Woodland

Cemetery's used to make me really uncomfortable when I was younger.  Standing in front of a headstone, reading the words carved there, I'd suddenly realize that below my feet was a box, and in that box was a body.  What's left of a body.  Bones and dust that belonged to a person who was loved once, and is now nothing more than a name and a date.  And I'd try not to cry when I thought that someday, that will be me. 

I was a bit of a fatalist as a child.  Emo before I knew what the word meant.  I've grown out of it enough to visit a cemetery without being overwhelmed by the inevitability of my demise, but not enough to forget that there a people down there.  

Walking through Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, I find myself saying "Excuse me" when cut between the graves, or "Pardon me, Fannie" when I lift a fallen branch or brush away some dirt for a better picture.  I apologize when I trip over the stones so small they're little more than nubs in the overgrown grass.  I wonder about those little stones; were they bigger once?  Taller?  And they've now been so broken and so weathered that they've been worn down to these little bumps on the ground?  Or was the family simply too poor to afford much more than a bare minimum marker for the grave, so they've placed this little stone here for remembrance.  I find a few little stones with initials stamped on the top; I think it might be the latter. 

Memorial Day wasn't that long ago, any many of the graves still have their flags and wreaths, though there's a helpful sign at the entrance informing all visitors that these decorations will be removed and disposed of by the end of the week.  With the exception of the solider's plot in the front section, I stay away from those marked with memorial wreaths, ribbons, and flowers.  I doubt their family intended for their veterans to be my photo op. 

Woodland's an interesting place.  It's mostly hill, and there's  line of mausoleums built along the road, right into the side of one of the mounds.  It's a big monument cemetery - Dayton used to be where the money went, and anyone who could afford a big rock, got the biggest rock they could.  There are a lot of obelisks, leaving the landscape looking like it's dotted with hundreds of tiny Washington Monuments.  There are enough oversized crosses for the cemetery to host a "Crosses of Woodland" feature on their website, and many, many angles.  Angles with their hands raised in praise.  Angles mournfully touching the family stone.  Angles weeping at the feet of the family plot.  Those might be my favorite kind.

I do tend to gravitate towards the more audacious graves, the ones that are so over the top they start to suggest at a sense of humor from the person who commissioned it.  There's a copper statue of a man at the Woodland entrance, reclining in his chair atop a massive block of concrete.  It's the first thing you see when you drive in, and how could you not?  It's huge.  It demands your attention.  Clearly, this is a man who understood that the dead have no need for modesty, and I salute him for it.  This is his only lasting impression, and now everyone who walks through the gates will notice him.  I hope I can be so bold.        

I walk too far looking at the names.  There's a strong line of German heritage in this area of Ohio, and I try to spot which surnames used to have an umlaut.  Did poor Oliver Gunkel's family lose something in the Americanization of their name?  And what about the stones that just say "Mother" or "Father" or "Mary"?  There's no family plot stone to say who they belonged to, nor are there dates on these stones, saying when they died.

I end up in the Greek-Orthodox section.  I can tell it's the Greek-Orthodox section because of all the Greek.  

I've also walked as far as I can go, and it's much further than I intended.  There's a fence in front of me, separating the cemetery from the great beyond, and I've walked up an down so many hills that if I can no longer see my car.  I know that if I just put my back to the street and walk in a thiswardly direction, I'll eventually find it.  Or I'll end up back at the entrance, and I can pick up one of those maps they (allegedly) have on offer.  Squaring my shoulders, I start the trek back up the hill.     

And there in front of me at the top of that first hill, is this: 

Preserved Smith.  Were it not for actor Benedict Cumberbatch, Preserved Smith might be my favorite name ever committed to a real person.  The heartiness of "Smith."  The descriptiveness of "Preserved."  We don't much name our children for adjectives anymore.  Or words in general (unless your a celebrity scientologist.  Pilot Inspektor, anyone?).  But the virtues still remain.  

(I don't know for certain if this Preserved Smith is the Preserved Smith, but wouldn't it be a tickler if it was?  The man died in Kentucky, but he was born in Cincinnati, so let's assume they're the same man.  Just how many Preserved Smiths can there be, anyway?)   

Come back tomorrow to learn about some of Woodland's most distinguished guests.

Letter to a Baby Tourist

Many years ago, when I was too young to appreciate it, my mother wrote me letters.  She told me about herself, and myself, the things we were doing, and the things we had done.  Every adventure starts somewhere, and this is the start of mine.  Enjoy.

June 26, 1987

Dear Baby Tourist -

You are now six weeks old.  You are the joy of my life and I love you more every day.

This past week you have started to smile at people.  You always smile at your dad first thing in the morning; I know it's a nice way for him to start his day.  I feel so proud that you have learned a new thing.

