Life With Horace

poetry & essays

Category Archives: memoir


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How is it?

How is it
on the mountain, friend,
your spirit free
to roam the peaks
while others only visit,
awed by your home?

Can you see
the wonders that
your children are,
carrying you forward,
best parts mostly,
through life’s flow?

Do you know
I miss you still,
regrets dimmed,
a mind’s eye memory
of boundless energy,
on the night we met?

Is that you
beside me in the woods,
silent escort through
the marshes, dogs in hand,
then safely home,
here for the asking?

Yes

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For Mike, whose birthday was today. the photo is of Mount Lafayette, where his ashes rest.

my daughter with Eddie


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Lioness still

You think you know,
beforehand,
what you will feel,
but no it is impossible
the first time,
even with a child
you carry, part of you.
The fierce love comes
in waves of tenderness
letting down like milk
and never stops.
With each new step
from stone to anchored stone
across life’s flow,
strength to strength, joy to joy,
my heart follows, watching,
knowing only pride
as she runs on, lioness also,
my firstborn.

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For my daughter, on her birthday

flowers from Geoff


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every day, love

we settle, cozy with each other,
life together flowing,
knowing we won’t leave
this place, our coupleness,
while our hearts are here.

quiet moments, though less weighted,
felt more clearly than crescendos,
simple, loving gestures
saturated with delight,
flowers you have chosen,
waiting on our table,
lovely, in a jar or pitcher,
knowledge of these growing things
and bird songs,
gifts I brought to you
through our acquaintance,
love’s osmosis
passing bounty back to me.

you brought me here, to
nights on mountains,
walks through wetlands,
skiing on a snow deep pond
in winter moonlight,
summer swimming ledges,
hearing loons or beaver slaps,
thrushes lilting song in hemlock woods,
rhododendrons bent with snow,
discoveries that echo joy,
and I suppose, my loving them
is now a gift turned round again

to you


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Still

What visits me today
A lullaby in baritone
and funny bits of song
Dreadful jokes
in nuanced tones
Bearded bristle paired
with a million kisses
All too human shoulders
I thought and hoped
were everlasting granite
Long held friendships both
a gift and an example
The pungent scent of cuban leaf
lit anywhere but in the house
A feel for speed and open road
the skies he loved and flew so well
Laughter books and music
with the color light and form
he looked at every day
These brought him peace
the certainty of love
from open eyes
Straight told advice
his caring deep
His spirit so ingrained
that now whenever
need is great
I conjure loving echoes
of an imperfect
perfect father
to see me through
the dark

_______________________________
My father died at 89 in 2005, suddenly, but blessedly not alone, my sister was with him. His legend looms large in our lives, to quote a beatle, and I know we all miss him, need him, still and always.


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emptying a place, filling my soul

Sell a 6000 square foot house with outbuildings on 23 acres. Empty out 200 years of stuff. Add 15 cousins, stir well.

A TV series pitch? Not so much. It was my life for a while. It took about three years, but we did it, my cousin and I, with lots of family help and the sale of a painting.

There were miracles involved.

We were a typical extended family with rifts and misunderstandings. My cousin and I were trustees for the two branches (his father, my mother). We worked hard to heal the effects of the past, building a good working relationship, learning to trust each other. The rest of the family followed our lead, slowly but surely.

The potential for great drama burned off like fog. When the time came to finally empty things out, the family grew closer. There were no fights. None. Someone might get crabby for a few hours, but we all understood and helped each other through it.

Coming down to the wire the wild and wacky bartering started. Taking my name out of contention for a wooden bench, antique hay fork and french watering can produced the rug next to my bed! We all got into it. And it was never about monetary value.

So much so that when our family lawyer arrived on Monday morning to arbitrate any disputes, there were a whopping seven items waiting for him to decide about. Out of all that stuff. He said he’d never seen anything like it.

Big ticket items? Nope. The French watering can and a painting by my mother were the most hotly contested.

Even when the outcome was decided, we still made adjustments. One of my cousins (unbeknownst to me) was extremely attached to a child’s hearth chair that I got. Watching a slow tear make its way down her cheek, I simply gave her the chair. Fondness trumped by memories.

Later on her brother came up to me with a bowl he knew I really loved, but that he had chosen. He put it in my hands saying it had a small crack, and his wife had a thing about cracked bowls. I know it was because of the chair, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

Losing stuff. Regaining family.

It was that kind of day.


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The child within

She calls me now where once she hid frozen,
afraid of dark paned windows,
conjured menace staring blankly in.

I first returned to grasp at shards of understanding
and found instead a small hand needing mine,
we stood together, unafraid.

There was a magma shift, the hard and inky dark
shape-changed by love’s reagent into brightness,
the bond of trust rewarding us with grace.

 


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The piano duo

The photo shows my godmother, Anne Hull (left) and my grandmother, Mary Howe, circa 1920. They were both pianists and composers, and performed together as a piano duo from 1912 until 1935. They met at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore in 1905, when my grandmother was studying piano with Ernest Hutchinson. She later returned to the Peabody (with the unequivocal support of her husband, my grandfather) to study composition with Gustav Strube, gaining her diploma with high marks in 1922. She was active musically until the early 1960s, an internationally recognized composer, and a founder of the National Symphony.

Anne was studying for an Artist’s Diploma and Teaching Certificate. She had a rich musical life, never married, teaching first at The Institute of Musical Art in New York, and later The Juilliard Graduate School. Retiring in 1968 at the age of 80 she left New York to live in the Algarve, and shared a house with the conductor William Strickland.

