On a Clear Night

by Marnie O. Mamminga

Always there were porch lights beckoning and sweet songs answering.

  Sometime during the boys’ teenage years, however, Mary’s caroling phone call stopped coming. Band concerts, dates, and sports took over the boys’ busy schedules, and we all moved on to other Christmas activities.

  Like the imperceptible beat of angel wings, time flew by. Our boys became young men, Bill passed on, and after twenty-six years as my neighbor, Mary moved away.

  Yet even now, when the hectic holidays threaten to turn me into a humbug, I’ll step out into the night and look up through the gnarled arms of an old oak to the sparkling stars. The cold quiet warms my soul. And if I listen closely, I can hear the peace of Christmas in the whisper of young boys’ voices serenading back to me, “All is calm, all is bright . . .”

  The echo, forever, will be a hymn in my heart.

  Comes an Echo on the Breeze

  The kid is leaving. It’s been only three days since his college graduation ceremony yet my firstborn is ready to strike out on his own. In the early morning light, as the sweet songs of waking birds fill the air, he stuffs the flashlight I insist he take with him into an already jam-packed car. Then, with a happy honk and a hearty wave, he pulls out of our driveway and heads west to a new life.

  I wave cheerfully and shout “Happy trails!” as he rounds the corner, goes over the hill, and drives out of sight. Then I turn, walk into my husband’s arms, and sob my heart out.

  Twenty-two years. Born, raised, and out the door. Our job as parents of our firstborn is essentially done. As I stand in the driveway in my old green bathrobe, letting the warm morning sunshine soothe my hurting heart, I realize I am not prepared for this moment of separation and all that it means. The fact that he is moving twenty-six hundred miles away only accentuates the point. He is the first to leave the nest, and it is not easy.

  I have never been good at parent-child separations. I have too much of the mother bear instinct. Worries and fears about the unknown overwhelm me when my cubs are out of sight. Fortunately, my children do not feel the same. They bound out the door to new experiences with joy, anticipation, and a sense of adventure.

  The day my oldest headed off to kindergarten was no exception. Despite a gentle rain, he insisted on standing outside, not wanting to miss a moment of his new journey. He stood on the corner in a little yellow slicker, eagerly awaiting the school bus, while I paced nervously back and forth. When the bus finally rumbled over the hill and stopped for him, he looked back at me, gave a merry wave, and hopped aboard.

  He’s never looked back.

  When he was twelve, we went through our first extended overnight separation when we drove him to a weeklong music camp. Although I knew it would be a wonderful experience for him, I sat in the passenger seat on the drive down, knitting needles flying, fretting about leaving him on such a big campus. What if he got sick? Could he get lost? Would he make friends?

  Yet for him, those challenges meant learning to take care of himself, navigating an unfamiliar environment, and meeting a diverse mix of kids. He had a blast.

  When he was sixteen, he jumped at the opportunity to travel to Italy with his Latin teacher and class. This was our first long-distance separation, and I was a total wreck. How could I let him fly over the Atlantic Ocean without me? Would he be able to communicate? Would he be safe exploring on his own?

  Yet for him, those challenges meant the thrilling adventure of flying (without me) over a vast ocean to a foreign land, learning to communicate with people not like him, and sharing insights with his peers on the beauty of Italy’s historic art and architecture. It was a wonderful education.

  The day we took him off to college, I held my breath. This was real separation. On his own. Total freedom. Choices to be made. Responsibilities to be met. I knew that, as his mother, I was fading out of the picture. He was testing his wings, and I had to step back.

  Four fast years later, we found ourselves at his commencement, listening to the regal rhythm of “Pomp and Circumstance” and wondering where all the time had gone.

  Despite his mother’s worrying and fretting over the years, he is confident and strong, just as I want him to be. I am grateful that he has the self-assurance to embark on new adventures. I wouldn’t want it any other way. And in my heart, I understand it is what he needs.

