This Land

There is always music for those who have the ears to hear

The land was our legacy. My grandfather had saved and saved until he could buy it. He had worked his fingers to the bone so that the Pellyn family would have a legacy, something it could pass on from father to son, generation after generation, as long as our line continued, and then some more. Today, as I stood on the hill overlooking our two-storey house, the land belonged to my father. In some unconceivable future the land would belong to me. That was the way it was. That was how it had been with my father. Some things did not change. Some things remain constant. But then some do change.

Once my grandfather had stood on this hill, and looked with delight over all the land that was to be his. My father had played on this hill, and thought about the land that was to be his. Today, as I stood on the hill and looked out over the densely wooded land that was someday to be mine, I felt trapped. The sky was endless above me. Below me the land stretched out as far as I could see, but still I felt trapped, unable to move. My father loved the land almost as much as he loved his wife and children. The land was part of what made him who he was, almost as much as being a husband and father made him who he was. He was happiest when he was working his land, immersed in the beauty and splendor of it. He enjoyed working the long hours, clearing the trees where they needed to be cleared and in their place planting new vegetation, food to feed a family of six, and selling the excess wood and vegetables. But I did not love it. While I worked with my father I was longing for something different. While I worked in the untamed beauty around me I longed for the tamed world. I longed for the big cities with their reaching buildings, their museums, their libraries, their music.

My father once said to me, “Son, if you stand still and listen long enough with the right ears, you will hear that there is music in the world, no matter where you are. You just have to have the ears to hear it.” My father loved music almost as much as I did. But I could not hear the music of the land. I could not hear the music my father heard and delighted in. For him that was enough, but I needed more.

I heard my sister Nora call. “Hugh! Hugh, it’s time for dinner!” I pretended I didn’t hear for a few minutes and didn’t answer. I wanted a few more minutes to be alone. I knew what was going to happen when I walked down the hill and into the house. I delayed it as long as possible.

“Hugh!” My sister’s voice was closer. I waited until she walked up the hill to me. “Hugh,” she said, “I’ve been calling you. It’s time for dinner.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m coming.”

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Nora came to stand beside me and looked over the land. When I didn’t answer she looked at me closely. Nora was always the favorite of my three sisters. I think she understood me more than the rest of my family. But not even to her had I told my secret desire. Even Nora wouldn’t understand.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about a lot of things.”

“Away by yourself, it seems,” Nora said. “Dad’s furious.”

“I know.” I sighed. “Come on, Nora, we’d better go down, or he’ll be even more furious.” We raced down the hill and into the back door of the house. My father was not a hard man, but he placed great importance on duty. It was our duty to work, and it was our duty to be on time.

The rest of my family was already sitting around the table. We slipped into our places as Dad gave me a stern glance and began to say grace. I folded my hands and tried to concentrate on the words of the prayer.

“Amen,” we all chorused. We drew in our chairs, and Mother began to serve the food. My father did not say anything as she passed the plates around. Clare began talking about something one of her friends had told her. I did not listen. I looked down at my plate as I shoveled roast into my mouth.

Clare could talk forever if the occasion arose. But finally her story was finished. I knew Dad would not say anything even then. When any of us was in trouble, Dad never spoke of it at the dinner table. When he wanted to bring it up, he would bring it up after dinner, in his library. Dad liked dinner to be pleasant. He and Mother and the girls talked all during dinner. I didn’t say much unless anyone addressed me.

We had chocolate cake for dessert. When Sophie had cleared the dishes away Dad stood up and looked down the table at me. “Hugh, come to the library with me, please,” he said.

I got up and followed him to the library. The library faced the west, and the sun was setting, casting a warm light in the room. It was the perfect time to sit in the window seat with a book, but I knew Dad hadn’t called me into the library to read a book.

Dad sat in one of the big chairs and looked up at me. “Where were you all afternoon?” he asked.

I looked at a book above his head. Galileo’s Discoveries and Opinions. “Down by the river,” I said to the book.

“Doing what?” was Dad’s next question.

“Nothing in particular. Thinking.”

In my peripheral vision I could see my father run his hands through his hair. “Why weren’t you helping me?”

