Birdy's Lesson: She Was Not Alone

My favorite uncle died last week. Truth be told, I was glad. Uncle M. was 96 and had stopped eating. In a nursing home, he didn't recognize his own daughter. When he did talk, it was to relatives long dead. Dementia had stolen his mind.

Yes, his passing gave him release from his earthly suffering. But my reasons go beyond his personal situation. Their roots are ancient, timeless, something I can't pinpoint precisely. But I'll give them shape with a narrative that revolves around a visit with an elderly woman named Birdy, some 16 years ago.

You could call this a ghost story. I call it a revelation. And it changed me to my very core.

The weekend began simply. After work on a Friday, J. and I drove out of the city into the hills of Pennsylvania. The constraining hours in the office, which had encircled us like coils of rope, faded with each mile. Our voices, strong with rich new breath, flowed freely. As we hurtled through the darkness, we grew bright inside the cocoon of the car.

Our friends waited for us beside a little store in a tiny town that had rolled up the sidewalks at twilight. They led us through winding lanes to D.'s grandmother's, a big old farmhouse. We had to drive the last miles slowly, watching for horse-drawn buggies caught out late, without lights. We were in other-worldly Lancaster County, home of many families adhering to Old Order Amish and Mennonite faiths.

D. introduced us to Birdy. He had talked about her with enthusiasm for so long and wanted us to meet her. "Before it's too late," he said. She was in her 90s, still living on her own in the big stone home of her birth, looked in on by neighbors, the parish, meals-on-wheels feeding her once a day.

She was delightful, just as D. had said. Charming, high lilting voice and laugh. I looked her straight in the eye, but also off to the side a bit, an old trick of mine that somehow allows me to imagine the young woman she had been -- sharp-featured, vibrant with energy.

Using her hands for emphasis, she directed her grandson and his girlfriend to get this and that from the kitchen and told J. to find something in a far corner.

Then she turned to me, lowered her voice to a whisper and said, "My mother has been calling me on the telephone. She calls alot. We have so much to talk about." She also told me something else. And I remember this quite distinctly. "My mother has been calling me. Because, you know, she's coming here soon."

She raised her voice again when the others drew near. She obviously did not want them to hear her talking about her mother, who had been dead for half a century. Those words were for me only. I was not surprised. People sense in me a sympathetic ear for lost causes, for what others know to be impossible.

The evening continued pleasantly, and several more times Birdy had the chance to whisper to me about her mother. She said she needed to stay close to the phone, that she was sleeping on the first floor because of the stairs. But also because she could get to the phone faster that way.

So, when we retired for the evening, J. and I went to the old master bedroom on the second floor. This had been Birdy's bedroom with her husband and the room belonging to her mother and father. It was the biggest bedroom in the sturdy house with walls a foot thick. Tired, we quickly fell asleep in the dark room.

But I woke up in the middle of the night. And I saw a small woman sitting at the foot of the bed. She had very thick, curly black hair flowing over her shoulders and down past the small of her back. She was small-boned, sharp-featured. Her frame was nearly overwhelmed by this thick mass of hair.

We watched each other for a few moments, I don't know how long. I sat up, with the idea she was about to tell me something. But J., a very light sleeper, startled awake, which scared me and I gasped. Or, I simply woke up from my dream. I'll never know. Because she was gone.

The next morning, I told D. what had happened, describing the apparition. He looked surprised. And started off through the house. He came back, finally, and said I had described, exactly, his great-grandmother, the former owner of the house. Birdy's mother. He was looking for a picture of her, to see whether I had seen it. And then conjured her up in a dream. Or something.

D. and his girlfriend were astounded. People always talked about this woman's hair. Thick, curly, black, masses of hair that nearly overwhelmed her small features. The woman at the foot of the bed in her old bedroom. And no, they had never talked about her around me and I'd never seen a picture. No one had a picture that I could have seen.

All of a sudden, my head began to pound. We were nearly through with breakfast and I just couldn't pretend I wasn't in pain. So J. gathered our belongings and made apologies, we thanked everyone and hustled out the door. I was really sick. I held my hands over my head and groaned as J. drove down the hills, alarmed.

Ten minutes later he pulled into a store parking lot to try to find something to help me. But the pounding stopped as soon as it started. The pain just lifted. I was fine. No explanation. We drove home and resumed our lives.

A couple of weeks later the call came.

Birdy had died.

