Hard as it is to admit, I've become something of a shut-in. Yesterday, once again, the wind blew so horribly that I cared not a fig to go out in it. This winter--and when will it be over, please?--we've had a half-dozen snowstorms (nothing near blizzard-level, however), but what's most wearing finally is the interminable wind, takes your face off, I used to say.
We're in process of selling our house out in the country this week, and it hurts a little because we're solidly in senior housing right now, a pretty little condo that's less than half the size of the home we left behind. Honestly, out there, with a corner to the northwest, we were subject to prairie winds far more than we are here, in a covey of condos. Still, I can't help but believe we've suffered more wind here than there.
So this shut-in has more time on his hands, time to do things. . .like read. I spent my Holy Saturday reading, and I enjoyed what I read--I really did. I don't know that I'd call Ruth Suckow my all-time favorite-st writer, but I've grown a real affinity for her work, even though its oh-so provincial in subject matter--rural Iowa, early 20th century, almost exclusively farm folk of German stock doing what they did, being who they were.
Suckow, a preacher's kid who grew up here in northwest Iowa, is a sworn realist. She'll never make your favorite writer list if your a devotee of Harry Potter. In a Suckow story, you have to expect an unflinching look at setting and character. Plot isn't all that exacting. Spending an afternoon with Suckow means not wandering far at all from these windswept plains, just no cell phones.
After two long stories, I moved on, but the stories stuck with me. One of them, "Renters," featured a Steinbeck-like family who simply couldn't shake being "renters," the economic place thereby implied, as well as the stigma--"they're just renters," as if they'll never be anything but.
A friend from Parkersburg, Iowa, once did some research about my ancestral family who lived there sometime around the turn of the 20th century. He found my great-grandfather's name on a patch of scrubby river bottom land and told me, rather sweetly, that that patch of land did more than suggest he wasn't wealthy.
In Suckow's story, the couple hits hard times harder and longer than most families do; they're not in the least lucky--in fact, good times so regularly escape them than they can't help wonder whether there are good times at all. But they're sympathetic. The husband is a hard worker who does his landlord's right. They're fine people really, but they just find it impossible to keep their heads above water.
It's sad. "Renters" is a sad story. It's well-done, but it's just plain sad.
And then there's "Uprooted," a story made more painful by reciting the lot in life when accrues to people our age. Adult children of an old couple meet at their parents' farm to talk about what's to be done with their parents, who are little more than potted plants. For very understandable reasons, none of the children (and their spouses) really want their ever-more elderly parents to live with them. In point of fact, those elderly parents don't want to close down the old ramshackle house and move in with their childrens' families either.
Suckow's characters inhabit a community and time in which there are no old folks' homes, which means there are no good options. Plus, Ma and Pa absolutely don't want to move either. My grandfather Schaap was the pastor of the church I grew up in before I was around. My only memories of him are as a sourpuss I wanted to stay in his room and out of my life. Grim stuff.
The story ends with the rich son heading back to his home in Omaha, anxious to shake off all the residue of a visit to Ma and Pa. He's looking forward to sitting in his own chair. Thus do we all make nests of our domiciles; thus, would we all rather not be "Uprooted."
I enjoyed reading both stories, really did, more than I enjoyed the stories--if that makes sense. But I couldn't help wonder why Ruth Suckow chose the kind of determinism she did--why are both stories so sad. She could have turned the lives of the renters around and given them blessed landlords. She could have changed the attitudes of one of Ma and Pa's kids, made them more sympathetic to their elderly parents' cares and needs.
But she didn't. If I'd written the story, I don't know that I would have either. Life is like that, right?
Two stories, well-written, close to the bone, but both of them given gray and cloudy skies. No wind really, but no sun either. Both negative.
So we wait--like Holy Saturday. We wait, the meditation we read last night at supper maintained. So, on Holy Saturday, we wait.
The morning has come. Just now--felt like the first time--I woke up to birds singing. No wind either.
It's Easter morning.
The eternal is once again very real.
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