Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.
Tuesday
On Thursday I will be giving a talk on what it was like to grow up in Sewanee, Tennessee, where Julia and I have retired. Sewanee is one of those places that reminds people of Mayberry, the idyllic small town in the 1960’s sit-com The Andy Griffith Show. After all, everyone knew each other back then, and as a kid I could bicycle to school, to my friends’ houses, to the swimming lake, to the baseball field, to–well–just about anywhere.
It wasn’t perfect, the biggest blight being segregation. Now, of course, we’re no longer segregated but we might just as well be as most of the African American community has migrated to the valley, where there’s cheaper housing. High house prices are also discouraging families with children from living here, which means that it’s lost some of its vibrancy. I’ve learned that, in Thomas Wolfe’s immortal words, one can’t go home again.
For my talk, however, I’m putting that aside and recalling early memories. To that end, I have been going through my mother’s old scrapbooks and also old slides and strips of film, all of which she preserved. D.H. Lawrence’s “Piano,” which has long been one of my favorite poems, captures some of the emotional roller coaster I’ve been going through. The fact that my mother was a piano player adds to the feelings.
The Piano
By D. H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
Okay, so I haven’t been weeping. Nevertheless, my heart is being pulled, especially since I have now lost both parents and one of my brothers. And then there’s Chris Mayfield, the girl I was attracted to in third through fifth grade and whom I’ve long ago lost track of. As they look out at me through old photographs, “the glamour of childish days is upon me.”