  As the ceremony drew to a close, the university choir serenaded the rows of seated family members with our state song, “Illinois.” A deep voice sang the lovely lyrics against a background of harmony:

  By thy rivers gently flowing, Illinois, Illinois,

  O’er the prairies verdant growing, Illinois, Illinois,

  Comes an echo on the breeze,

  Rustling through the leafy trees,

  And its mellow tones are these, Illinois.

  My prayer for my son, as he crosses new prairies and fords distant rivers, is to always listen for the “echo on the breeze.” It is the sound of our love for him always.

  At our fourth-generation log cabin on a lake deep in the Northwoods, our family has always rung an old metal bell when someone leaves at the end of a stay. We stand outside and wave and shout with gusto, ringing the bell loudly until the friend or family member drives out of sight. For the one driving away, it is a happy and joyous sound.

  And so on this beautiful early morning, as you drive around the corner and over the hill, although I do not have the bell with me, know that it is ringing in my heart loud and clear. Happy trails, my son. Happy trails.

  Changing Course

  It’s hard to see down the road. The pouring rain and hot summer mist create a veil across the fields of corn as I drive my youngest child off to his two-day college orientation.

  It’s been a week since his high school graduation, and we have hit a lull. The excitement and anticipation of the ceremony are over. Now the future hovers with uncertainty. In the fall, he will leave all that he has loved and known for a new life, and I will return to an empty nest.

  With jangled nerves, we pull in to campus and check in to his overnight dorm. As he heads upstairs to his room, I pace nervously around and somehow enter the men’s bathroom. (I don’t know who looked more surprised, the two young men or me.) Meanwhile, he has mistakenly walked into the wrong room and met the wrong roommate. We are off to a shaky start.

  The morning improves, however, when my son makes small talk with the kid behind him in line and coincidentally discovers it’s his roommate for the fall. Big sigh of relief. He has a friend.

  Next, I check into my dorm across campus. I’m not happy about having to share a room with a stranger after our kids dump us off at nine o’clock for their evening of activities. I’ll just want to read my book and go to sleep, not make small talk.

  As I unlock my dorm door, my roommate happens to arrive at the same time. Her friendly smile and easy conversation put me at ease. We both head out to our separate activities a little less anxious.

  The first orientation session focuses on planning the students’ fall schedules. Until this point, my son has wanted to major in history education. As we listen to the information, he casually turns to me and whispers that he wants to switch his major to acting.

  Acting?

  I remain calm.

  Although he has nonchalantly mentioned this once or twice in the last few weeks, the kid is now seriously testing the waters. We both know the odds of “success” are slim, which means this $18,000 annual tuition bill might lead to a career as headwaiter.

  But who am I to say, “No. You have to be a history teacher”?

  “Acting?” he asks with hopeful eyes as he gets up to leave with his academic advising group.

  “Go for it, kid,” I say as he heads out the door.

  Waiting for our parents’ session to begin, I think back to the start of my own college days. I can clearly remember what I wore my first day on campus: a navy blue shirtwaist dress with a red apple pin anchored to its Peter Pan collar and red flats to match.

  However, as the year wa
s 1967, I soon traded the dresses and pins for bell-bottoms and beads. The anti-establishment attitude, feminist movement, and Vietnam protests were just heating up.

  Being at a university during this poignant historic period led me through all sorts of twists and turns, achievements, disappointments, and new experiences. Yet, looking back, I am grateful for the opportunity to grow, the exposure to vastly different viewpoints, and the challenge to really think on my own.

  I cannot say, as many do, that it was the happiest time of my life, but I can say that I learned a lot about myself and the world. In that sense, my college education was a huge success. I can only hope for the same for my son, no matter what choices he makes or opportunities he pursues.

  Later that night when my roommate, Darlene, and I are back in our room, we discover we are both 1967 high school grads. We compare notes and laugh about the similarities of our college days. Soon we are discussing our dreams for our children about to embark on theirs.

