Sep 29, 2004    The full moon comes over the hills as I drive home early in the AM. A full night behind, the warmth of home ahead of me, the realization that life is full of twists and turns just like the road I drive.    The full moon often makes me think of the many places I've watched that great orb rise and settle down.    Some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen has been the moon lowering itself into the Western sea. That great Pacific Ocean that lies not too far from home. Great glossy sea, smooth with the oils from the kelp, shining the reflection of the moon back into the dark sky. The moon can drown out the stars with its reflecting brilliance.    There are times that the moon takes up the reflection of the sun from the earth. These are the times that we see the dark moon, but it has that curiously light aspect to it. Not the full moon shining like we usually associate with the lunar light. This is actually the reflection of the sun off the Earth lighting up the moon in a shallow imitation of it's full-moon brilliance. This is a parlor trick of God as He plays with His great polished mirrors that He so long ago set spinning in the vastness of space when He took His first days foray into creation. This back-shining is called 'Gegenschein', which is German for something like 'reflected back'.    As I drive along looking at the moon, seeing the silver light shine upon the fields and hills around me, I can't help but remember the words that my Grandmother once told me of her life on the farm in Hungary before the Nazis came. They had a large farm, and were well-to-do by the standards of the time and area. They had fields, orchards, and livestock. They did all their farming with animals and human power and all in the family worked long and hard to enable them to have a full larder before the winter snows would drown the fields in a carpet of white.    When the harvest of wheat was ripening the work would be long and hard. Yet the mid-days were still hot. My grandmother told me they would wake at about two AM, and the old women would have already prepared coffee and baked rolls with lots of sugar for energy. The workers and family would all eat and then climb into the wagons for the ride to the fields where they would work harvesting the wheat by the light of the harvest moon.    At about six AM the old women would send the young children out to the fields with cooked bacon, rolls with butter and jelly, potatoes and eggs and more coffee. All work would cease for breakfast. And then they would resume work after eating and refortifying themselves.    The at about ten AM the children would return with a small lunch of rolls, jelly and butter, and other assorted treats. Then they would get back to work again.    A full lunch would be sent to them at about noon, this would be a large and massive lunch consisting of chicken or pork, vegetables including always potatoes and some Cole crop such as kohlrabi or cabbage. They would also have a fair amount of homemade brandy. This large meal would make them all sleepy, and they would then go to sleep in the shade of the trees or under the wagon. This would spare them from the heat of the day.    After a four hour break and nap they would resume working again. At about five or so a small supper would be sent out to keep them from hunger. This would be the same kinds of things they had for lunch, but in smaller quantities. Then at about eight or so they would have some more food, something with sugar for energy. they would work until about ten at night, when they would return to the house to stumble bone-tired into their beds to sleep for four hours until they woke again at two AM.

I think about my grandmother and the hardships she endured in her life. The sadness of having her husband snatched away to die in a foreign land when she was just a young woman. Widowed at twenty-four, and then driven from her farm and the land of her ancestors by the communist government with a young daughter in tow to go penniless to another land where she was regarded with suspicion because of her accent and different clothing and eating habits.    She was indeed a marvelous woman, and a strong and wise one. She had a tenacity that was amazing, an intuitive knack of being able to find the simple in the complex, to break all down into the simple meanings that a peasant would understand and be able to convey to a child.    Now as I watch this moon on it's ascent as I drive this California freeway at a time when all good and honest people should be safely tucked away into their own beds, I reflect that this is the time when she and her kin would be rising from the goose down folds of their beds and rising to the scent of fresh coffee on a cool Hungarian morning, and I am just now heading home to retire for the night.    How is it that life has taken us all from one generation to the next in a flight from the peaceful bucolic peasant life with it's hugely manual labor to the frenetic pace of a cyber-ponzi scheme that rushes from one moment to another at all hours of the day? She told me often that I should slow down, and take some time to enjoy my garden, not just work in it. She was trying to tell me to take the time to smell the roses.    She is now passed on into another world for some eighteen months now, and she walks with the Lord in a land of eternal sunshine in the peaceful fields of her youth, alive with the sounds of the birds in the trees shining with green leaves. The children of a lost time run with her, free from the trauma of war-weary men who break into the house and rip up the bed sheets to make bandages for their fallen comrades and cause unspeakable damage to the innocents around them out of avarice and despair.    She is free now from all of mankind's ills and demons. but she left me and other people she touched with so much. So much she told us and taught us. And so much that she did not say. I can still think of her way of saying "uhuh" when she did not agree with something I was going to do. This was her subtle way of telling me that she did not agree with the outcome that I thought would ensue, but she left it to me to do as I wished and experience the outcome so I would more fully learn the lesson. Now as a result of so many decades of hearing her advice, I can imagine what she would say to almost any situation that might arise in my life. If I get that little niggling doubt in my mind I can hear her "uhuh" coming through to me warning me of a dangerous and foolhardy undertaking (I've had my share of those).    So, I drive along, a smile of whist fullness on my lips, a longing to be able to hear her speak again. But I speak to her everyday, and ask God often for His help in her new life. And I know that He loves her much more than I ever could, so He holds her close to His heart always.    There is a saying I heard once, "when you pray do not say "The Lord is in my heart", say "I am in the heart of the Lord"". And she is in His heart.    So, I turn from the freeway, heading to the California hills that are now my home. Two generations from the plains of Hungary, and one life from the next.    The harvest moon rising in my eyes.    Gott Sei Danke.

