I’ve been away from the blog for some weeks, in part because I’ve been cleaning out my father’s house and preparing it for market. A rite of passage for adult children, of course, but made much easier for me by working alongside my incredible brother, John. (My sister had made an earlier trip that helped us make progress, too). Together, we spent weeks shifting and sorting, cleaning and clearing. And remembering the good years our family had had in that house. It meant a great deal to share that labor with John and my father.
To get there, I drove by myself from Michigan to New Mexico–and back again. I had a few adventures on the way (which I’ll save for another post), but there is nothing like driving alone for 3600 miles to cultivate attentiveness. There are clear dangers, of course, to zoning out, but to really notice what is passing by takes intentionality. To find it beautiful or full of blessing even more. It put me in mind of this Wendell Berry poem–a perfect reminder for summer, wherever we are, to help understand what little can be preserved. Vacations and houses and lives need being in them.
The Vacation By Wendell Berry Once there was a man who filmed his vacation. He went flying down the river in his boat with his video camera to his eye, making a moving picture of the moving river upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly toward the end of his vacation. He showed his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, preserving it forever: the river, the trees, the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat behind which he stood with his camera preserving his vacation even as he was having it so that after he had had it he would still have it. It would be there. With a flick of a switch, there it would be. But he would not be in it. He would never be in it.
