Idyll Banter

by Chris Bohjalian

  CLOUDS CAN’T HIDE THE SUN

  ON A SPIRITUALLY BRIGHT

  EASTER MORNING

  MOUNT ABRAHAM HAS no Himalayan aspirations, no delusions that it is part of a particularly grand massif. Just above four thousand feet, it is among the taller mountains in Vermont, but it is still less than one-seventh the height of Everest.

  Nevertheless, it towers above the village of Lincoln, its summit just east of the town, and offers a remarkably different visage when scrutinized from different angles.

  Peter and Sue Brown, for example, who live to the southwest in a farmhouse Robert Frost once tried to buy, see what has always looked to me like a gargantuan toppled pear. John Nelson and Christine Fraioli, who live due west of the mountain, see instead a more gently sloping incline: A colossal bunny hill for a giant just learning to ski.

  It is not uncommon for there to be a layer of clouds just below the summit but nothing but clear sky above 3,500 feet. When this happens, the peak can look a bit like a boulder at the seashore at low tide: The clouds become sea foam and the mountaintop—white in the winter, brown in the spring, a deep green in the long days of summer—grows reminiscent of a stone in the breakers.

  When this occurs in the very early morning, before the sun has come fully over the top, the clouds become an almost nuclear shade of orangy red.

  One of the best views of the mountain is from Gove Hill, a gentle knoll south of the center of the village that is bordered by woods to the west. The hill is just steep enough that in the winter children can race down it on their snowboards and sleds.

  This morning, Easter, a good number of us from churches in Lincoln and Bristol will gather on that hill and watch the mountain to the east. We will arrive there before 6:00 A.M., and we will hope that today will be one of those sunrises in which we do indeed see the great star slowly emerge over Abraham. We do this every year, a ritual we share with congregations all over the world.

  One of the great idiosyncracies of the sunrise service on Gove Hill, however, is that we never know what to expect in terms of the weather. This is Vermont, after all, and Easter falls in that time of the year when the climate can only be called capricious. In recent years, the small congregation has gathered in the midst of howling snowstorms, and on balmy spring days when the daffodils and crocuses have already pushed through the boggy ground—kaleidoscopically beautiful signs of rebirth.

  There have been many Easters when the mountain has been completely obscured by fog and clouds, and the only evidence we’ve had that the sun is up is that the asphalt-gray sky has grown marginally lighter.

  At the same time, there have been Easters when the clouds have been a pure white woolpack just below the summit, with the sky above them a cerulean blue. Those mornings we have sung a hymn, and the sun has appeared miraculously over the mountain—seemingly at the same height as our little perch on Gove Hill. Those moments are a particular blessing.

  But gather we do, regardless of whether we need to tromp up the hill in our mud boots and parkas or in light sweaters and sneakers. Sometimes there are fifty of us, sometimes there are a hundred. But the size of the congregation is less relevant, it seems, than the fact we are a part of a fellowship. We have been taught, after all, that it takes only a few of us to gather for there to be a church.

  Likewise, the unpredictability of the vista before us and the fact the sun and the mountain may be obscured are gentle reminders of just how little we know and how much we must take on faith. The sun will rise, we believe, regardless of whether we see it.

  Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.

  FAITH GIVES A CHILD SERENITY

  MY WIFE, my three-year-old daughter, and I are sitting around the kitchen counter where we have breakfast and lunch most weekends. It’s just after noon on a Sunday.

  With the pensiveness that is peculiar to small children—my daughter’s lips are drawn tight and her chin is tilted down toward her chest, but her eyes are looking up without a trace of a pout—she asks almost abruptly, “God’s really strong, right?”

  “Certainly,” I answer, and then quickly translate my response into one of the colloquialisms she hears around the house all the time: “Sure is.”

  And although I’m not surprised that God is on her mind—she has, after all, just returned from Sunday school—I inquire as casually as I can, “So, why do you ask?”

  “Welllll,” she says, drawing the word out the way she does whenever she’s figuring something out. “Your mommy died. And mommy’s daddy died. And God had to carry them both up to heaven.”

