a granddaddy with a refrigerator filled with nothing but soft drinks and ice cream, a refrigerator that he and he alone controlled - who wouldn’t?) that one particular night, i sat hammering nails into the linoleum-covered floor while granddaddy watched the evening news. daddy heard the sporadic tap-tap-tap and came to investigate. “jeanne, you stop that,” he said as soon as he saw what i was doing.
i didn’t even look up. no need.
granddaddy kept on rocking, looked over and said calmly, “this is my room, son. if she wants to hammer nails in the floor, she will hammer nails in the floor.” daddy stepped back, closed the door softly, and that was that.
when he was converted the cow pasture he inherited from his dad into a golf course, daddy had me pick up rocks. nobody likes to have their ball ping off a rock, he said, suspiciously sounding like the voice of experience. i rode out to the golf course a week or so ago when gathering red clay for autoquiltography two. though the layout has changed, the course is still there. the old pro shop is now the maintenance building. the pond i swam in as a child (grateful that the resident cows were willing to share their watering hole with me) is still the water hazard on the front nine. and those rocks i picked up - all those layers and layers and layers of granite - well, they’re still there, too. stacked and mortared into entrance gates. just where they’ve been for decades. where they will, barring a natural catastrophe, remain for generations to come.
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lovely writing. Really beautiful memories shared here I shall have to come back and re-read it a few times when I am not distracted by blinding disappointment. Barre Vermont? You were close enough to have made a detour and “seen it all” for yourself. Boo hoo
if we’d only known…
wow. you can really tell a story. even without stitches….
yes, I agree, you are a wonderful storyteller. It is no wonder you are the spunky, tenacious, and funny soul you are, you came by it naturally. I am glad you had such strong, creative and loyal men to look up to, it helped you know to find the one you’ve got, and helped make you the strong woman you are.
Thanks, Jeanne. A wonderful rememberance of a wonderful man. and so vivid!
We all miss him.