She passed away quietly, at home, in that big old farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills. She was pushing 100. She had not wanted to leave that home, ever, at least while living on this Earth. And she hadn't.

And I knew with absolute certainty that Birdy had not been alone at the end. Because she had told me so. Her mother had been calling her, on the telephone. And the mother was on her way, after all. And I'd seen her myself.

I don't know how to explain this kind of thing. I can't defend my idea that "we" simply do not end when it is time to leave this life as we know it, here and now.

I don't know how it happened or where they went, exactly. Or what they became. But the lady with the big hair came, when it was time, and took her daughter home. That much I know, in the very core of me.

Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses materialized on our front porch one blazing hot summer day, while my mother was sick. I glimpsed them through the screen door, framed by a gravel road and cotton fields. Pamphlets in hand, God on their side, they inquired after my mother's salvation.

"Mother," I yelled toward her bedroom. "It's the Jehovah's Witnesses, asking if you're saved." After days of sickness, her voice came back suddenly strong, "Send them in."

The Witnesses had no inkling they were about to face an uncommon spiritual adversary.

My mother, pale and weak from the double assault of a migraine and back trouble, propped herself up on pillows. The two women and a man filed into the small room, standing respectfully at the foot of the formidable old oak bed that had belonged to my maternal grandmother. Pink began to seep into my mother's face. I peered around the edge of the doorway, wary but excited. The Witnesses were too confident. This was going to be good.

The visitors hurled the opening salvo, asking my mother whether she understood that their religion was the true way to salvation. My mother belongs to a Church of Christ in rural Alabama. There's an old joke about that church. The pope passes away and is welcomed at the Pearly Gates by Jesus. The pontiff asks what is the austere little white structure way off by itself. "Shhhh," says Jesus. "That's the Church of Christ. They think they're the only ones up here."

My mother countered the Witnesses' tactical mistake with biblical verses supporting her beliefs about the "one true church." That her church members do not follow any man's beliefs or accounts, but model their lives after Christ. And that the Bible is the only text for a Christian. Period.

Then the combatants locked horns over the Bible. Scripture verses flew in the room like racks of arrows. Some careening and crashing with an avalanche of noise, others falling in distant silence.

My mother felt disdain for the Witnesses' New World Translation, since they brought the matter up. She was civil. No amount of interpreting about contents and explanations about inserts could change that fact for her. When the Witnesses quoted one Bible verse, she quoted three. When they summarized an entire New Testament book, she brought up a raft of others, followed by words said to have come directly from Jesus himself.

My understanding of the arguments was hazy. I was a child caught up in the excitement of the encounter. I kept thinking of the words "when two or more are gathered together..." But this wasn't a worship session. This was an epic. My mother, ailing, warring against three in-perfect-health Witnesses looming over her bedside.

My mother had lived her beliefs, carefully studied the Bible, attended church every time the doors were open. Her scholarship was not casual. She had been on track to become valedictorian of her high school graduating class. Extremely shy, she was horrified of making the primary speech, so she purposefully messed up final tests so she could finish with the second highest grades. She should have gone to college, studied the math and science she excelled in, but there was no money. Her brothers paid for six months of secretarial college.

She worked for years for a man who was barely literate. But his correspondence showed no sign of this. Because it was written by her.

She put up with his condescension. And put her faith first in all things. With her intelligence, unshakable faith and refusal to be talked down to, in her own home no less, she did battle that day. I had been in houses of friends where Witnesses had stayed for hours, extracted promises of church attendance, contributions even. But they stayed no more than 15 minutes at my house.

That's because the Witnesses understood after a few minutes that they never had a chance. They put up a token fight. Then shaken to their doctrinal foundations, wished my mother well and quickly filed out the front door.

Rejuvenated, my mother rose from her sick bed, bathed and began tidying up, working in the kitchen. She hummed and sang old gospel hymns, her usual routine.

I'm not sure of it, but I can well imagine one of them. "Up from the grave he arose; with a mighty triumph o'er his foes..."

Fernet-Branca

In Venice, they asked me to join them at their table. She ordered. Fernet-Branca. I had never heard of that Italian spirit. The waiter brought the liquid in a slender glass, thick, black with a tinge of green. A digestive, she said. I caught a whiff of pine.

She was tiny, ethereal, with exquisite clothes and wire-rimmed spectacles. Spiky black hair. He was not her physical counterpart -- gruff, ill-fitting suit on his bulky body. Earth bound. He could not take his eyes off her.

I asked about the Fernet-Branca. She warned me -- I wasn't likely to care for the taste.