I shrugged. “I wanted to think.”

Dad’s hand came down on the arm of the chair with a thump that made me start. His voice was angry as he said, “Hugh, I waited for a whole hour for you. Your sisters went looking for you. I needed help, and you were off by yourself thinking.”

“I thought you liked people to think,” I mumbled to Galileo.

“Not when there’s work to be done,” Dad said, still angry. I heard him take a deep breath, and then he went on more quietly. “Hugh, now that you’ve graduated from high school, I need your help even more. This land is going to be yours someday, but right now it belongs to all of us, and I expect you to help with the work. You need to learn about it, understand it, and know it.”

Something in me snapped then, and I began to yell. “I don’t want the land,” I stormed. “I don’t want it at all. I hate it. I don’t ever want to see it again, much less work it. I don’t care if it was grandpa’s dream. I don’t care if it’s our legacy. Our damn legacy can go to hell!”

I stopped then, not because I was finished, but because Dad had slapped me across the face. It startled me and made me shut up.

“Hugh, calm down,” Dad said, surprisingly calm himself, considering my outburst. “If you have something to say to me, say it in a respectful way.”

I took a deep breath. “Dad, I don’t want the land. I’ve never wanted it.”

Dad sat down again, crossed his legs, and looked at me. “Hugh, this land is our legacy. It is very important to me, and it should be to you as well. My father bought the land so that I, and you and your children, would have a chance at something.”

I let my breath out in a loud puff. “I know Grandpa bought this land to give you a chance, and you love it. But I don’t love it like you do. I don’t want your chance. You had your chance, so why can’t I have mine?”

“What do you want?”

“I – I want anything that’s not this. I want the big buildings, the cities, the music. There’s so much in the cities that I can’t have here. I want to live in the city, maybe study music, or art. I just want to see what the world is like.”

Dad nodded slowly. “I see,” he said, and his voice was very sad. “Funny, because I came here to get away from all of that.” He sighed. “Well, I suppose we don’t all love the same things, but I just can’t…” He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I’ll have to think about this,” he told me. “You may go now.”

I went out. I knew what the outcome would be. Dad would never let me have what I wanted, because to him the land was the most important thing, and he would see that I remained on it, working on it until the day I died. That was the way it was. I went into the living room and began to play on the big grand piano. It was my mother’s piano, and she had brought it with her when she married Dad. It was she who had taught me and my sisters to play. She loved music.

As I was playing, Mother came in and sat beside me on the piano bench. When I had finished the piece I was playing, she said, “I just talked with your father. He told me what you said to him.”

I looked down at the piano keys and played a few notes with my forefinger.  “Oh,” I said.

Mother touched the keys gently. “You know, Hugh, I was going to be a concert pianist,” she said.

I looked up at her. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you?”

“Well, I met your father, and he was, and still is, everything to me. Being a concert pianist suddenly wasn’t important. What was important was building a life with him, a life where we could raise our children in love and beauty.”

“But isn’t music important?”

Mother nodded. “It is, Hugh, it is. But music is one of those things that is important no matter where it happens, no matter who plays it. I realized I didn’t need to be a famous pianist to do what I loved. I love playing for my family and teaching people how to play just as much, if not better, than playing in front of great audiences. Music should be shared, but it should also be shared in love. I’ve never been happier playing for my family, and teaching you how to play.”

I picked out the first bar of Fur Elise. “But Mother, I don’t have that. I want to do something different. I don’t want to do what Dad does. I don’t know why he can’t see that. All he can think about is the land.”

“Hugh, honey,” Mother said, “that’s not true. He loves you, and he wants what’s best for you. I do, too.”

“And you think what’s best for me is to stay here and never see anything besides our land and the town. That’s not very much.”

“It’s more than you think it is. There’s something about this land that makes me feel more alive. It makes me love what I do even more.”

I shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t do that to me. All it makes me do is want to leave.”

Mother got up and dropped a kiss on my head. “Someday you’ll understand,” she told me. “Someday you’ll see what I see.”

