Unsettled: Closing Thoughts

It was in June of 2008 that I began writing this Unsettled storyline about the property we’d purchased forty years before. I was prompted by the thought that we needed to settle the estate, as they say, and it struck me as strange that after “settling” this land for all these years there were still unsettled tasks to be done. Days of sitting in the house, still furnished and left exactly as we knew it through the years, reminded me that the settling of this land had shaped my family’s life, and therefore, whatever remained unsettled should be done in the same spirit we enjoyed throughout those years.

What better way to do that than to tell the story as my personal time allowed. What better place to do that than here at Patterns of Ink where others may learn of the unique setting, characters, actions, and conflicts that fueled the plotline of my life during those formative years.

The setting? Mostly the property with occasional glimpses of life in Roseville. The characters? Mostly two parents and five kids (to the neglect of a huge network of friends and relatives who lived through these years with us, but I tried to stay focused on the original cast). The Action? If this were a film it would certainly not be an action movie, but I tried to highlight those "acts" that were most unique to this setting: building the barn from logs; spanning the creek first with logs and again with slabs from I-94; digging a cistern well one crock at a time; salvaging a two-room schoolhouse for the lumber for the house; and then the long process of finishing the house itself. The conflict? Man vs. nature on occasion, and  conflicts I understandably chose not to include, but really… the theme itself is the recurring conflict of change. For mother it was the change from suburban to woodland life. For Dad the change of a family grown and gone just before his dream house could be lived in. For the four oldest kids, the change from the security of the home we knew to the homes we started. And for Jim, the youngest, the change of all the above as seen through the eyes of a young boy.

Oh, there were other conflicts along the way: we boys grew to resent the weeks of digging the well; Mom worried that the well would be salt water and then her putting the car in reverse at 50 MPH. Our dog Duke having to be put down the night we packed for Georgian Bay. Mom's private struggle. Dave and I walking home after wrestling practice in that blizzard. Mom blowing up her kitchen table. Me telling Dad, “Why don’t you come over here and show me how to tie a half-hitch!” The time I hit Dad’s thumbnail with a hammer. There were lots of snags along the way, the kind that bring excitement to a day, but at the heart of it all was the conflict of change that affects all things human. Change is the bridge from what was to what is. We can sit on that bridge and watch things slowy pass, but in time change itself sweeps everything away like the bridge my father built across Fish Creek. It washed away in the flood in 2004 (as the first bridge had done years before). Somewhere deep in the banks of the creek are the some of the slabs of I-94 he used in the foundation. Those are the only remaining parts of the interstate on the property. What about the driveway? Well, in the fall of 2009, we paved the driveway to the house and pulled up the old cement two-track we'd used for over twenty years. Change...and the tug to hold things as they are is one of the silent rhythms of life.

These chapters are not memoirs—not in the truest sense. I’m not sure what genre they fall into. Is there one called “Reconstructed Non-Fiction”? Maybe that’s what it is. The non-fiction applies because, to the best of my ability everything I’ve shared is true. I’ve been careful with dates and all chronologies (often with the help of my siblings). The “reconstructed” term applies because, obviously, the events were not filmed and recorded in real time. They are skewed by my perspective, temperment, and personality. They have also been flavored by the months that elapsed as I wrote the chapters in the context of long periods of real life and the recurring duties related to preparing the homestead for an estate sale. Quite often the seasons during which I was writing also came into play. The final chapters, for instance, were written in the Christmas season of 2009. It was a joy to be reliving those memories while a current Christmas season was happening around me.

The dialogue throughout these chapters is true to the events and personalities and outcomes of the storyline, but they were not transcribed from a Dictaphone. I’ve been told by readers who know my family that they can hear the voices behind the words; they can remember the actual conversations or imagine them while the words on the page play out in their minds. That is high praise in my book, for it is those same voices I hear as I write. Not some strange psychopathic muses, but the actual voices of the characters of my family at whatever age and time the dialogue was included. To be honest, dialogue is the most cathartic aspect of “reconstruction,” because I love those voices, and especially miss the ones no longer here to hear. At times I don’t know whether it’s a blessing or curse to have these vivid details and voices found so undisturbed in my mind, like the letters we found in Mom’s cedar chest in the attic.

For many years after my father’s death, I could only write of mourning and grief when it came to family things, and to be honest, I wrote very little. Mostly I wrote on scraps of paper kept in my Bible or nightstand and filed away for future use. It was these “endless patterns of ink” that prompted a short poem and eventually the title of my blog in 2004. Only then, did I gradually begin to feel comfortable writing about my father. Only then could I do it with the full range of healthy feelings beyond grief.