  I nod, desperately in love with both her logic and her faith. (Meanwhile, the literalist inside me I’ve never liked much is thinking, “Well, they died four years apart, Grace, so God didn’t have to carry them up to heaven at exactly the same time. There were probably two trips.” Fortunately, I keep my mouth shut.)

  “Yeah, I thought so,” she murmurs, and then contentedly takes another bite of her cheese sandwich, moving on blithely to the next question in her head: whether her mother and I will allow her to inebriate the cat with catnip that afternoon.

  I pray that my daughter never loses her faith. I pray that children of every faith retain their assurance that there’s more in this world than they can see and comprehend, and that their confidence always remains a part of who they are.

  Some days, of course, that prayer seems more reasonable than others. I’ve certainly sat through funerals in which my own faith was challenged: the funerals of friends who in my mind died way too young. Sometimes I marvel that faith even survives in a world that in recent history has offered us ethnic cleansing in what was once Yugoslavia, mass slaughter in Rwanda, and people willing to blow up whole buildings in Oklahoma, Argentina, and Dhahran.

  I have an older friend who attended divinity school with every intention of becoming a clergyman. But he found that in his case, the more he studied, the more his faith diminished. Eventually he dropped out and went on to a successful career in market research. In his life’s work, the thorny issue of blind faith was made irrelevant by focusing instead on those questions and problems that lent themselves to statistical analysis and concrete projections.

  And there’s no doubt in my mind that faith is capricious. My mother-in-law is an unwavering atheist, while her brother was for decades an Episcopal minister who works now for the Episcopal diocese in Chicago.

  But faith is also accessible. It’s a gift given to the soul the moment we begin to sense the mysteries that surround us: an absolute intangible such as love. Those small and large acts of seemingly unreasonable selflessness that pepper our days and our nights. The astonishing goodness and beneficence that bob like buoys in the maelstrom that is this planet so much of the time.

  There’s something miraculous in the very premise of spring.

  And faith is a boon that seems always there for the taking. Sometimes it demands a little work: a participation in the rituals the soul is craving. Acquiescing to the likelihood that we don’t know quite as much as we thought. A willingness to bow before the notion that for once in our lives we have to swallow our pride and ask for something we need.

  But the gift has always struck me as enormous: a whole life lived with the peace of mind of a three-year-old.

  MARRIAGE WEDS LOVE TO LAUGHTER

  I ALWAYS KNEW the pastor of our church had a pretty good arm from center field, but I’d never realized his biceps were so large until I saw them in a sleeveless white wedding gown.

  Likewise, I’d never imagined that construction manager Mike Stone could make a Barney-purple cocktail dress and high heels work so well with his mustache and goatee, or that Wendy Truax and Helen Turner could don men’s suits and produce a fashion statement that was certainly bold . . . but at least not completely insane.

  And I’d certainly never realized accordion music needn’t always be a crime: There is only magic in the way Libby Atkins plays her half-century-old Sereni, a joy in her “Blue Barrel Polka.”

  Frank
ly, there may be no better way to savor those last warm Saturday afternoons in Vermont than to attend an outdoor wedding re-enactment, with the sun still high and hot at midday, the gathering at once ebullient and restrained, and the large bridal party completely in drag.

  Clearly, there are thousands of reasons why I cherish Vermont (and even more when I think specifically of Lincoln), but Mike’s and Wendy’s willingness to wear purple silk and gray flannel respectively to help four friends celebrate two wedding anniversaries must be among them.

  Twenty-five years ago, the twin Goodyear girls of Lincoln, Lorraine and Lenore, were married in one ceremony to Bob Patterson and Russ Gates. Their double marriage was recently re-enacted in Lincoln at a surprise silver anniversary party for the two couples, and well over 150 friends and family members descended upon the center of town to toast the Pattersons and the Gateses and witness the incredible simulation.

  The identical twin brides were played by identical twins David and Paul Wood, and the grooms were played by the Pattersons’ and the Gateses’ teenage daughters, Krista and Alison.