I didn’t think so, but I didn’t say so. I began to play Fur Elise as Mother went out. The music calmed me, and I felt much better as I went to join the rest of my family as they gathered in the living room.

The next evening I was reading in the living room when Clare came skipping in and told me Dad wanted to talk to me in the library. I put down my book with a feeling of dread and went to the library. Dad was standing by the window when I came in. “Hugh,” he said, “sit down. I want to talk to you.”

We sat in the big antique arm chairs. Dad cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday,” he began. “I talked to your mother as well. Are you really serious about wanting to go away?”

I nodded. “I am.”

“I see. Well, we’ve come to a decision. I want you to do what you love, and I don’t want to hold you to something that will make you unhappy. But there is something to be said for doing your duty.”

I held my breath. What was Dad getting to?

Dad went on. “We’ve decided that you may go away and do what you want to do in the city.”

I jumped up, elated. “Thank you, Dad!” I cried.

My father held up his hand, and I sat down again. “There is one condition,” he said to me. “The condition is that you stay here and work on the land for six months. If by the end of the six months you still want to go, you may, with my blessing. But while you are here, you must put everything into your work. Do I have your word?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I promise.”

Dad held out his hand, and we shook solemnly. “Thank you, Dad,” I said again. As I went out of the library, I thought about my promise. “If you still want to go,” Dad had said to me. Of course I would still want to go! There was no doubt about that.

I kept my word to my father. As the days went by, I did what he told me. I worked beside him every day, doing what he loved, and I did not complain. I hated it, but I did not complain. The land meant nothing to me, and it was only long hours of work, for nothing, it seemed. I got no joy out of it. I would watch my father as he straightened up from his work, ran his hand across his forehead, looking out over his land with such joy in his eyes. There was peace in his eyes. He really was happy. It was as if he were listening to a beautiful symphony, or sitting beside my mother of an evening as she played the piano. No matter how hard I listened, I could not hear what he heard. I could not hear his symphony.

Sometimes when we worked, my father would tell me stories of when he was young, or when my grandfather was young. I had never known my grandfather; he died just after I was born. Grandpa had had many adventures in his youth. He had travelled the world until he came to this valley, and knew that was where he was going to settle down. He worked hard to buy the land, and in a few years he had saved up enough. Then he built the house, married Grandma, and proceeded to produce and raise a family of seven: one boy, my father, and six girls. Having one son and many daughters ran in the family. Many times I found myself wishing boys ran in the family. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about taking over the land. I often wished I could have known my grandfather. Perhaps then I could understand what he wanted for my father, and for me. But there was no way to ask him that. All I had to go on was what my father said, and at the moment we weren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye on certain matters.

One day as we were working, my father stopped to take a breath. He leaned on his shovel and pushed his hat back from his face. He looked all around him, and said, almost as if he were talking to himself and not to me, “I always feel so much closer to my father when I’m out here working. It’s as if he’s here working with me.”

At that moment I got a bit of a glimpse of my father. He was my father; he’d been there as long as I could remember, and before. By working the land with his father, he had created a bond with him. We could not have that bond, I realized sadly, because I did not love the land as he did. To me the land was a place to live, a ground to walk on, earth to give me food, trees to shade me from the sun and keep me warm in the winter. To my father, it was something different, something to be loved. But I could not see it, and I could not love it.

My father was not one to give up without a fight. Nor was he one to go back on his word. Thus it was that he tried his hardest to bring me to love the land, but in the end, when he realized he could not, he agreed that I might go away. I did not like to see the hurt in his eyes, but I was determined to make a new life for myself. I began to pack my bags.

Then Dad got sick. We didn’t know what it was, or exactly how it happened. He was fine that morning, and went out to work as usual. At lunch he was tired, but seemed well enough. When dinner-time came, he did not appear. Mother sent me to look for him. He’d said he would be clearing some trees that day, so I went to the grove, calling his name. There was no answer, and I searched around until I found him, lying on the ground, unconscious. I ran back to get help, and Mother and I carried him back to the house.

The doctor could not name his sickness. He had never seen anything like it before, he said – the fever, the weakness, the constant fainting. He told Dad to stay in bed, and not to set foot out of it until he was better. He left, saying he’d be back in the morning.