  When I mention that my son wants to major in acting, Darlene is encouraging. When she discusses her daughter’s desire to balance soccer, a business honors program, and dance team, I respond in kind.

  We talk late into the night, finally drifting off to sleep, no longer strangers but friends and mothers with similar hopes for our children. Our books lie unread beside our beds. We would have made good college roommates.

  The sky is sunny and clear as my son and I leave campus the next day. The kid drives. He is now officially an acting major. We enthusiastically fill each other in on information we gathered at our different sessions.

  Winding our way back home through the cornfield-lined highways, we listen to each other’s music. He plays for me two versions of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Eric Clapton and Guns N’ Roses. I play for him Carole King and James Taylor. He sings to his tunes. I sing to mine. Sometimes we sing together.

  The song I hope he listens to most, this dear child of mine, is the melody of his heart. As he flies away and leaves my nest empty, it matters not if he becomes an actor on the big screen, a history teacher in a small town, or headwaiter in a fancy restaurant. I’ll be there.

  Just listen for my applause.

  Forever Friends

  You will remember a curve of your wagon track in the grass of the plain, like the features of a friend.

  —ISAK DINESEN

  Still Afloat at Fifty

  “Fit and fabulous at fifty!” This was our motto. Around age forty-eight, my two best friends from childhood and I (who together dealt with bikes, bras, and boyfriends, in no particular order) decided over a long leisurely lunch that we needed some motivation to meet the half-century mark.

  “We’ll be fit! We’ll be fabulous! We’ll be fifty!” we shouted to the annoyance of neighboring lunchers who wondered if our hearing had gone bad.

  “Let’s do it!” we yelled. (We didn’t spend years cheerleading for nothing.)

  Alas, two years later, here we are. Each, in our own time, labeled with the big fifty vintage upon our bottled necks. Fit? It’s more than iffy. Fabulous? It’s in the eye of the beholder. So, forget the fit and fabulous. Much like a kaleidoscope that fractures images into startling surprises, the real fifty produces unexpected results.

  First off, fifty is freeing. For Martha (my best friend from kindergarten) and me, riding our bikes together through leafy, sunlit streets from one house to another was a favorite activity. The best moments came when we headed down a little hill, the wind whipping our hair and cooling our faces on a hot summer day. At fifty, I know it’s metaphorically time to capture that feeling again. The trail has a finish line. It’s a now-or-never moment to jettison old baggage and hang-ups, let go of the brakes, and ride for the joy of it.

  Fifty is also about forgiving. The snubs, the cross words, the unintended hurts seem less significant and easier to forget. At fifty, the brilliance of old friendships or the beauty of a sibling’s enduring love can shine through the muddiness that clouds even the best of relationships. At fifty, one becomes more acutely aware of the rare gifts these friends and family members are in our lives. These treasured connections take on the light and luster of high-quality gems. Yes, there are still flaws, but that is what makes the relationships all the more precious.

  And finally, fifty is about the physical. It’s about coming to terms with one’s body and accepting what one has or doesn’t have. Yes, it would be nice to look like the model in the health club ad, but at fifty that dream has definitely gone up in smoke.

  Isn’t it wonderful that Renoir painted arms like mine on his lovely lady in The Laundress? These arms might be flabby, but they can still sail a boat solo across the rough and windy waters of a Northwoods lake.

  These legs might no longer earn the Best Legs Award I received in high school, but they can still get me up onto a slalom water ski on the first pull. What more could I want? Fifty brings a sense of physical peace.

  I spent my fiftieth birthday with my family and a few dear friends on the beloved lake of our family’s 1929 log cabin where I celebrated my first birthday, as well as at least forty others. It was a simple, yet joyous day. Fifty is fit and fabulous. To have good health, friends, and to be loved certainly makes it so.