  Sociologists or psychologists or cultural historians could probably read into that mock wedding—and the rural tradition of which it’s a part—whatever they wanted. There’s a lot there, the ritual is layered with meanings: the roles of women and men, the power of costume and dress, the simple fact that the days get too short too fast in this part of the globe.

  Arguably, the greatest fashion no-no that occurred at the wedding—the most glaring violation of gender dress norms—probably hung from the shoulders of my friend Wendy Truax: You wouldn’t see me wear a gray flannel suit when the temperature’s still flirting with ninety degrees. You wouldn’t see most people (guys or gals) do it.

  Yet Wendy did, and she did it for, well, love. Maybe laughs and love. Maybe laughs, love, and the chance to embarrass Lorraine and Lenore. But love was definitely in the equation.

  That’s what I saw most in that mock ceremony in Lincoln. I saw the deep-rooted affection a great many people have for the Pattersons and the Gateses, and their profound awareness of the myriad ways the four lovers have brought joy to the lives that surround them. I’ve probably attended a half-dozen weddings in my life in which we were reminded of the apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians—love is patient and kind and endures all things—but it was only in that faux ceremony that I saw Sarah’s testimony in Genesis that love is also about laughter.

  Today is my twelfth anniversary with my own inamorata: my enchantress, my bride, my wife. If, in thirteen years, we are surprised by a bridal party in drag (my teen daughter as me in a tux, my pastor in white as my wife), I will consider it evidence of a life lived well, in a small world that understands the meaning of ritual, celebration . . . and a guy in chiffon.

  THANK YOU, FRIEND, FOR GUIDING ME DEEPER INTO MY FAITH

  “I AM A Christian because of Owen Meany,” the fictional John Wheelwright observes in the first sentence of John Irving’s wondrous and complex novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. The book is a decade old now, but that sentence comes back to me often, especially when I contemplate the oddly comforting ruination of reason that is my faith.

  Most of the time I am not altogether sure why I am a Christian. I’m a confirmed Episcopalian, but much of my study involved listening to Jesus Christ Superstar in my older brother’s bedroom while rifling through his drawers to see what he was hiding beneath his socks.

  Growing up, I went to church on Easter and Christmas, but I have no memories of Sunday school. It wasn’t that my parents were particularly remiss. In fact, they weren’t remiss at all when it came to most things, and I had a glorious childhood. But this was suburban New York in the 1960s and ’70s—a small world of impressively dysfunctional Cheever-esque excess—and my friends and I didn’t know it was possible to be an adult on a Sunday morning who was simultaneously awake and not hungover.

  Even then, there was something that was drawing me beyond Star Trek spirituality. I read often about the Crucifixion, and at age eleven, I could have volunteered the information to anyone who was interested that a Roman nail was about as thick as a Magic Marker, and why the Mediterranean heat made crucifixion an especially gruesome way to die.

  Nevertheless, I managed to keep organized religion at a safe distance as a young adult—so distant, in fact, that people who I knew long ago are astonished when we meet now and they discover my faith.

  There was one time last fall when I was at a bookstore in Minneapolis and a woman I hadn’t seen since 1982 approached me. I showed her the cover of my new novel and pointed out to her the church.

  “I’m a deacon there,” I said.

  Her mouth hung open for what seemed like an hour. I could have counted the fillings in her lower teeth. “You?” she said finally, too astonished to croak out more than a syllable.

  Of course, the person she’d known in college was considerably different from the person I am now. Not better or worse. But twenty years ago when someone would approach me with his belief in a God who was knowing and loving and kind, I would usually nod and then ask him to explain Auschwitz to me. Or Bangladesh. Or childhood diseases that take people when they’re young.

  I still wonder sometimes.

  But it no longer diminishes my faith—which is a real shocker for some of my friends. It’s as if it is impossible to reconcile rigorous intellectualism with spirituality.

  Yet the world is filled with devout Christians and Jews and Muslims who are dramatically more educated than I am, and considerably smarter. I would never question the rightness of anyone’s faith—or, equally as important, the meaningfulness of anyone’s doubt. We believe what we believe.

