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The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I cannot go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree, but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
--Theodore Roethke
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Joy's Updates - Straight from the Horse's Mouth.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2003
The Bee Funeral
Funerals are an important part of Southern life. They provide opportunities for family gatherings and a ritualistic method of extending condolences. It is literally a rite of passage with customs that are meaningful to a particular family as well as the community in which they live and worship. There is a certain funeral home etiquette that's expected and which also varies, even though some of it is fairly universal. We have made it into an art form in the South where appearance is more important than content. Depending on how well we know the family and deceased, we determine the extent of our condolences, which can range to sending cards/flowers/donations to preparing meals. The length of visit to the funeral home depends on several factors, as does attendance to the funeral. Generally it's not a good idea to spend too long with a family member unless they indicate they need you to be nearby. If so, they will ask you to stay or sit with them. Otherwise, let them know you care and are sorry for their loss and either leave or go sit with the other visitors. People often prepare food for the family to eat there at the funeral home or send it to the home of some family member where they will gather after the funeral. I don't think families stay at the funeral home as long as they used to and have more regular visiting hours now. The whole process is emotionally draining and cathartic. I learned about funeral etiquette from my mother.
The first time I really learned about funerals was from my neighbors who lived on each side of our house. There were two girls who were three years older than I and made sure I realized it. They taunted me with what they learned and could do and dangled it like a carrot in front of me. "You haven't lived until you go to school!" "Just wait till you learn to read!" "You haven't lived until you're in third grade!" "Riding a bicycle is great!" "Oh, just wait until you can wear a bra like we do!" "It will be a long time before you get to date, but we can!" "We have our driver's license!" And on and on! No wonder I'm such a malcontent and live in the future. They never let me enjoy my present life without looking forward to what I wasn't doing yet.
Of course, they went to a funeral before I did. They were older while I was too young. So they relished describing every detail to me in a superior manner while making it sound dramatic and mysterious. We all played outside most of the time. We played tag, hide-and-seek, blind man's bluff, football, basketball, baseball, cowboys, cops and robbers, and games we made up. We also climbed trees, rode bikes, made mud pies, and explored the woods behind our houses and the extra lot. It was fun and fed our imaginations.
Daddy had a vegetable garden and chickens, so we always had fresh vegetables and eggs. Mother spent a lot of time during the summer canning and freezing the bounty. She still makes the best applesauce I've ever had. Daddy enjoyed giving away tomatoes, squash, corn, and all kinds of vegetables he'd share. Fortunately for me, this was a form of relaxation for him, and he didn't want anyone messing things up by weeding the wrong plants and not doing it like he did. That was fine with me! I did have to pick things sometime but not often. I also got out of dealing with freshly-killed chickens except for cutting them up into pieces since I could see a potential use for this information. Unless you've been there, no one can imagine how bad a chicken smells that's been dunked in extremely hot water to loosen it's feathers so they can be removed. I whined and complained so much about it and intentionally did it very slowly and ineffectively until he was sufficiently irritated and told me to just let him do it. Having a parent with some control issues can work for you if you play it right. It worked with scaling fish too. I made a huge mess and left gaps in them, so Mr. Perfectionist Virgo Daddy didn't make me do it. Being a girl helped, I'm sure, because I don't think my brother got out of doing much. He cared more about pleasing than getting out of work like I did.
I've really digressed! I was going to tell about the bee funeral and need to get back to that story. One day a hen killed some of her baby chicks. We saved two of them, a dark one and a yellow one, which we named Blackie and Whitie - how original! We brought them in the house, fed them, and took care of them. Blackie died. When I told the neighbors about it, they decided we needed to have a funeral for it. This way they could not only show off their knowledge but direct a production and be in charge while we played funeral. They described all the roles and what everyone did. We gathered others from the neighborhood and volunteered for our parts. Obviously, we didn't really grasp the concept of death and what it really involved. We were upset when one of the fathers wouldn't preach the funeral, so one of the older ones did that. A couple of people were the choir. I wanted to be the family since I thought pretending to cry would give me a chance to overact. We put the baby chicken in a matchbox, dug a hole, conducted its funeral, and buried it. It was lots of fun and a new game we hadn't played before. Besides, we gave him a proper burial and not something impersonal. Curiosity overcame us as we discussed what we thought happened to the little chick. Several theories were entertained until we had to find out for ourselves. Yes, we dug it up to see what happened. Gross! I was pretty young and thought it turned into worms which seemed incredible. I imagined how that must have happened and visualized it. That image is still clear to me of the remains in that matchbox. When I studied Shakespeare and read the line, "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love," I got it.
We liked playing funeral which wasn't so much play as performing a service. Otherwise, we'd have pretended to have a deceased; however, that didn't occur to us because this was serious business. Like vultures, we waited around for something else to die. Nothing cooperated. One of the older ones (and I want to emphasize that this WAS NOT MY IDEA - I was only around eight years old) suggested we trap a bee in a jar and not poke holes in the lid the way we did for lightning bugs, so it would die. That seemed like a good idea since almost all of us had stepped on a bumble bee while barefoot in the yard which had some clover in it that attracted bees which stung us when we stepped on one. I don't know that justification was discussed, though. It takes a bee a long time to die in a jar. It would have been more humane to have stepped on it, but this was our plan and we stuck to it. Every day we'd shake the jar to see if the bee moved or not. Eventually, it was immobile. We went into action immediately for our funeral. The bee remained undisturbed after its burial. In fact, the funeral was almost upstaged because that's the day our first television was delivered.
Years later, I told this story to Challenge Class students. They thought I was horrible and macabre because of this but feared me just a little knowing that side of me. Well, I can think so anyway. I taught them for several years, and at the end of his 8th grade year which was the last year I taught him, Ben Blankenship gave me a little jar with a fake bumble bee in it. I'll always treasure it and laugh and smile every time I look at it and remember his face when he gave it to me.
2:39:00 PM
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