Black Locust

[michaelboy]

Even through our teens, whenever my grandmother (Mama) would give us some cash -- usually a few quarters, she would wrap it up, knot it tightly in a handkerchief and then pin the whole affair to the collar of our shirt or jacket. We felt like dorks walking through the field towards home with a hanky pinned to us, but as she said "if I don't, you'll lose it under the locust tree"

Mama spent twenty years alone after Papa died, but I was too young then to imagine how lonely she might have been. It just had never occurred to me.

* * *

My dad had several Black Locust trees in our yard. I've always loved the shape of their leaves and how it felt to pull a handful of them from the thin green stems of the leaf clusters. We would use them for decorations of all childhood sorts and sometimes even used the thorns from the limbs to pick at each other.

In the corner of our yard was a locust fence post that was placed as a boundary corner to my grandparent's farm. It lasted for several decades and was still standing the last year before we sold the home. The posts are durable, rot-resistant and so strong that they are often the first choice for roof-support posts in the coal mine.

* * *

Sometimes when grocery shopping, I will see an older person shuffling around in the store with only one or two items in a very large shopping cart. Oftentimes those selections are ones that you wouldn't consider to be staple items - maybe like a package of dry beans and a package of brown shoelaces. Often they seem lonely and I wonder if they are just shopping to fight off the feelings found in the lack of companionship.

When I used to visit my father in the VA hospital during the last year of his life, I would feel so guilty about it. I'd walk into his room and he would be strapped in a geriatric chair - tracing the outline of his food tray with his finger - over and over again. Here was this man, the artist and father that I knew - so broken by strokes and loneliness - and here I was visiting for a short while and then leaving for home. It never felt right and I felt weak because of it.

* * *

Yet, alone isn't always lonely & lonely isn't always alone