Even though the spirit is made in Italy, it was not always available. So she carried a small bottle with her. At night after the conference meetings, she would pull the container from her bag and pour the thick liquid into a dainty glass at the hotel table, canal-side outside the hotel. Sip. Stare into the languid night of Venice, which had been cleared of tourists for the meetings. Her long brown cigarette glowing red near her cheek.

She filled me in on the Fernet-Branca. It was the only topic I heard her talk much about. The full list of ingredients supposedly has never been divulged. But some are known -- myrrh, chamomile, cardamon, aloe and saffron.

The drink was "all natural" because of the herbs and spices, she said. The spirit was developed as a health elixir, purported to be a tonic for all manner of illnesses back when.

As we sat, he continued to work. He chased delegation members after hours for extra stories, quotes, anything. It was the only way to do his particular job, he said. In between, he tried to check in with her, the delicate beauty he had seemed so unlikely to find.

He did not keep her.

One night, I heard later, he woke up deep in the night to find her in a compromising position with a man they had been keeping company with that evening. He threw her out. A scant few years later, he died suddenly, far too early, far from home.

She was wrong about me. Visiting Italy for the first time, engulfed in the magic of Venice, I loved the taste of Fernet-Branca.

I'm not much of a drinker now. Wedding toasts, maybe, a taste on New Year's Eve if the champagne is really good. But I do keep a bottle of Fernet-Branca, in the back of a tiny cabinet.

Once in a great while, the mood strikes. I pull out the bottle. I pour a small amount into a tiny crystal liquer glass, the only one left unbroken from my first marriage. I take it to the porch and sit. And like her, I stare into the night. I pull the scent of pine into my nostrils. Sip. And I remember.

Rattling the Chains

There is a saying that southerners do not hide the eccentric or mentally ill when visitors arrive. They bring them down to the parlor and show them off.

My mother's attitude was even more nonchalant. She did not acknowledge mental issues unless they, say, reached murderous proportions. I suppose. I say that because at one point my sister and I had a daycare provider who periodically would need to leave to spend time at the state's mental institution.

I can't imagine that kind of thing happening in today's overprotective, litigious society. And the truth is, not only did my sister and I emerge unscathed. Our lives were richer for the experience.

D. was from "up North." Her family built a house not far from us in that stretch of former cotton fields that converted into a close-knit neighborhood during the nation's mid-century space race. They were really from Indiana, but native children didn't understand fine geographical distinctions.

My sister and I were thrilled to hear that the new people had girls our age. We waited for the workmen to leave and slipped into the shell of a home and poked around. I remember sweeping up debris, tidying bedroom spaces, imagining our new friends. Once a station wagon pulled into the unpoured driveway and I had to jump out of the stepless back of the home and hide in the sagebrush.

The new family pretended they hadn't seen a little girl running from the house. They talked about how pin neat it was inside, how the construction workers were the cleanest they'd ever encountered, all the sweeping up they'd being doing after themselves every day. And what do you know, they'd even left a little bouquet of goldenrod in a Coke bottle. All said in loud voices addressed to the golden sage in the back of the house where I hid, red-faced.

After the family moved in, my mother went back to work and my mother hired D. to watch my sister and me after school and during the summer. My sister and I, with D's four girls, became the gang of six. They taught us how to skate on the pond behind their house on the few winter days the water was frozen enough to hold our weight. We showed them blackberries and plums in the wild, just waiting to be gathered in big vats.

We played Batman and Robin, Flash Gordon, Witch games. Swam in small plastic pools and endlessly waited for turns on the Slip and Slide. My sister and I were thrilled to get to eat things my mother never served, like hot dogs and canned soup, washed down with green Kool Aid. Then, D. would send us to the country store to buy snacks. She had fallen in love with eating Goo Goo Clusters in between chain-smoking while watching her soap operas, cooled by a round squat fan I'd never seen before, called a hassock.

By summer's end, all of us, the six girls, were nut brown.

D. was always a yell-y fidgety type from the get-go, although harmless, she was the background noise. But she started gathering us in a circle to recite the previous night or weekend's drama. Bad things had started to happen. Her husband was working nights. And now "someone" was showing up outside the bedroom window. In the darkest part of the night.

She thought neighborhood boys were responsible at first, looking for mischief. She would yell, shine flashlights, go outside and demand they show themselves. But they never did. Because eventually she realized something much more sinister was actually appearing at night.