  Which brings me back to why I am a Christian today. There was no sudden infusion of light, there were no voices inviting me in. There was no near-death experience; there was no collapse into drinking and drugs. My wife and I did buy a house next to a church—which certainly made getting to the sanctuary once a week easier than if we’d actually had to get in a car and drive—but even that isn’t why I’m a Christian.

  This week, the pastor of that church next to our house, David Wood, celebrates his twentieth year in the pulpit. Two decades at the United Church of Lincoln. We are the only parish he has ever had, and, speaking selfishly, the only one I hope he ever has.

  David was among the first people I met in Lincoln, and a fine introduction to the community. But he was also the perfect soul to guide me to that cliff from which one must shed disbelief and shirk gravity. He evidences more patience in a day than I will show in a lifetime, and he is as gentle with people as the best mothers and fathers are with their children. He is knowledgeable, comfortable with doubt, and a great listener—which is no small accomplishment since, as he knows, without his hearing aids he is as deaf as a post.

  And so perhaps when I think of why I am what I am, when I deconstruct the different components that comprise the intangibles of my spirit, I can echo John Wheelwright: I am a Christian, at least in part, because of David Wood.

  Happy anniversary, friend.

  THE CEMETERY

  OF MEMORY AND HOPE

  THEY COME WITH dandelions, since dandelions are plentiful in the last week of May and may be picked with impunity. They arrive around 9:30 in the morning, and as they walk underneath the wrought-iron gate that is three and four times their height, they abruptly stop hopping or skipping or trying to step on the heels of the children in front of them.

  Suddenly, they are attempting to behave like grown-ups. They disperse into small groups, but they walk slowly among the tombstones and markers, pausing when they see a name that they know, squatting when they discover a relative. The boys stand with their hands clasped before them, replicating the ways they’ve seen their fathers and grandfathers stand, while the girls sometimes hold hands.

  Every year on the first school day after Memorial Day, the children of the elementary school in Lincoln, Vermont, walk about a mile from the red cedar building that houses the s
chool to the village cemetery. The school is east of the center of town, and the cemetery is to the west.

  The result is a rambling parade through the village: 106 students, kindergartners through sixth-graders, fourteen teachers and administrators, and perhaps a dozen members of the support staff. They walk across the narrow bridge spanning the New Haven River and then past the line of Gothic Revival homes built a century and a half ago. They pass the gray clapboard general store and the town hall with its imposing brick walls and slate roof. Then they wander around the hill upon which sits a church built in 1863, and down the short street that once housed the village’s modest creamery. They walk right past my house. And, all along the way, they stop, bend down, and pluck the dandelions they will use to decorate the graves, many of which will have small American flags.

  For some of the children, there is a special satisfaction when they find a rusted star on a pole in the ground. Underneath the corrosion on that star are the letters G.A.R., signifying the Grand Army of the Republic. Finding a G.A.R. star is a bit like finding Waldo. It means that someone has found the grave site of a Civil War veteran.

  Finding a G.A.R. veteran is not the sole reason they come—that war, after all, is ancient history to them, as unreal as the struggles of Odysseus, Menelaus, and Agamemnon. But it does help explain why Mom and Dad didn’t go to work on Monday, and why they themselves haven’t gone to school for three days.

  Their search does, ironically, bring history to life. After all, Memorial Day, now a three-day festival of barbecues, beach picnics, and golf, has its origins in the carnage of Chickamauga, Antietam, and Petersburg. The idea of taking the holiday at face value and pausing to memorialize or remember the fallen war dead is considered by some to be unstylish at best, militaristic at worst.

  Certainly, I, at first, had mixed emotions. I’m a thirty-something kid from the suburbs of New York City who never even considered enlisting when I registered for the draft twenty years ago. The notion that Memorial Day had more meaning than a long weekend was beyond me. But then I moved to Vermont a decade ago, and in Lincoln I learned that Memorial Day is neither anachronistic nor sentimental.