A Mother's Day Greeting from Ithilien

Ithilien does not have a Hallmark card industry.

Long stemmed roses do not grow here.

You will not be able to find a champagne brunch on a country club lawn within 250 miles of here.
And most of us who come here - whether to stay or whether just passing through this place as one stop on the long journey - have, at best, an uncomfortable relationship with domesticity. It frightens us. It smells from a distance like the final triumph of table manners over the human soul.

The flight from domesticity is yet another reason that many of us are 'out here'. This is not to our credit, hear me clearly (though some seem to think so). There is nothing wrong with IRA accounts, lawn fertilizer, and the cabin up at the lake. There is nothing wrong with bills and pets and the PTA. With Mother's Day and Father's Day and Groundhog Day and President's Day and Memorial Day ... But at some point in the life of each Seeker, even if he never abandoned the trappings of domesticity, something just ... smelled funny about it. And if that rejection is in some sense prophetic, well, that still doesn't mean it's to our credit. Quite the opposite is more likely.

In some ways I wish I could have just settled down in 'ordinary' fashion ... gotten a power boat, a dog, a career ... found a wife, bought a house, had children. I think I would have liked having children. And I don't think I'm going to like growing old without them. But at some point ... I just had to get away. I had to get out. And after many long years, here I am, for now.

But there's any interesting thing about this flight from domesticity that seems to be one of the distinctive qualities of a Seeker (especially the Seekers-Errant in whom it is almost certainly a vice on some level). It is not incompatible with a tendency to cherish deep, profound and sentimental memories of childhood, parents and home. These mysterious sensations of the innocence, joy and peace of our younger days have, in fact, become for many of us touchstones of sehnsucht. And these touchstones fuel something deep - something that keeps us from despair but keeps us moving. It's more than just memory, regret or nostalgia. There's a hope and future mixed into it - just out of reach but not so far as to leave no room for the real possibility that something, somewhere, somehow...

And our mothers are almost always wrapped up in it.

So today I want to pay tribute to my two grandmothers and my mother - not for everything mothers always do, but for a few isolated moments, several touchstones in my life for which they are responsible.

My paternal grandmother is still living in the town in which she was born, though she is legally blind and can only hear dimly in one ear. It has been five years since I have seen her and I wish I could communicate how much that pains me. I wish even more than I could just leave here and go visit her. But I can't. Too much keeps me here and too much keeps me away. God forgive me.

Thank you, Grandma, for red-hots from the jar, for graham crackers with frosting, for scrabble, for singing "The Old Rugged Cross," and for coming out on the porch to greet me.

My maternal grandmother had been dead for ... it must be four years now. I lived with her and Grandpa for a couple of summers during my Seeker-Errant days. We got along amazingly well.

Thank you Grandma for fixing sandwiches for me and Grandpa when we would go fishing, and for packing them in the blue cooler and yelling at Grandpa not to put the fish in with the sandwiches even though you knew he would anyway. I was always on your side on that one, even if I never told you. Thank you for making a fuss about my long hair. Thank you for always keeping some ice-cream in the freezer to put over the peaches.

And my mother ... she died in a car accident almost exactly five years ago now. I did not make it home for her funeral. I didn't even hear about it for five days. I was not easy to get a hold of then. She was only 61 years old. Not a day goes by that I don't think of something else I should have said to her.

But for this year, Mom, thank you for raspberries. Thank you for canning. And thank you for books - especially for reading Frederick Beuchner when I was in high school and leaving his books lying around where I could find them. He was a revelation. A first foothold perhaps. A real beginning of something inarticulable but manifest throughout my life. He was a gift you gave me almost as significant as the gift of life.

I knew that you found something in him that you couldn't quite articulate. And I knew that you were glad that I had read him, too. And though it may have seemed at times odd that we couldn't ever really talk about his writings openly, I don't think we needed to.

Tomorrow morning I will continue working on the root cellar. Tomorrow afternoon I think I will start mapping the valley - by myself.