November Memories

The lingering evenings of summer have turned to memory. Lately the November sunsets captivate us -- as I walk back to the house up the drive they are one part gilded mountain silhouettes, one part inky, back-lit garden silhouettes. All the glory slips to shadow and darkness like running water. The light's collapse yesterday brought back the refrain from that folksong: “oh our good times are all gone and I’m bound for movin’ on.” The green slopes below our house carry my thoughts down the steep hills, down and down to the river. There's something about moving on in the air. Joni Mitchell also wrote a good sad song about summer dying into fall and how her lover just had to leave and how she had to let him go.

Every line in “Urge for Going” plucks at my memories. Tom Rush sang the song the first time I heard it. He was at Northeastern University in his very first one man concert. Between that and “The Panama Limited” my 16 year old self was struck dumb with desire. Not for him but for the romance. I wanted the departure without a place to go. To wander, to hop trains, to feel the drama of lovers parting, the farewell that only sang its hurt and thought not at all about the morrow...that was the stuff of my dreams then. So November sunsets still provoke some wish; maybe it’s only an unrequited longing from the past. And yet, 44 years later, with a house and attic full of stuff, a safety deposit box downtown and in it a last will and testament, well, the nostalgia about feeling free of things feels almost fresh. These very thoughts of lightness and simplicity beguile my soul.

I don’t go anywhere, of course. I shrug off those longings and turn back into the house where the light beside my chair falls on bright wools and my usual, several half-read books. I tell Hugh some garbled version of all those thoughts and feelings and in response he puts on a record of Pete Seeger in concert. My heart thrills to “We Shall Overcome” and to hear again the old hootenanny style Seeger never abandoned, not even in Carnegie Hall, so effective at getting everybody singing, everybody marching. What are these sentimental tears for songs of political purpose and protest? It’s been forty years at least.

The timer ticks; nighttime has darkened the windows, made them into mirrors. Dinner is almost ready. Now, deep in my body, I miss my mother and my father. If only they could have seen this house, petted these dogs, let me serve them at this table. If only they were here to kiss me. And to let me kiss them. To gaze on their granddaughters. These are November thoughts, that wild rushing wish to steal back what life has taken from us.