Features and Series

Posted in: Features and Series
Attendance is all that matters
By Laura Timm
Jul 31, 2008 - 10:04:11 PM

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“The river and the trees and the paths had healed us both. The anxieties of the day had been defeated, at least for a day or two...” Laura Timm Photo

July has escaped us. This hard earned summer, though not yet packing to leave, has made appointments with autumn.

Perhaps some share my conflicted excitement as the weeks of football and volleyball camps approach, as the site of the year’s crops reveal their probable or improbable harvest and as we proceed toward a historical election year.

Perhaps some also find themselves cringing just a little upon seeing the normally welcomed palettes of boxed pencils and notebooks in their candy colored jackets. This year it all makes my chest tighten just a little with slight panic at the thought of another Iowa winter.

Whether you’re the child of a Boomer trying to do it all, be everywhere for everyone, jumping in what you hope is the right direction to avoid financial chaos, a still working Boomer, trying to squirrel away something quickly, searching for that elusive answer to building or saving your retirement, or the grandchild of a Boomer, whom the rest of us now need to make an appointment with just to have a sit down discussion or a family night, there is one thing I hope you do before this summer ends: Attend.

I’m right there with you, living too fast with kids in too many sports, working more than one job. The droppings of my wasted time have screamed and have gotten my attention, “Do not let this summer slip away!”

Something clicked when I heard that. I decided that I don’t want to get lost in the rush, drinking too much caffeine and pleasing everyone but myself. I don’t want to be ‘just caught in traffic’ for the next six weeks or to get in my car one morning, rushing off with my coffee to please the person of the day and suddenly notice the leaves are beginning to change and some are beginning to fall.

It did, after all, take a record setting year of snowfalls, tornados and floods just to earn our summer. Finally we saw the fragile yellow-green leaves replaced by the lush deep green hillsides that reassure us that yes; we are still blessed to live here in Iowa.

Last week, amid the chaos, the deadlines and the teen drama that I and so many others regularly navigate, I escaped, just for a few hours. During a misty drizzle, I turned my car east toward a place that still calls to me. As I turned into the darkened entrance of the park I remembered that this was also my father’s place.

My car rolled easily under the canopy of trees that darkened the winding road. The paradigm that had been placed over my eyes and mind by television and other people for many months slipped off as if someone had removed a hood from my head. Apparently unable to breath the atmosphere of this place, my anxieties dripped away with the mist and drizzle.

I thought of the days when my father had taken the time to come home and invite me to attend his escape. Perhaps they were only the days when he hadn’t packed the poles and the tackle box. These short trips to the park, only a few miles away from our home, always began with anxiety fraught directives from him toward me to watch the poles, to make sure they didn’t bump each other and, as I learned to do without the command, sit back tight against the passenger seat at every intersection so he could see oncoming traffic before turning.

He was probably in his late thirties then and just beginning to show the pasty-white bloat of a man in middle management. The anxieties packed and piled against him all day and the responsibilities waited in a tangled heap for him at home. Even as a child I knew better than to materialize unexpectedly on our way to the escape. It was a vital mission that could be thwarted by any number of small crises.

These memories tumbled through my mind as my car came out on the other side of the wooded road; the river, powerful as ever came into view. A mist rolled up off the river road as I slowed and admired the bluffs and the banks that seemed very much the same as they had looked thirty years ago.

I parked the car and locked it. I gave myself permission, without kids for now - just for me this time, to explore the old paths I’d been pointing to and telling my family about for years. Again in a darkened place under the cover of trees I followed trails that were only vaguely familiar. I realized I was a little thrilled, knowing I’d soon see the treasured stairways and bridges and hidden limestone gazebos that waited all these years for me to return. The rainy afternoon couldn’t have been more perfect, in a strange way.

I can’t say that going back there that day changed my life in any way that others would notice. I had no more money to pay bills when I got home then when I’d left that morning. What did change was that I had attended. It had taken me a long time but neither the trees nor the river scolded me for that.

As I drove out of my escape that day, I remembered the laughter and the chatter that had always accompanied my father and me on the way out of his escape. We were like two entirely different characters in a new play. Vaguely, I remembered that the sun was usually setting behind his face by the time we reached the highway and that, at least once, when I thought to sit back tightly against the passenger seat, that he’d noticed my action, smiled and apologized for getting so uptight.

The river and the trees and the paths had healed us both. The anxieties of the day had been defeated, at least for a day or two, because we had attended.



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