The song of the seasons

One night when I was in high school, I drove home from track practice and found myself alone at the farm. I don’t remember what kept my mom and dad in town that evening, maybe a church meeting. Whatever it was, I knew they wouldn’t be there for supper.

I dropped my stuff inside and sat down at the kitchen table. After a few minutes I decided it felt weird to sit in the house alone, so I grabbed a snack and a blanket and headed to the front porch.

It was almost dusk. The air was damp and cool. The trees west of the house cast long shadows across the yard as the sun worked its way toward the horizon. I wrapped up in the blanket and sat still, enjoying the quiet and wondering why if felt easier to be alone outside than in the house.

I’m sure I had homework. I’m sure I wanted a nap and another snack, fatigue and hunger being the chronic state of high schoolers.

But something about the silence and the solitude was mesmerizing, so I stayed where I was, thinking about nothing in particular.

From south of the yard, I heard a whoosh of beating wings. I looked up to see a hundred or more red-winged blackbirds, glittering in to fill the trees just a few yards away. I’d never seen so many at one time.

I burrowed deeper into my blanket, hoping they wouldn’t see me. They started to sing. The effect was stereophonic. Their music rose and fell, over and over, while the shadows crept across the yard. I closed my eyes and listened. For 10 minutes I was surrounded by bird song. It felt like spring had found its anthem.

After the blackbirds flew away I sat awhile longer, content to exist immobile inside my red and black checkered blanket, alone on my farm. The assurance rose within me that life was fine and good, and my future awaited. When the time came, I would be ready to set off and find it, claiming my destiny among the noble citizens of our planet.

Then I went inside and turned on the television. That’s how it is with moments of clarity. They come embedded between reruns of “Happy Days” and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” 

But I’ve never forgotten the hopeful yearning I felt, being young and suddenly serenaded by a hundred wild birds that had no idea I was listening. That feeling returns whenever I see flocks of red-winged blackbirds in the spring.

And that evening did reveal something definitive about my future. I’m still happiest outside. And I still find simple experiences the most illuminating. 

Under my checkered blanket on the porch, I knew without knowing, if that makes sense, that my life would be made up of moments like that. Fine, simple moments when the air comes alive with the change of seasons and the notes of a song.

We come to ourselves in moments like those. When an experience clicks, like a key in a closed door, and we glimpse what awaits us on the other side.

I was wired for a simple life, but a good one, made so because of the place I live and the people who live with me. 

In some small way, it’s what the blackbirds told me long ago. And Marcus Welby. And Fonzie, Richie and Ralph. Even Potsie. There is a future for us to step into. We’ll need our friends to get there, and maybe a good family doctor, but we’ll make it. We’ll do it together and it will be fine and good and maybe become an anthem of sorts.

The world around us plays a song. If you haven’t heard it lately, grab a blanket and head out to your front porch. When you get there, take a deep breath, and follow Fonzie’s advice: “Sit on it.”