In the morning Dad seemed a little better. He did not have a fever, but his legs were unaccountably weak, and he could not walk. The doctor decided it was some kind of stress on his body, and prescribed him a month of inactivity. Dad of course was upset. How was he to work? Even after a month, he would hardly be strong enough to continue to work as before. There would be no money. A whole month without money would set us back terribly, even though we were careful.

No one told me I could not go away to school, but the thought was there, nagging, in the back of my mind. I pushed it away at first, but as I lay in bed at night, it came to me again, and I knew what I must do. I did not like it, but I must do it. There was no other way.

The next morning I announced to my family that I would not be going to school. I was going to stay and do Dad’s work until he was able to do it himself. Mother begged me not to throw away my dream; she could manage. I knew she knew that was not true. Finally she kissed me and told me I was a good boy.

Dad was quiet for a long time when I told him. Finally he said, “You are sure of this?”

I nodded.

“We had a deal.”

“I know, Dad. But I can’t let the family suffer while I am off doing what I want. I’m going to stay. You’ll be back to work in a few more months.”

“And by then, you will have missed the entrance date,” Dad said. “You will have to wait another whole year. I don’t want you to do that.”

“I know,” I said. “But I’m going to stay.”

Dad smiled at me and grasped my hand. “Thank you, son.”

Again I worked. I worked so hard that I thought my back would break in half. Every night I sat with my father and told him what I had done, and he told me what I should do in the morning. Then I would go to bed and sleep heavily until it was time to get up and do it all over again. I had never worked so hard in my life. I wondered how my father stood it. No wonder his body had given out temporarily.

One afternoon I was so tired I put down my shovel and law down on the grass for a moment. The ground under me was cool and soft as I closed my eyes. My whole body ached, and for a while all I could focus on was my discomfort. But then I relaxed a little, and I began to listen, and I heard sounds. There was a bird. And there was the wind sighing through the trees. The creaking of the trees. The sounds blended in my head. I do not know if it came to me just at that moment, or if it had been there all the time, and I had just ignored it. I understood how my father saw the land. He did not see it as work, or merely ground under his feet. To him it was not just a place to live. It was a place to love. It was alive, and it was beautiful. It was music, and I could hear it as it played around me. There was nothing more beautiful, not any music made by man, not any human voice. Dad had once said something that had always puzzled me. He said that the world was God’s love. I hadn’t understood it then, but now I knew what it meant. As the birds sang to me and I felt the ground under me whisper to me, I understood.

I stood up and looked around me, and I saw the land as my father saw it. I understood my father as I never had before. He worked hard to make it thrive, and because of that he loved it. I hadn’t wanted to make it thrive, and I had hated it. This land was mine. It would always be mine, because I loved it. It was my legacy, and suddenly that legacy was no longer a burden but a gift. I knew then that whatever I did next, wherever I went, I would always come back. This was my land. And that was music enough for me.

Those Days

To Jennifer, in memory of those days, the good and the bad. Thank you for being my friend through all of those days.

They were red and brown, those days,

Those days we sat under the golden trees

And talked of poetry, and how one day

The world would all be ours.

Those days of fleeting warmth,

Of golden sunshine touched with faintest rose

That touched and warmed our eyes and hair;

Those were the days that we were young.

They were silver and blue, those days,

The days when we walked along the icy walks,

And talked of books, and how we’d change the world,

Just one step at a time.

Those were the days of driving wind and ice caps

Forming on our frozen noses as we walked

Under a gray and dismal winter sky;

Those were the days we were alive.

They were gray, those days,

The days when we sat beside the burning fire

And talked of the world, our little world,

And all the troubles that it held.

Those were the days we longed for sunshine,

And when it did not come, we sang our songs

Beside the glowing fire in the hearth;

And those were the days that we grew wise.

They were the golden days,

Those days we sat under the spreading trees

And talked of times gone by, and how one day,

Some day, they’d come again.

Those were the days of sweetest warmth,

And fragrant sunshine touched with memory’s hand,

The hand that warmed our hearts to fire;

And those were the days when we were young.