Friends for the rest of their lives, they did extraordinary things in a world that sometimes considered them dilettantes, and not to be taken seriously.

My grandmother’s unequivocal take on being a woman composer, circa 1950:

“Women composers should be played more than they are. I don’t think conductors have a prejudice against women composers now. But no one puts women writers or women painters in a class any more and they still do with women composers. I know I considered it a handicap to be a woman when I started composing. I’m not a feminist. But I think I would have gotten along faster if I’d been a man.”

I generally admire her pieces, and think her art songs were her strongest. She knew many poets, and read poetry voraciously. Her friendship with the poet Elinor Wylie, whom she met during an early stay at the MacDowell Colony, is a story in itself (a particular favorite of mine is her setting of Wylie’s poem “When I Died in Berners Street”).


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Imagining dragonflies

Walking under mid-March flying clouds,
snow still layered tightly on this wetland road,
there are soft murmurs, water running under ice,
the flow from unseen melt is fleeing winter.
A half-warm sun and gusting wind of early spring
cannot erase the memory of heat and fecund life,
riches here to be regained at nature’s pace, not mine.
The dogs and I tramp to the dam and back,
and dream of summer pleasures looming large,
imagining the dragonflies.

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On yesterday’s wetland walk my mind kept overlaying summer on what I was seeing.


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sure signs despite appearances

We all know what yesterday was, and for most of us in the upper tiers of North America it was just a date.

But, there have been signs. More than one. Different signs, unexpected and joyous. Spring is en route here. Emerging at glacial pace after a winter that brought stoic New Hampshire yankees to the point of actual complaint.

The turkey buzzards are back. Really turkey vultures, but down in DC they were buzzards. I like that better. Circling singly and in whirling vortexes.

I’ve heard red wing blackbirds twice, once in my own yard.

Speaking of which, it is beginning to show mud. Longing for mud season. Just this year, mind you.

Bird song in the early morning is loud, and full and sweet, their spring calls.

There is more flowing water than ice or snow on our own Fassett Brook. The dark shape of the Brook is emerging from the snow in the woods behind us.

On a walk yesterday there was a bug creeping across the snow in front of me, when I happened to glance down. No idea what it was. Small and spindly, it crept along, and I imagined it muttering to itself about the snow.

And last of all, somewhat incongruous to me, I saw a male ring necked pheasant. First sighting up here for me ever. Coming home on Mountain Road, on the last climb up before the Old Toll Road trail. On the side of the road, looking a bit confused about getting back up the bank, to safety. Hope it didn’t become Creamed Pheasant, if you get my drift. It’s a busy road.

It’s definitely coming. Just very very slowly.


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Today, a while ago

A while ago I had a gift
and gave one too,
a lovely boy
whose soul and name
my heart reached out and held
before his birth.

And then he grew,
gifts seized with joy
and challenge met with grace,
in one quick moment,
my life’s blink
this swoosh, bright energy
old true soul, became a man
possessed of loving honesty.

Now two score on
a truth teller thinker
dreamer husband father
nephew cousin brother son,
above all friend,
his light shines bright
held always
in my soul’s arms
and in my heart.

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for my son, on his 40th birthday


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Nana’s birthday surprise for YaYa

A few years ago my daughter and her family were living in Hawaii. My then 6 year old granddaughter YaYa couldn’t hear enough about all the snow we had in New Hampshire. A true snow child. My answer was to send her snowballs for her early February birthday.

The two Fedex ladies near the Manchester airport didn’t bat an eyelash when I said the styrofoam steaks box packed with newspaper and dry ice needed to go overnight to Hawaii. They would get it there. I didn’t say what needed to stay frozen, and they didn’t stop to wonder until it was all packed in a big cardboard box full of packing peanuts. There were many forms to fill out and lots of ‘Hazardous Contents’ stickers. It is a tricky thing to ship something packed in dry ice by plane.

When they finally did ask I confessed to sending snow to my granddaughter for her birthday. They were simultaneously horrified (it was not cheap) and charmed.

The surprise came off perfectly. YaYa was thrilled with her snowballs. As were her classmates the next day when the first snow many of them had ever seen were part of show and tell.

© 2014 KH Rantilla. all rights reserved.


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lunch with a cousin

Being a southern girl at heart, my grandmother always set great store by her cousins. I’m with her on that, a good thing since I have a ton of them!

Yesterday, Cousin Stan came for lunch. My late husband’s first cousin, he lives in San Francisco and was making a swing through New England reconnecting with family and friends.

It was a really nice time — first a walk through the woods with the dogs, up the hill to see what animals had been visiting, and what colors were left in the woods. Over lunch there was lots of talking, catching up with news from our families, ourselves.

Turns out Stan is one of those special family glue people. He likes to keep in touch, connect branches of the family with each other. My uncle was like that, and family, sometimes quite distant cousins no one had ever heard of, often came to visit or for lunch.

I told him about discovering my cousin Cassie and her family, then through her Elizabeth, the three of us meeting this summer, third cousins all descended from one great great grandfather.

Seeing Stan brought back so many memories. He resembles his father and my late mother-in-law, and has some of their mannerisms, small things that tugged at my heart. They were with me in those moments. Guess I’m feeling a little wistful today, actually more than that, to be honest. It’s all good.

My youngest brother and sister and I are meeting up on the left coast next month. We’ll hang out, see lots of my son and his family, and also see Stan. It’ll be a good time.

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copyright © 2013 KH Rantilla