The last two weeks Aunt Judy has stayed with us to help take care of you.  You were a good girl for her, and she liked being with you.

Today we leave for a week's vacation in Michigan at the cottage in Glen.  This will be your second trip to Michigan.  You and I went to visit Grandma M for a week when you were 3 weeks old.  You met Uncle Joel and Aunt Karen, Uncles Todd and Gregg, and Aunts Heidi, Joy, and Judy.  We also spent a day with Grandpa R and Becky and Holly and your Great-Grandma and Grandpa R.

Sunday June 7 we spent the day with Grandma and Grandpa P, and Aunt Jan and cousin Mike.  We also introduced you to Great-Grandmother W and Great Aunts Debbie and Sherrie and Great Uncles Art and Bob.

On Memorial day Uncle George and Aunt Shirley stopped to see you on their way to Tennessee.  Soon we hope to visit your Great-Grandma P.

Dad and I like showing you off because you are such a sweet, pretty girl and we are proud of you because you are ours!

Baby Tourist, you have changed my life so much.  You have helped me learn to be patient, and to know what is important and what isn't.

What is important is providing you with lots of love and security to make you feel safe and happy.

I am so lucky to have you.  You and your dad are the most important people in my life, and I thank God for making us a family.

I hope you will always know we love you.  I've mad a promise to myself that I will tell you every day.

You are crying now, so I'll end this and go to you-

Love, Mom.  

Sand it Black

Hawaiian Big Island.  Winter, 2008.

Punalu'u Black Sand Beach is an instant beach.  It's not really sand.  This beach, and many like it, were formed when hot lava from the volcanoes rapidly cooling and exploding when it hits the waters surrounding them.  The stones are smooth, polished by the years of being turned by the tides.  Maybe in a handful of centuries the grains will be worn down to a fine, proper sand.  For now you can feel them crunch and slide under your shoes as you walk along the shore.  The sand is fine enough to walk over with bare feet, but coarse enough to hurt when it gets stuck under your toenails.  I recommend you be properly shod.

And you wouldn't want to take to the tide pools without protecting your footsies, anyway.  This isn't really a beach you come to for swimming (and with sharp underwater rocks and little protection from the currents, you wouldn't really want to), so the big draw are the hidden pools tucked away in the larger lava formations.  The crabs may scurry away when your shadow falls over them, but the sea urchins aren't going anywhere.  The fish don't often make it up to the tide pools, but when they do, the sun glitters of their vibrantly colored backs.  Blues, reds, greens.  Little pools of rainbows. 

White pebbles pop against the black sand like stars against the night sky.   Visitors who've come before me have left behind simple messages - a stick figure, an initial, a cat.  I leave a little smiley face behind a rock. 

Local tradition says that those who take rocks or sand away from the beach (or the islands, depending on who's doing the telling) will be cursed by the fiery Pele until the stones are returned.  I've had a Pepsi bottle full of black sand for a year and a half without too much tragedy befalling me (yet) so I don't know how much stock I put in that legend.  Though a display case in the lobby of Kilauea Military Camp has a small collection of rocks mailed back to the island after their captors hit a wall of bad luck, so make of that what you will. 

(Interesting to note: while that's perpetrated as being an ancient belief, historians can only trace the myth to the 1920's.  They believe park rangers invented this little piece of fakelore to prevent visitors from packing their pockets with pebbles.  Maybe I should return that Pepsi bottle after all.)

Further up along the formations, too high for the waves to reach, the lava rock twists and turns, forming high peaks and shallow crevasses.  It's been raining since we've set foot on the Big Island, but we've been afforded this rare moment of sunshine, and the light casts long shadows across the lava-formed walls, making faces in the rocks.  Moss grows in the bumps and tubes - food for the tiny crabs that scuttle into their hidey-holes when we stand too close.

Standing at the lava's edge, we watch the waves crash into the rocks.  The water doesn't quite reach us, until suddenly it does, and we're too shocked to get out of the way in time.  Our toes squelch in our shoes, and it's starting to rain again.  It might be time to go.

Children At Your Feet. Wonder How You Manage to Make Ends Meet.

There's a woman standing on the side of the road in Springfield, Ohio.  We've passed her and her children many times before without recognizing her.  All day she stands there, all day she watches.  She holds her children close to her, and glows a warm pink in the light of the setting sun.  She is a mother.  She is a wife.  She is Madonna of the Trail.

There are twelve Madonnas positioned across the continental United States, all but two facing westward.  Following the line of the National Old Trails Road (now mostly Rt. 40 and Rt. 66) from Bethesda, Maryland to Upland, California, these women were erected to honor the women of the frontier, the wives and daughters who were so strong and who so loved the men with whom they crossed the nation.  The presence of these women established the expansion of the American territories as much as their adventurous husbands did, and for this they are recognized.