We sat cross-legged, eyes huge, mouths round. Waiting. Six girls, most of us not yet in puberty.

The thing, whatever, whoever it was, had started rattling huge chains outside the window, she said, the type used on boats. All night long. Hunched low into her soft chair, chain-smoking, she had stopped eating except for the Goo Goos. Her eyes were dark, darting. She couldn't stop talking about this horrible menace that parked itself outside her bedroom every single night and rattled chains through the dark hours.

Before long, she had gone. She was several hours away in the state's huge mental institution, for a bit of a rest, we were told.

When she came back, she was cheerful, happy, and her oldest daughter had taken over the household responsibilities. The girls were very careful of their mother, quick to defend against any perceived criticism or slight.

I was young, ignorant, insufferably curious. I actually asked her whether it was true that patients at the institution howled at the moon as another kid had told me while she was gone.

Her children recoiled in horror. But D. laughed. She was happy to clear up this misconception. Once again, we gathered around her in a circle and she talked about her days at the hospital. The routines, the doctors, the therapy, the other patients. The rest she got. That's all she needed. She was tired and just needed some rest.

And that was that.

Soon after, I started writing short stories whenever I had school assignments I didn't particularly want to do. Building forts with popsicle sticks was a particularly onerous task to me. So I would conjure a wagonload of pioneers heading West during a particular period and write about it instead, which always secured an "A" for me.

Other times, I would write about gothic themes. Something dire was usually waiting for the unlucky narrators, a thing so horrible that it could not be named. Although I'm told he no longer tortures the elderly D., this thing, this ghostly figure carries huge chains he rattles outside bedroom windows. In one form or another, it is D's "unspeakable horror."

The figure's ability to terrify is largely sheathed now. But he is lodged in an imagination that comes alive when I most need it -- vibrant, powerful, in technicolor. The colors of a young life that in some important ways was lived fully, without fear, and without censure.

A Love Letter to Grandfathers

"I never met my grandfather
I wish I had
Sometimes I think he is watching me."

My son wrote that poem at age 6. His teacher, a veteran instructor who was never one to gush, had tears in her eyes when she handed it to me. He was writing about my father that day, but it could have been about his other grandfather too.

I understood the sentiment. The poem was an emblem of one of the bonds my husband, son and I share. We never met our grandfathers. They all had passed on when we were born.

In fact, my husband touched me more than I could express when we heard some people giving lofty speeches about the historic figures in the past they would like to sit down with given the opportunity. Lincoln, Jefferson, Lee and Grant, Freud, philosophers and poets.

My husband said he wouldn't have to think about that question. He would ask for a few minutes with one grandfather. He wouldn't be picky, someone else could choose which one.

So with Father's Day advertisements plastered all over the airwaves and elsewhere, we feel blessed to have known our fathers, certainly. And our mothers are powering along in the 90s category.

But we also think about those grandfathers we didn't get to know, wonder about the exact shade of the blue in their eyes, who had the curly hair I was born with, and a laugh that takes hold of the body unexpected, shaking us to the core, like mine does and my son's. What were their voices like? Did one of my husband's grandfathers have that deep voice? Did my son's grandfather have the off-the-wall sense of humor I've never found in anyone but my husband?

And the truth is, when you complain about the old geezers and maybe neglect them a little, we envy you. We are the ones who laugh at their corny old jokes in the grocery store lines and don't mind when they take too long to conduct their transactions.

If you feel they are too much, maybe, if you have something else you would rather do on this Father's Day, then send them to us. We'll be waiting, with a nice cake, a glass of cheer, open hearts, and all the time in the world, to just listen.

A Moveable Tea

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past." Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby

If you see me carrying my "moveable tea," be aware I'm not alone. You probably won't see them, but I will be accompanied by two ghostly figures from my past, a genteel couple from the Deep South -- Ellis and Vannie.

They are the embodiment of the fact that even our smallest actions are informed by the past.

I was reminded of this the other night when I brought tea to a parent meeting. The mother of my son's friend said she was impressed, that I had thought of every little detail related to serving tea, hot and cold. And she was right.

I brewed organic darjeeling tea leaves with spring water and placed it in carafes, rinsed out with hot water, to seal in the heat. Even though I like my tea plain (why gild the lily?) I sliced lemon, poured milk into a small container, fine sugar into another. I resisted the urge to make sugar syrup, I would save this particular piece de resistance for another time. Spoons.

