PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
A CALL TO SERENITY
This is a difficult
time to write a column
that I hope people
turn to as a source of
diversion and perhaps
mild amusement.
Even the spreading
virus and ensuing
lockdowns could
be fodder for jokes
about weight gain and
quarantine beards
and wine tours that
took you from your
kitchen to your
bathroom to your living
room. Creative types
repurposed popular
tunes and masterworks
of art with coronavirus
themes. (My favorite
was “The Girl with the
Purell Earring.”)
I thought it was a tribute to the
human spirit that in the face of
a global pandemic, people found
a way to laugh. Humor gets us
through a lot. But there’s nothing
entertaining about the current
events of our nation, and I’ve been
hard-pressed to find a
topic of diversion.
Then I came across
a quote by writer
Annie Dillard: “A writer
looking for subjects
inquires not after what
he loves best, but after
what he alone loves
at all.” So, I thought
I’d start there, first
focusing on what I
love, which is a lot of
things, then trying to
identify that thing that
I, uniquely, love.
Chocolate and coffee
are easy to cancel out,
as they are items of
universal adulation.
Mountains and
beaches, sunsets and
waterfalls also garner widespread
admiration.
I am developing increasing
appreciation for Mason jars,
versatile little things that can be
used as drinking vessels, rustic
vases and storage containers and
are useful as a measuring utensils
ROBIN S NEST
Robin Conte lives with her
husband in an empty nest
in Dunwoody. To contact
her or to buy her column
collection, “The Best of the
Nest,”see robinconte.com.
to boot, but they’re making a
comeback, so I’m not alone there,
either.
And then, suddenly, I thought of
the whippoorwill.
I know I’m not the only one
to be enchanted by the call of
a whippoorwill, yet for me it is
singular in that it is the song of my
own memories. The very sound
carries me back to my childhood
and nestles me softly down onto
the old couch on the front porch of
my grandparents’ house in rural
New Hampshire.
It was there that I learned of
this bird as a herald of the night
and heard its call, a piercing sound
that begins at the first dusky
moment of twilight when the
sky melts into mystical shades of
bluish gray (shades which I’m sure
Benjamin Moore has a found a
way to can and number).
It was there that my
grandfather Nono told my
siblings and me a legend of a
pair of star-crossed lovers who
became separated, as lovers of
' egends are wont to become,
and whose nightly calls to each
other were immortalized in the
whippoorwill’s repetitive trill.
It was there that I would sit as
the evening deepened and cooled,
by then just with my siblings and
our grandmother Nana, because
Nono always retired early. We
would sit in the comfort of her
presence, watching and listening,
and use the time to rest and reflect
on the day that just faded and how
it was spent and the promise of
not much more to come but sleep
and rejuvenation and the prospect
of rising again.
I think of the song as mine
alone because it is the call of my
wise and loving grandmother, as
well as my own naive youth. And
with it I remember the words I
spoke at her funeral almost 20
years ago, when I struggled to
describe her to the congregation.
I admitted that my words were
flat, like snapshots, and that to
truly reveal the person that she
was, I would have to take you with
me, to her house on the hill, where
you would feel serene just to be
in her presence... the presence
of a woman whose soul was as
pure and clear as the call of a
whippoorwill.
Perhaps that’s why I love that
bird’s call, because in reminding
me of her, it calls for me to be the
same.
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AUGUST 2020
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