The following little prayer in German was at a site from
Bruder Titus, that I liked enough to want to include. Because it would have meant a lot to my grandmother, it means a lot to me.

Gott sei mit dir

Gott sei mit dir, da wo du wohnst und lebst
und schenke dir seine Gnade.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du arbeitest
und schenke dir seine Kraft.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du hoffst und betest
und schenke dir Erfüllung.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du den Frieden suchst
und schenke dir Gelingen.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du feierst
und schenke dir Freude.
Gott sei mit dir, da wo du liebst,
und schenke dir seinen Segen.
Amen.

God is with you

God is with you, there where you live and love
and gives you His grace.
God is with you, there where you work
and gifts you with His strength.
God is with you, there where you hope and pray
and gives you fulfilment.
God is with you, there where you look for peace
and gives you success.
God is with you, there where you celebrate
and gives you joy.
God is with you, there where you love,
and gives you His benedictions.
Amen.

Sep 21, 2004    Driving down the road today I got fleeting images of Spain in my mind. It's funny how the olfactory senses will prompt recollections from decades before. The sun hot in the interior of the truck, the warm sage scent from the hills. The brown and tan colors on the hillsides as I drove, all these conspired to bring into my mind the flotsam of thoughts and images from trips to Spain.    I spent several years in Spain as a child, and I traveled through there on leave while in the military. It is a beautiful land, rich with a multi-cultural history. The Galicians, the Romans, the Goths and the Moors. In that land of hot desert heat in summer, richly arabesque fountains, and the graceful Moorish architecture I whiled away my summer youth. We would hike through the swampy areas near our home in search of large lizards, and we would prowl behind the henhouse for the cast-off chicken legs with which to tease the girls.    The workmen would make little hats from newspapers and cover their heads from the scorching summer sun. They would sometimes make those little hats for their mules and donkeys that pulled their work carts. When lunchtime came the workmen would slip a feedbag over the donkey's head before they opened their tins of sardines, and cut into their large rolls and cut off chunks of their aromatic cheeses. A good stockman will always make sure his animals are fed before he himself sits down to eat.    Now I am reminded of those carefree days in Spain as I travel this California highway near the coast. The hills ahead of me loom like the undulations of a trampled bed cover. The verdant green of winter has given way to the tans of summer, the grasses shorn short by cattle. In the folds of the hills are green patches with oaks and chaparral, clinging with the tenacity of life that is our lot.    I climb the hills with my truck, stuck behind a small car, it's driver is having a hard time keeping on the road. Several times the car starts to leave the pavement, and then the driver corrects quickly, heading back onto the road leaving just a puff of dust from the shoulder to mark where he miscalculated his track. Together, we travelers pass the site of a small monument, a small white cross. Erected last year by the grieving family of a young woman who's vehicle plunged over the side of the hill, leaving behind sorrowful members of her relatives. The cross is stark white against the colors of the bright and beautiful flowers placed there daily by her loving kin. The sadness is in us all when one of our own perishes, especially when that one is in the full bloom of youth and holds still the promise of regeneration and renewal of the family lineage.

We rise over the crest, and the hilltop is resplendent in the Bishop Fir. this green mantle on the hilltop cloaks the otherwise tan hill like a purple robe on a King. The hilltop experienced a fire several years ago, all the old firs burned to ash leaving behind black spires reaching their charcoal branches to a gloomy sky thick with greasy smoke. But as is their way, the seeds of the previous generation were stimulated by the fire to grow with the coming of the winter rains. The fertilizer of the old trees coaxed the renewal of the years onto this hill and now it is greener and more luxuriant than I ever recall seeing it. From the ashes of ruin can come the fertility of the ages, and the regeneration of the land.    We continue down the trek, and then see another cross. This one is simple, just a white cross with an American flag planted at it's base. Is this a monument to the Americans who have given all in defense of our land? Or is this a tribute to a single person who also perished on this most dangerous of roads?    This is near the spot where a local woman was said to have died in the 1920's. Her name was Agnes, and the old legend goes that she had a fight with her husband in Santa Maria, and left her home in the middle of a gully washing rainstorm. Driving, crying, with her infant child screaming in her Model T, she missed the turn near the top of the hill, and her car went over the abyss, into the gloom of the night. Her vehicle was found the next morning, hundreds of feet below the road, her body was said to have been taken out by the emergency crews, but they never found her baby. It was presumed to have been dragged off by coyotes. The local teenagers whisper of this spot, and it is a natural place for the more adventuresome of them to come for a little late night romance. The heartbeat races when one hears of the ghost that is rumored to haunt this spot, it is the hysterical women looking for her lost baby. Many are the tales of people who have seen the woman wandering in the dark, asking anyone she sees if they have seen her baby. Many are the tales of her savagery in ripping the tops of cars open with a hatchet in her attempts to get to anyone who might be taking her child. These are tales that are meant to keep the young lovers from staying out too late at night. Although everyone here has heard the stories, I've not yet met anyone who has seen Agnes. But it is a good ghost story, and like most tales like this, it has a symbolism meant to make one aware of the dangers one can face when making unwise choices in life. I have been to the bottom of this ravine once, when I was a brash and adventuresome teenager myself. There was indeed an old car at the bottom, rusted with age. So old it had a flathead engine in it, and the gas cap was below the windshield.    As I near the bottom of the hill we pass the bloating corpse of a deer, just another sad and forlorn example of the death that stalks this road. I don't think there has ever been a year when someone did not die on this short stretch of highway leading up this twisting road over the hill. Just another bit of America. God Bless us all.