But the iced tea I made with tea bags, Lipton, it just tastes better cold. Spring water, again, heated slowly in the sun in a glass jar for a smooth taste. Ice. Tongs. Glass ice bucket. All carefully placed in appropriate insulated bags for the trip. That night I did not include finger sandwiches, tea bread and sweets because that wasn't my assignment. But all go into the "moveable tea" when appropriate.

"You really know how to do this," said the mother.

Yes, I do.

Years ago, when I arrived in Washington, D.C. from Alabama, I was quite unexpectedly bereft. I had spent years plotting my escape to the bright lights, big city. And I'd gotten my wish. But I missed my childhood friends -- especially the best and most honest person I know, J., who I had known since we were 5. Who happily played loving Mary to my feisty Laura (Little House on the Prairie) for untold hours out by the woods that cradled both our homes.

And why had I moved so far from my college familiar K., who could turn a dry cleaners trip into a high adventure. Why did I think I could leave behind our rowdy mountain compound horseback rides, followed by the rejuvenating communion of a silent row on the pond. The precious company of my little sister and her husband, who I had known since he was a bashful little boy. So many things I had casually tossed aside.

And then I found Ellis and Vannie. Or they found me.

Straight out of a storybook, this warm, beautiful couple from Montgomery, AL, famous for their southern hospitality, lived near me in a big beautiful corner rowhouse on Capitol Hill. Their yard burst with flowers and greenery tended by Ellis, a political operative who became a successful self-taught artist in his later years. They entertained regularly. Everyone was invited. They especially loved other southerners.

They told stories about their rich past. They had a clothing shop in Montgomery where Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald came everyday while recovering from a nervous breakdown in her hometown. Each day, she came in and bought just one snow-white linen handkerchief. Nothing more. Vannie would get a rare sad look on her face, "You know, Scott just ruined that girl."

And Hank Williams. Ellis had known the country music legend as a poor boy, shining shoes for pennies on the street. Then as a famous singer, he had to come into Ellis' shop one day and cut off his spendy wife's accounts. Embarrassed, he paid off what she owed and then said, "We're not married anymore. That's it."

I had no idea how many things I would learn from this couple. I'm still learning from them. Ellis was a chameleon. He had several careers due to a voracious appetite for life. He was quiet because he loved to listen to others talk. But he had a wonderful quality that I couldn't define until Vannie took me aside one day and explained it, laughing as always, her long straight blonde hair swinging around her shoulders.

"Ellis has a twinkle, you know," she said in her inimitable deep, slow drawl. A twinkle is a look in a person's eye that signals a playful personality, someone who is so curious about life and people that he or she finds it impossible to judge annoying personality quirks that can be so off-putting for many. You can see it right away. The physical aspect is a sparkle, a little glow, a glimmer, if you will.

Under their tutelage, I learned to look for and find the twinkle, which comes in people of all sizes, shapes, ages and colors. I never know when one will appear. When it does, it makes my day.

Over the years, Ellis and Vannie got old. The entertaining stopped. They couldn't go out. So I came up with the idea of the moveable tea. Via trial and error, I baked this and that and stored things and carried them over and kept at it until I managed to make it work.

They were honored. They were tired and sick. But for the short time that they were able to attend the moveable tea invented in their honor, the twinkle was back. And it extended to everyone in the room. This happened several times before before they passed away, a mere weeks apart.

So when the calls go out for volunteers to do this and that, I raise my hand and suggest various versions of the moveable tea. With practiced hands, I pull it together, wheel it in and start setting up.

And as that happens, a grand, beautiful blonde is holding up a long elegant hand with an emerald ring on one finger, the one reflecting the color of her eyes. She is laughing and pointing out the young woman who looks just like Zelda, before Scott "ruined" her. And Ellis is staring at a vase of flowers tumbling from a vase, possibly to paint later. And I see the vase is beside a quiet man surveying the room, eyes catching the light with a certain familiar sparkle.

And for no reason that anyone present can see, I am laughing too, with my old friends in a great room filled to the brim with paintings, flowers and old school southern charm. They are gone, that grand couple, but I carry them with me still.

An Exotic Trip

One day, the older brother I worshipped suggested I go outside and dig a hole to China. So I gave it my best shot.

I believed him. I always believed him. So I got a shovel, dragged it to the lower lot next to our house and started to dig. I wanted it to be true. To go somewhere, especially an exotic place, one with cute outfits if my paperdolls from around the world were accurate representations. To be anywhere but that farming village in the deep South where I grew up.

