Sweeping out the cobwebs

May 31, 2007

Dear Leslie,

Memorial Day weekend on the Castor River doesn't have the tradition of Labor Day weekend, when members of DC's clan descend on the cabin from most corners of the state and Florida to say goodbye to summer with odd performances we call Castor Fest. Owls help us hoot right through it all.

Memorial Day weekend usually only attracts DC's parents, her brother, Paul, and us. We're there to sweep the cobwebs out of the cabin and get summer started once again.

To anybody else, Memorial Day weekend at the cabin would look like a work detail. Paul replaced gutters. DC's mother cleaned the outdoor plastic chairs we donated to the cabin, unwashed refugees from our own backyard. DC's father rearranged the hummingbird feeders. Seven hummingbirds gathered at the two feeders next to the screened-in porch when we ate breakfast. Tiny birds drinking sugared water was more captivating than the movie we watched in spurts.

DC stripped paint from a window and painted a white picnic table red. I offered help, but nobody wants help. This is their idea of a good time.

I go to the cabin to hang out on the river, to dream and read. This time I read: "To grow in compassion for one's own life is the great task of the middle years, and it requires that, first, one must embrace with love and pity a whole reception line of relatives, and then move on to the politicians." That's from Mary Rose O'Reilly's "The Love of Impermanent Things," a book so profuse with ideas and poetry that minutes sometimes pass before I can turn the page.

The others seem to embrace with love and pity my lack of utility. They find time to play, too.

The day before DC and I arrived her father caught the biggest largemouth bass of his life, and that's a lot of fishing. Unfortunately, it also was the day before bass fishing season started, so he gave his largest bass back to the river.

The river ran fast and high. Water covered the sandbar we usually sun ourselves on. Our branch of the Castor and the main channel converge there. As teens, DC and her sisters were skinny-dipping at the sandbar one day when a canoe carrying teenaged boys came around the bend. I think the memory still gives her a thrill.

Our movie was "Going My Way." Bing Crosby plays an unorthodox priest who tunefully rescues people from all sorts of dilemmas. The hit song from the movie is "Swinging on a Star," which warns the priest's disadvantaged young flock against growing up to be as stupid as a mule, as lazy as a pig or as doomed as a fish who can't read or write. I happen to think those animals could be exquisitely happy just doing what they do.

I much prefer a different celestially influenced song. "When You Wish Upon a Star" promises: "If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme."

Disney's theme song. Our niece, Devon, and her sisters have been going to Disney World regularly since they were little girls. They're crazy about the place. Now Devon is a manager for Disney in Orlando.

Devon doesn't do projects when she comes to the cabin either. She reads and sleeps and dreams and wishes on stars.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.