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Splendor In The Grass

Cassidy with our dog Rosie at Bergman Park. Photos by Sandy Robison

What through the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

September fields, Chautauqua, farewell summer.

Strength in what remains behind …

William Wordsworth,

from “Intimations of

Immortality from

Recollections of

Early Childhood”

Wordsworth’s words come to mind this glorious September day, sweet as youth. Cassidy does not know this now, but one day she will look back and recall days like this, perhaps this very day, romping with her canine pal Rose and her grandmother in the park on the grass green and soft beneath the towering trees of upstate New York. She will recall it with joy and sorrow at once, a pinch of both, at the marvel of childhood’s long and splendorous days. If the angle of light, the quality of life, the meaning of moment creates a long term memory, surely this will be one.

For the past month, I have cared for my two youngest grandchildren Cassidy and Little Brennan. Little B stayed two weeks and Cassidy has stayed the entire month while their dad moves to a new town and a new home in New Jersey. It was a grandmother’s dream to have her grandchildren with her for such an extended period of time. Little B has already started school in his new hometown in northern New Jersey much nearer his father’s job. My son Brennan no longer must drive three hours a day commuting from the Jersey shore to his job in northern NJ.

It’s a good thing to move and a painful thing. When we move, we leave behind so much we have loved and become familiar with on a daily basis, right down to the scents and colors of life morning, noon and night. We never forget hanging upside down in the backyard cherry tree, eating a popsicle on the front steps amidst the blooming peonies of summer, or throwing the Frisbee to our dog in the back yard. We recall sitting at the kitchen table in a patch of sunlight drifting in through the window as we savor our morning coffee. We recall the sound of the house in the middle of the night. The very air felt like home and always will in memory. Sometimes our pets are buried in the backyard there, under a favorite tree or in a garden corner. There’s an ache to leaving such a home that never quite goes away.

I’ve moved so many times I can’t even recall all of them. I made a list once, and it was 53 places long, and I don’t think that was all of the moves. I’m not sure why but for about 30 years, I could not set down roots and stay in one place. My dear friend Bill Ward called it a peripatetic life. He was dead right. It was a kind of living like a refugee, a syndrome I’m sure I got from so much early loss. It was like I did not dare to invest in one home and one place for fear it would disappear through no fault of my own. I did buy this little house in the late 90s though and kept it all these years. Thank God I did because it is home. It was the home I needed all my life.

The good part of moving is the fresh start in life. My son and his children are leaving behind the only home the kids have known in their lives, but it is also the huge house where their mother died one awful March night in 2016. It’s the house where Cassidy roamed the halls weeping with her blanket and favorite stuffed animal, Baby, for more than a year thereafter. It’s the house where the drapes and blinds were drawn tight for a year in mourning and only one by one opened to the sun of future.

So leaving is a good thing, a necessary thing.

Now the new house will be ready to fill with life and joy and promise. Every morning will offer a fresh plate of new wonders, a big backyard to get to know, a neighborhood to walk the dog in, a new school and a new teacher. Cassidy wants a pale blue room with rainbow bedding. Little B wants a football scheme for his room, NY Giants of course. He has left behind his Spiderman days as he moves into second grade and a new house.

My son, Brennan, tall and strong, who has endured all like the Scotch-Viking he is, will wake every day to hope and a fresh scenery with fewer memories of loss, less color of grief. It’s best now. It’s the right thing.

From these precious weeks of late summer, Cassidy and Little B and I will recall most romping in the fields with our dog pal Rosie, who is a BFF, says my granddaughter. We rode the rides at Midway and won tickets in the arcade there, hoping to win the big prizes. We explored every city park and spent hours at the basketball court and playground at Allen Park and Bergman Park. Cassidy says Jamestown is the best ever. Granny, she repeats. Jamestown’s the best.

And so, while the radiance of the children’s and my son’s family life was dimmed, it was not put out, and they emerge in the light of day stronger now, full of hope and promise. As Wordsworth says, Nothing can bring back the splendor in the grass, glory in the flower, before their mother died, before Brennan’s wife died, but they “shall not grieve, rather find strength in what remains behind.” And so we encounter tragedy and loss, all. And so we romp in fields and taste life anew. And so we lay down new roots. This is the symphony.

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