  Shortly after my birthday, with my family scattered to their various responsibilities, my almost eighty-year-old mother and I shared a few last days of summer on the lake together. Sitting on our weathered dock in the August sun, we watched the waves sail rhythmically down the lake and listened to a soft wind rustle the branches of the white pines that my grandmother planted along the shore over seventy years ago.

  Stepping with comic ungracefulness into the water to cool off, we discussed the milestones in age that we had each reached. As we waded across the sandy bottom, gingerly sprinkling ourselves with the cold water, we acknowledged that inwardly we both felt at least twenty years younger.

  “I have to admit though,” I confided to my mother. “At fifty, it’s hard knowing that I’ve definitely left my youth behind. I could fool myself for a bit in my forties, but at fifty, it’s definitely gone.”

  Without missing a beat, my mother looked me squarely in the eye. “Just look at it from my point of view,” she said. “Oh, to be fifty again!”

  “Let’s swim,” I said.

  With that, we waded farther out, took a deep breath, and plunged into the cold water, diving deep to follow the old family tradition of “clearing the cobwebs from our heads.”

  “Refreshing!” my mother said as she popped to the surface.

  “Exhilarating!” I answered with a splash.

  After several laps out and back, we floated on our backs and gazed up at emerald pines framed against a deep blue sky. An eagle swirled high overhead, do-si-doing with the wispy clouds that danced across the heavens.

  Perhaps from her lofty perch, the eagle gazed down upon a “middle-aged” daughter and her “elderly” mother bobbing contentedly side by side on the waves, happy for the warmth of a late summer sun upon their faces.

  I like to think she tipped her wings in fellowship.

  Synchronized Heartbeats

  It was the hat that got my attention. Two feet of white faux fur strapped jauntily on his head, a stunning accoutrement to his white drum major’s uniform with gold buttons that glinted in the stadium lights.

  The year was 1963. As a high school freshman, I had been asked by a sophomore to homecoming. Since neither of us could drive, my date snared a junior who could. Warm autumn breezes filled the night as my homecoming date steered me toward the band section of the bleachers to introduce me to the driver of our car. In the midst of cheering football fans, a handsome drum major stood up and doffed his monstrous chapeau to greet me.

  With all due respect to the hat, it was his warm, smiling green eyes that sparked my heart. Even though he was seventeen and I was only fourteen, I knew instantly that something magical had happened.

  And I was right. Within a year, we became high school swe
ethearts, dated steadily for five years, and married when I was twenty. Thirty years later, we’re still here, happy together.

  “How did you know he was the right one at such a young age?” friends will often ask.

  “Young and dumb,” is my glib reply.

  “Didn’t you date anyone else?” is the next shocked question.

  Being older, he had several girlfriends before me, and I dated someone else for three months during my senior year. But mostly, it was just the two of us.

  During our five-year dating period, we held hands a lot, called each other Buddy, and, when we weren’t kissing, laughed often at each other’s attempts at humor. Thirty years later, it’s still pretty much the same, only now we hold hands to help each other up, call each other Mom and Dad, sneak in the kissing, and laugh because we can’t hear what the other said.

  With marital longevity under our belts and the last of our three sons leaving home for college, we’re suddenly aware that we actually still like each other. I’ve heard many happy couples attribute their marital success to hard work, but I must confess the opposite. It has never been work. It’s only been easy.

  It’s easy to love a man who has washed the dinner dishes all of our married life, serenaded me on the piano by candlelight when the electricity went out the night before our first child was born, and built fires at 2:00 a.m. on cold winter nights to keep me warm as I nursed a newborn.

  It’s easy to love a man who planted a whole row of blooming daffodils at the edge of our woods one Mother’s Day, played ball for hours in our yard with our sons, and canoed with me on my fiftieth birthday out to see the sunrise on the same Northwoods lake where we celebrated my sixteenth birthday together.

  On our sixth wedding anniversary, my mother found us unromantically varnishing doors outside in the hot sun and called our marriage “glorious.” Henceforth, we have humorously toasted each successive year, despite the challenges of jobs, children, and home, as glorious.