Month: April 2017

Potted lilies lined the side of the entry to Costco, a sea of white flowers on green stalks announcing the return of another Easter season. The steps to the chancel would be similarly clad in Dad’s churches on Easter Sunday morning. The bulletin listed the people who provided each lily, either as a tribute or as a memorial.

We called them Easter lilies. Their blossoms were perfect trumpets for the Easter message.

The Costco display transported me back to memory after fond memory of the pinnacle of every church year; favorite hymns, a pervasive sense of joy, childlike wonder at the miracle being celebrated by the faithful

The same week we visited a garden on the North Shore. The Botanical Garden Club had arranged with the owners for a group to visit. They bought an acre in Pupukea fifteen years ago and, over time, transformed the dirt into a wonderland of succulents and cacti. To jump-start their garden, they brought hundreds of specimens from their home in Santa Monica, California to array into a variety of zones; aloes here, desert roses there, pachypodiums placed in between to provide height, texture and interesting shapes.

Being one of her flock that morning was to hear Elissa share her passion and her advice, her lessons learned and her triumphs. In response to a question about the origin of her ideas, she said that many of her plants represented specific times and places in her life; her garden was part of her visual autobiography.

Then she said, “I have plants that bloom at different times of the year. So I am never without something of beauty to look at.” She was saying, if the cacti are blooming, it’s spring again.

Back home, the book I took up to read began with an author’s note: “The poles of American politics have been stable since the presidential election of 1800. A federalist party proclaiming, ‘We are a nation of laws’ has always been opposed by a ‘Don’t tread on me’ party that resists regulation in the name of personal liberty.”

She went on to note the relative unpopularity of the President, the fractiousness in Congress, the dislocation of the American worker due to technology, and the tensions between urban and rural America in the time about which she was writing: the 1880s.

OK, some cycles are more positive than others.

I attended an assembly at a school in Korea a few months back, featuring three rock bands. First the elementary rock band played. The singer found the right key from time to time but it didn’t matter. The music was loud, and the band’s classmates were on their feet, moving. The middle and high school students remained seated on the floor.

Next came the high school band. Their singer had advanced in “The Voice” competition and was really good. That band got everybody off the floor.

The members of the last band were faculty members; three guitars, drums, and a singer. There was a lot of groovin’ to the music among their peers as the band sang an Eagles hit.

The kids in the elementary band were excited to be playing in front of their friends. A few worked at aping popular rock musicians, and it seemed each one was a bit taller when he had a guitar strap across his shoulder or a microphone in her hand.

The affect of the high school students was blasé, too cool to be seen as excited or nervous. The guys on the guitar did their best to look bored, as though strumming metal strings and making a lot of noise was just the done thing. The girl at the piano was serene, even as the pace of the piece picked up. The energy came from her striking the keys with extra force at moments of crescendo. The singer caressed the microphone and worked into her voice the pathos of heartbreak at appropriate moments.

One of the faculty band members, a man in his 60s, played bass guitar (a math guy) and looked impassive; he let his music do the talking. The lead guitarist jumped and bobbed and shook his head, trying to make well-trimmed hair fly about in the air to show intensity. The singer had one level of volume. Have kids liked loud for all time?

I had trouble figuring out which group had more fun playing for the school. I am certain the elementary kids were the most proud. The faculty made me feel that their short time on stage was a most-welcomed moment to be 18 again. The ones who were 18 that day would never let someone my age know that they thought playing a guitar on stage at school was about the coolest thing to happen that week.

People of a Certain Age, you and I know that, before too long, the elementary musicians will be practicing their teenage affect. The teenagers will be in somebody’s adult rock band. There will be new members of the elementary band, yet unborn or at least yet to be introduced to these tools of deafening noise that seldom fails to cause someone in the room to shake and wiggle and move about in unexpected ways.

In a world of rampant randomness, there can be comfort found in cycles.

Daniel E. White

April 17, 2017

I was eating dinner, doing a crossword, listening to Evening Concert on HPR. Judy was on the mainland, visiting her brother. I meant the music to be background, filling, in a small way, the emptiness of the house.

The familiar strains of Les Miserables began. In was an orchestral version, the various songs organized in a way that made sense to the arranger. There was no mistaking the melodies, though; the sounds of hard labor in “Look Down;” or “Castles in the Clouds;” and “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables;” and so on.

The arrangement culminated with “Bring Him Home/God on High” leading into the triumphant finale reveling in the surety that “Tomorrow Comes.”

I sang along even though there were no vocals. Les Miz is more than musical theater for me. It represents many things, all good. The music caused my eyes to cloud over, blessed with hopes and memories. My puzzle got a little damp.

I first saw Les Miz by luck. I had a day to spend by myself in London, and I went to the theater where it was playing to see if I could score a half price ticket. I did. In the stalls. Twelfth row. I was so enthralled that, for the first time in my life, I bought the CD in the lobby on the way out.

What’s not to like about a story pitting the law versus justice and mercy, set to evocative music ranging from the aching lament of Eponeme, ”On My own,” to the prayer of Jean Valjean to “Let Him Live,” to the hopeful promise that “Tomorrow Comes?”

So I sat at the kitchen table, filling in the words for each song; I had played the CD that much. In doing so, I was transported to a lucky day in London and inspired again by the triumph of right and goodness.

People of a Certain Age, what are your transports to happy memories and ennobling thoughts?

As often happens, my dinnertime pleasure came in close timing with a similar experience that morning. Story Corps on NPR featured a mom and her son, talking about the mom’s dad. He was an African-American who worked in a factory located on the other side of a white neighborhood through which he had to walk to get home. He got tired of being stopped by police as he went through the neighborhood, so he quit his job and became a cop, vowing one day to buy a house in that neighborhood.

He did.

He doted on his grandson and provided the boy with an upright model of dignity and virtuous living. He died when the boy was 18.

Mom capped the interview by saying “the legacy that you leave is the one that honors him.”

Ernest H. Braem and Daniel D. White entered my mind’s eye just then. I am among the fortunate to have know all four of my grandparents, and I can conjure pictures of each easily. There is Poppa Braem, the pillar of the community and the Methodist Church; Dr. Braem, the dentist dressed in all white who, at age sixteen in his basketball uniform looked just like I did at sixteen in my uniform (scrawny, too). There is Poppa White, the first Dan White in the family, high-pitched voice, going blind from glaucoma, a shopkeeper respected as the most upright guy in town.

I daydreamed a while. Most of my time with them occurred more than 50 years ago. Details have blurred, naturally, but, the Story Corps mom’s reminder about how one honors one’s grandfather brought them into sharp focus.

Nowadays, I have to fill in the blanks of my memories of my grandfathers with hints from my siblings, old photos, or similar prompts. When I do, I am rewarded by mind pictures of two men who lived good lives, striving always to do what was right.

As the years go by, People of a Certain Age, we might be less able to sing all the words or recall every detail. Therein lies a blessing of long-time friends and families, pictures, diaries, and so on. They help us to fill in the blanks to produce rich treasures of memories from the past but powerful for us in the present as well.

With luck, the structure remains even when the details are fuzzy. The Les Miz music is stirring even without the words. My grandfathers are men to emulate in their goodness even though I can’t remember all of the details.

It is a gift to recall times a play or piece of music or love from another person has inspired us or given us hope. It is a special gift for those of us who have put in lots of time on this planet to be able to collect more treasures.

One day, tomorrow will not come. Until then, I hope to know how to fill in the blanks that appear in the unfolding story of my life.

Daniel E. White

April 3, 2017