My brother came out of the house, which had only recently stood in the middle of cotton fields. He watched me dig. He was straight-faced, confirming again that yes, I could dig my way to China if I continued to spade shovels of dirt long enough. It kept me out of his hair, gave him a reprieve from my incessant tattling, which I had started in retaliation because he had ditched me for friends of his own age and gender.

I remember being thrilled, working feverishly, yelling to anyone who happened by on the dirt and gravel road out front, "Hey, I'm digging my way to China! My brother told me all about it!"

Some of his friends eventually rolled up on bicycles, languidly twirling long green stems of grass from their teeth and lips, practicing for the cigarettes they would soon be trying out if not already. They smirked while giving me tips, then chipped in with digging help.

Eventually, my father came out, drawn by the growing commotion on his land. I remember informing him of my mission, that M. had divulged the secret to me. The hole was fairly deep at that point, only my shoulders and head were above ground. I can see him starting to laugh, his hands resting on his squared hips, legs wide, the confident stance of a man who had been an athlete and a soldier.

But he didn't dash the dream, squelch the effort, the fire in my eyes, arms and belly.

Instead, he enjoyed himself. He stood and chatted as the audience slowly grew for this peculiar mission -- a little girl of no more than nine, propelled by an older brother's mischief.

He supervised the site for safety, guarding against impromptu cave-ins and my younger sister's attempts to charge the hole. As the soft night stole over us, fireflies glowed against the ever darkening woods nearby. And still I kept on with my trance-like digging. My father's deep voice boomed, giving meandering lectures on the history of China and its leaders, communism, his dislike of all Chinese food (not that he'd ever tasted any).

Eventually, I gave up for the night, exhausted, covered head to toe in north Alabama's tenacious red clay, adding to my impossible laundry load carried by my mother, who understood my impulses. After all, she was still a tomboy too. And I went back to the hole the next day.

I don't remember how long I kept it up. But the digging went on for some time, definitely over a week. And then the rain started. It rained, poured, storms pounded the earth. I remember standing at the kitchen window, in despair, watching my China route fill with water. I couldn't see, but I knew. With that kind of biblical deluge, everything was filling up.

My brother, the heartless one who had started it all, joked that I would need to save my allowance for a submarine to make it to China.

The rain finally ended. I trudged through the mud to the hole. My father had built a wooden cover for it by then, to save animals and small children from falling in.

I pulled off the hatch. The hole was filled with muddy brown water. Literally full.

I was distraught.

The next thing I knew, a fake Indian war cry tore through the air, along with the metallic shriek of bicycle brakes. Jackie Ray! The neighborhood hoodlum boy, a bit younger than me, but a hurricane force of a boy. He had been desperate to get involved with the dig and I had absolutely refused. The dig was far too serious for the likes of Jackie Ray. He would have ruined the whole thing.

As I stood, frozen, Jackie Ray threw down his bike, tore off his shirt and jumped feet first with a huge splash and another war whoop into the hole to China. Which at that point was a big mud hole. Full of muddy brown water.

Filled with righteous fury, I yelled, demanded, "YOU GET YOURSELF OUT OF THAT HOLE RIGHT NOW JACKIE RAY!" He was completely oblivious. Jackie Ray, who was pretty much an abandoned little boy living with reluctant elderly relatives down in the woods, was having the time of his life. I stormed off. And met my father coming toward the hole to China. With a camera.

He was laughing so hard he could barely take the picture. But he managed. And that is what remains today of the hole to China, decades later. A faded photograph of a beaming stocky boy with a crewcut, in a mudhole. Smiling ear to ear. Laughing, full of joy.

As was the man behind the camera taking the picture.

Soon, I forgot about the whole thing. Eventually my father pushed the pile of dirt back in and we used it for a while as a barbecue pitt. But we abandoned that too. The China staging ground was later taken over by my father's excellent strawberry patch.

In time, I grew up, left home and traveled plenty. But my lifelong secret is this: I'm not sure, frankly, that my touring excitement ever quite matched the night I set out on my China dig.

All that's left of my great adventure is the picture of Jackie Ray swimming around in the hole. My mother won't let me have it, the photograph is too precious to her, to me, to all of us.

It was a silly thing, of course. But we were all there that night, fully present, vibrantly alive, engaged and happy. For a short time, we had the best of all worlds -- swept up in a child's excitement about traveling to an unknown, exotic land, while safely, thrillingly nestled in the unmatched glory of a southern summer night.