Charlene and Dan Sutherby before their home in Leonard |
I cried inconsolably when my father
uprooted us from our Kentucky farm to Detroit in 1954.
To
soothe my homesickness, Mom taught my two sisters and me how to make hollyhock ballerinas
with toothpicks. She bought us ice cream at Brown’s Creamery. I loved spinning
on the stools.
But
that didn’t last long. Dad moved us to another house in Detroit where we
climbed the peach tree in the backyard, and ran around the flowerbed that
bloomed tulips and roses.
Then,
of all delicious things, the Good Humor man appeared in his white truck. If Mom
found loose change in her purse, she bought us ice cream on a stick.
The
summer before third grade, Dad drove Mom, my three sisters and me north on Wagner
Street in Warren. Naked as it could be, I didn’t see one tree or speck of green.
Not one bird for half a mile.
To
my delight, I captured little frogs in mud puddles in our backyard. Mom found an
old pie pan for my pets. “No frogs in the house,” she said.
I
put some water and mud in the pan with the frogs and placed it on the kitchen
windowsill outside.
When
Mom called my sisters and me for supper, I found my little amphibians fried to
a crisp. I killed the only living creatures in our habitat.
Thankfully,
those unsettling times prepared me for a migratory marriage during the Vietnam
War. When we at last bought our first home in 1975, I planted several J&P dry
root roses and a vegetable garden in the rich soil of our first home in
Berkley.
Yet,
it was here in Lakeville where Mel and I first heard the spring peepers in 1989.
They’ve since serenaded us from every swamp and bog in our neighborhood and the
Polly Ann Trail.
A
silver lining to this present dark cloud of pestilence, we’ve passed several
families on the trail this week. Jacob, a kindergartener of Leonard Elementary
School, rode his bike while his mother jogged with their black lab. A young
family from Almont noticed my Great Smoky National Park baseball cap and prompted
hiking stories.
At trail’s
end, we admired again the large green house where a couple burned leaves in a
cauldron. “Hello!” the woman called and waved.
“That’s
Char Sutherby. You met her at the library,” I said, and waved back.
Mel
and I made her husband’s acquaintance without the handshake.
“Dan,
what material is your house made of?” Mel asked.
“It’s
handmade cement poured into a mold, a Sutherby pattern. My grandfather built it
in 1904,” Dan said.
“How
long have you lived in the house?” I asked.
“Forty-eight
years. We moved in as newlyweds, and we’re not going anywhere,” Char said.
“Neither
are we,” Mel and I said.
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Blackberry lily, or Leopard lily |
Today,
when we walked the trail, Char gifted me blackberry lily seeds. “They grow most
anywhere.”
Weather
permitting, I’ll sow seeds tomorrow, another silver lining in life’s long succession
of adversities.
Blackberry lily seeds |