Pastures New?

St. Anthony, St. Anthony

Please come down

Something is lost

And can’t be found.

Saint Anthony is my mother’s go-to saint.  Right now I need his help because for the past three weeks of nights, I cannot sleep but look for her obsessively.  For my husband, the dead are dead: just gone.  For religious friends, the dead go to heaven; “they are in a better place,” end of story.  The story of my life with mother and maybe every daughter’s life with her mother cannot have such a clear ending or maybe any ending.  After I read a book on “fell” shepherding in the Lake District of England, I understood better.  A fell (from Old Norse fell, fjall, "mountain") is a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain range or moor-covered hills.  In fell farming, the sheep spend most of the year on upland pastures that are not fenced or walled.  In theory they could wander right across the Lake District.  But they don’t because they know their place on the mountains.  They are “hefted,” taught their sense of belonging by their mothers as lambs.  “Heft” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adjective, and it basically describes an attachment or bond to an animal’s special spot on earth. 

As long as Mom was here, on this earth, my place was somehow secure … even when she was at the nursing home.  Now that she is gone, gone too is that invisible cable that bound me to her and to my place.  At night, I follow an irresistible urge to head home … to her, to her in a box, to do something, to get somewhere, to suckle.  No places are recognizable anymore.  Where is my place on the mountain?

The morning I sat with her before she headed off to her own place, I kept my hand on top of hers.  Her hand was like a rocky mountain, and it was warm in the way stones absorb the heat of the sun.  I remember thinking of her body, even in its shrunken state, in terms of a landscape or a world.  My mother.  My mountain.  She was it for me.  And like a good fell ewe, she taught me the places where I belong, to which I will be returning all my life:  Nesco on the edge of the Jersey Pines, Brigantine—the sea isle off Atlantic City, and Indian Lake.  But even more than these beloved places, she taught me how to find good pasture anywhere.  She led the way.  Even in hard times.  I talk to her as I walk.

“Mom, I was coming up through Kearsley Park yesterday, and the purple phlox was blooming like mad.  Suddenly, I remembered that God gets pissed off if people don’t pause to acknowledge the color purple.  So I did, and I noticed a path along the stream.  I followed it into the bushes, and I saw evidence that homeless men had used it as a washing place.  Some of their clothes remained on the branches.  Along this part of the stream, I’ve seen woodchucks and even deer—so near the road.  When I took the path to the washing place and thought of these men without houses, I thought of you going to the laundromat all those years and enjoying the adventure of it.  For most people, laundry is a chore we take care of in the privacy of our own houses.  But you filled the cellar so full you couldn’t have a repairman down to fix or replace the machines when they broke.  No worries.  You didn’t complain; just did what you had to do.  Even from this distance, I can still hear you striking up conversations at the Broad Street laundry.  I see you rubbing stain remover into the collars of your white blouses and standing outside in your jeans puffing on a Kool cigarette.  No cell phone to scroll through.  No book to read.  You looked.  You sensed the air of the day.  For you, this was pastime passing excellent, and you drove home with a sense of accomplishment.  Work is something that you relished.  It was life.  It was fun.  You showed us how to graze.  ‘Graze, my daughters on the fields of this world.  Don’t shy away.’”

There will be no other mother for me.

 

Why didn’t I stay by your side like Jennifer did?

I wanted you to come to Michigan, but you didn’t want to leave your own home turf and Jennifer packed up her life and headed north, going to the place where she’d been hefted.

What about me?  Banished.  Far away from my familiar mountains and fields.

Can we find each other and find a new place to graze together, Mama?  Will you lead me there tonight?

Dear Saint Anthony, I pray

Bring her back without delay.