I treated Patterns of Ink (POI) as a private journal for a few years, sharing only with friends and family. For the first four years, my mother printed off each post and began gathering them in manila envelopes beside her dresser. We found these after her death. That is a manuscript copy of Bringing Home the Duncan Phyfe which she helped me write that last year before she died. That was my first experiment in “reconstructive non-fiction,” and in that case, Mom and I talked on the phone Sunday nights and then I’d write a week or two until I needed more details. It was a delightful process, and I was grateful to give it to her for Christmas a few months before she passed away (though she had read each unfolding chapter in real time at POI for over a year). This Unsettled story would have been equally rewarding to write with her on the phone, but instead my siblings helped me here and there.

I remember the strange feeling I had the first time a reader left a comment. But as any blogger will confess, the fear of comments soon becomes an unexpressed desire for feedback and motivation to continue writing. I thank those of you who take the time to do that, and I apologize for not leaving comments in the blogosphere as often as I did a few years ago. This year I have failed at the "social networking" aspect of blogging. But with the help of a “counter” at the bottom of POI, I find some motivation in knowing that sometimes hundreds of people visit here in any given week. Since the beginning of this Unsettled series, the counter has been tripped over 15,000 times. I know many blogs have that kind of traffic in a week or month, but I find it amazing, and I’m honored. Without that sense of anticipation, that vague sense of “deadline,” I’m not sure I would have been as motivated to return to writing  these chapters whenever I got bogged down in real life or in the storyline itself. If you are reading this, you are one of the people who helped prod me along simply by stopping by to read. Thank you.

What now? Well, I have transferred  the 60+ posts into one long manuscript. I will now begin re-proofing it, streamlining it, trying to eliminate about fifty of the current 250 pages. That will take a while, but I am sure there is a lot of repetitive deadwood that needs to go. You also know I am prone to typos and spelling errors. I tweak those even after posts are up for weeks. Reading from a printed hard copy is still the best way for me to find my own mistakes. At any rate, once the manuscript is pared down to a presentable size. I’ll make a few copies for friends and family, saving one copy to leave in the house as was my original intent. Depending on how it “reads” on paper, I may also consider printing more copies for interested parties. We’ll see.

I'm going to close with a poem I wrote for my dad for Fathers Day 1994. It is probably the most structured piece I've ever written (8 syllable lines followed by 4 syllable lines), but it reads comfortably. The presiding pastor read it at Dad's funeral about a year after I wrote it.

Before the poem, however, allow me to share one last snapshot I've been saving for the end.  I took it in December 1979, on day before I left home to fly to Kansas with a diamond ring in my suitcase and plans to propose to Julie on New Year’s Eve. I was eager to leave and carry out my mission, but I was also aware that life as I knew it was about to change. I happened to have the ol’ Kodak instamatic camera in the car as I turned into the driveway. This was way before digital imagery; I had no idea whether or not this picture turned out until I developed the film months later. The house is in the background and I am in the rear-view mirror of my 1965 Oldsmobile Delta 88. (My first car which I later sold because it had the biggest gas-guzzling engine GM had ever made, and I heard a rumor that gasoline prices might go above $1.00 a gallon by the end of 1980.) I like this picture because it foreshadows the feelings that prompted me to write Unsettled thirty years later.

My Father's Hands

Sometimes…

I see my father’s hands in mine—

…not in my clasp
but in the flesh and form and line
…of span and grasp.

It’s not the look that came with age.

…I see that when

my lamp-lit fingers press a page

…or hold a pen.

But when my grip takes on a task

…or holds a tool,
my palms and fingers seem to ask

…if as a rule,

hard work alone gives hands their worth—

…not just their pain.

If so, then sweat must mix with earth

…as well as rain

to dampen new-sown dreams and seep

...into the soil

where hope takes root in things that keep

… and call for toil.

But who am I to talk of such…

…hard work I mean…

I’ve not attempted half as much

…as what I’ve seen,

and what I’ve done is only more

…or less child’s play

(like completing a morning’s chore

…that takes all day).

Occasionally, however,

…I’ve had to rise

to the call of some endeavor

…that otherwise

I’d never do…or even try.

…And when It’s done,

I stretch my arms toward the sky

…and setting sun,

and in the glow I almost see

…my father’s strength—

his hands are there (or seem to be)

…from an arm’s length.

 © Copyright 1994, Patterns of Ink
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Next weekend, I will resume blogging, but I think I am done with Unsettled for now.