In 1911, the Daughters of the American Revolution formed the National Old Trails Road Committee, and were tasked with the establishment of the route as a National Memorial Highway.  The dawn of World War One delayed the formal start of the project, but in 1924 Congress approved the plan to erect twelve statues along the Memorial Highway.  German-American sculptor August Leimbach was drafted to design the statue.  He describes his woman as such:

"When I came to America, I often saw these people of the pioneer type, strong and brave and always ready to protect themselves against any danger. Asked to make a sketch model for a monument of a woman of pioneer days, I was inspired by my own impression of these people I had met, and the Madonna of the Trail is the result."

And this woman is no dainty bread maker or house keeper.  She's a sturdy woman, face turned to brave the west.  She holds her baby with one arm while her son clutches her skirt.  And in her free hand?  A rifle.  No, this is no ordinary woman.  This is a woman who built homes.  This is a woman who conquered lands.  

The algonite stone used to build her heavily features Missouri granite, which causes her healthy pink coloring.  I don't know if they did that on purpose, if they thought that casting her in this delicate, feminine color would soften the harshness of her dominating figure.  The color doesn't soften her, not exactly.  Instead, it lends her an air of motherly stoicism.  Now she has a hint of personality, more than you might find if she were just another stark white memorial.

On July 4, 1928, at the dedication of the first statue, the one right here in Springfield, the leader of the National Old Trails Road Committee, then Judge (but soon to be President) Harry Truman said of these women:   "They were just as brave or braver than their men because, in many cases, they went with sad hearts and trembling bodies. They went, however, and endured every hardship that befalls a pioneer."  Within the next nine months, each of the twelve identical statues had been placed and dedicated, the final one resting at the start of the trail in Bethesda, Maryland.  They've since become a source of local pride, with the community taking care to see that their women are not defaced, or too harshly weathered.  They still stand today, that strong line across the country.

I still drive past our Madonna.  I am glad now to know her name.  

Is there a Madonna of the Trail near you?

Statues - Vatican City

Vatican City.  Summer, 2004.

Statues captured from within the territory of the Vatican.

You Look Happy to Meet Me

Numazu, Japan.  Summer 2003.

Midori teaches music class at the elementary school, and today I've followed her to work. 

A group of about twenty second-graders file into Midori's room straight away, and they chatter excitedly when they see me.  I think my reputation precedes me.  Midori shushes them, and urges them to take their seats.  She pressed the play button on the CD player, raising her hand when the music starts.      

It's "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music.  In Japanese, of course.  There's an extra syllable on the end of the word, and Midori laughs just a bit when her kids put at little extra emphasis on it.  E-del-wa-i-SU!  E-del-wa-i-SU!  Every morning you greet me.  I hum along, because don't remember much beyond "small and white," and it's not really my song to sing.  The kids sing the last note and hold it long after the music stops playing.  They giggle, trying to see who can hold it longer than everyone else.  A boy with close-cropped hair and too-big glasses just manages to outlast a girl with her hair tied back with pink ribbons, and he bows deeply in his victory.  Midori claps her hands, and they scurry to the back of the room and start pulling things from their bags.        

Midori asks if I have every played the recorder.  I nod, because I did in third and fourth grade, but I try to mask my fear when she hands me an extra one.  The kids are already running back to their seats, their own Yamaha recorders in their little hands.  I haven't played a recorder in years, I don't even own one any more, and while I may still have the muscle memory to play "My Heart Will Go On," I've long since forgotten how to read the music.  Midori rattles off another round of instructions, and the kids flip through their pamphlets.  I didn't catch the page number, but I don't want to ask her to repeat herself. 

The little girl in the chair next to me helpfully turns the pages of my book until she hits what must be the right one.  "Edelweiss" is written along the top of the page in English and katakana, and that's the first and last thing I recognize.  The rest of it might as well be braille for as much as I understand it.  Midori starts the music again, and the kids play along.  I rest the recorder on my lips and move my fingers, but I don't blow.  I think Midori can tell I'm faking.  As long as she doesn't ask me to perform a solo.     

After lunch, I follow Midori into another classroom.  It's the kids from this morning - they've been working with their teacher on a special song for me, and they're ready to show it.  Standing at the front of the classroom, they sing, in English, a song about happy trees, how they grow in the sunshine, how they love the rain, and how they'd love to give you a great big hug.  They raise their little arms high above their heads - look how tall the tree will grow!  I applaud when they've finished.  It was very cute, and I think I spy some of them trying to hide a smile as they bow.

Sensei tells them to sit down, and they gather in a semi-circle around me; they are allowed to ask questions until the end of class.  They ask little kid questions, the ones that are easy to answer, and Sensei translates them for me.  How long will you be here?  Two weeks.  Do you have any pets?  Yes, two cats and three dogs.  Do you like Japan?  Yes, very much.  Is it different from America?  In some ways, yes.  In others, not at all.  

One little boy asks if I speak Japanese.  "Hai," I say.  "Watashi wa chyo-to Nihongo o hanashimas."  Yes, I speak a little Japanese.  It's formal, probably way to formal for speaking to a child, but they are suitably impressed.  And excited round of whispers moves through the group.  I won't tell them that, unless their next question is "What is the weather like today?" that might be the extent of my conversational Japanese.  

A bell rings - it's the end of the day, and it's time to clean up.  I've read about this, but never seen it in action.  At the sensei's nod, the students run to put their chairs up over their desks, then go to pull brooms, dust mops, and towels out of the closet.  Some stay in the room, starting at one corner and sweeping their way across the floor.  A handful run out into the hallway - from the window I watch them get down on their hands and knees and push their towels and dust mops down the corridor.  I wonder if anyone is cleaning Midori's room.  

I'm not a student, so I don't have to clean.  Midori takes me back to my shoes (no shoes in this school, either), and reminds me that Fushiko is coming this evening to take me and Julie to Kyoto for a few days, and that I should be all packed by dinner time.

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Follow the Leader

Numazu, Japan.  Summer, 2003.  

Mariko has taken me to Johoku High School with her, and now I'm surrounded by calligraphy students, listening to the Sensei explain the day's exercises, trying to pick out any familiar words.  I speak enough Japanese to carry on a conversation with another person who's just beginning to learn Japanese (these conversations never seem to get beyond the weather, though,), but the sound flies so fast off a native speaker's tongue, I can't tell when one word ends and another begins.  I know I hear "mina-san", which means "everyone," because Hauptman Sensei says that many time a day, trying to get our attention.  Mina-san, mii-te kudasai.  Mina-san, kii-te kudasai.  Everyone please look.  Everyone please listen.

My shoes are somewhere else.  You're not allowed to wear shoes inside the building, so we've left them in a cubby down at the school entrance, and I'll be able to get them back when Midori, Mariko's mother, picks me up for lunch.  Now I've got school issued slippers on my feet, and I wish I had worn socks.  Mariko brought her own pair from home - they're a bit more festive than my baby-girl pink ones.  

"Do you know any kanji?" Mariko asks.  I do.  I take the brush laid out in front of me, and paint the handful of simply kanji I know.  Eye.  Sun.  Fire.  Water.  Child.  I write my name in katakana in the bottom right hand corner, then again in hiragana, just to show off what I know.

It's time to paint.  Sensei draws the first character on the blackboard.  It's much more complicated than anything I've had to do in my level two Japanese class..  I watch my host sister deftly put the ink to paper, drawing the delicately complicated kanji figures.  I pick up my own brush, holding it awkwardly between my thumb and forefinger, the way the other students do.  I copy Mariko's movements exactly.  My kanji may not be as confident as hers, but it's cleanly done.  Precise.  You can tell what it's supposed to be.

Sensei stands behind me, waiting to approve my work.  He shakes his head at my paper.  "Too neat," he says.  "Calligraphy is about brushstrokes.  We should see them."  He loads up the brush with ink and paints like a pro.  His kanji looks different than mine.  Just enough to make it look human.  "Like that," he says, and hands me the brush.

I load my brush with too much ink, and move too slow across the paper.  The ink leaves big wet blotches on the paper (thank goodness we've all laid newspaper down first), and all the shapes bleed together until the form is almost lost.  Sensei nods his approval.  "Much better," he says, and writes "GOOD" across the top of the page in red cursive.  His penmanship is better than mine.  I might be a little jealous.   

Sensei projects the list of to-be-practiced kanji up on the wall; Mariko shows me the stroke order, so that I know how to paint them.  (Every kanji has a natural stroke order, and to not follow it would be to draw the kanji incorrectly.)  My technique improves just a little bit, but I'm not anywhere as skilled as the other students.  The boy on my right flies his brush across his paper.  He must have been doing this for years.

Mariko waits until I finish the last stroke, then she and a handful of other students gather around to paint the translations in the corners of my papers.  This one means "smile."  This one means "blue sky."  Tanoshii means "funny."  Kokoro means "heart."  Sensei circles back around with his red pencil.  He writes a few quick notes on Mariko's own pages, then a second round of Good on my papers, above what I consider my sloppiest kanji.  A paper like that would get thrown out in my language class.  He must see how confused I am, because he leans close and says, "Calligraphy is human.  It is always beautiful, especially when it is not so pretty."   

At the end of the class, Sensei gathers up my good and not good papers, and layers them between sheets of newspaper.  He hands me the bundle with a kind smile.  "Good work," he says, and throws me a thumbs up.  I might be a little proud.

Mariko takes my hand, and leads me back to my shoes.  Midori is here to take me to lunch.