Aunt Emily's
porch is less porch than command post. It is fifteen feet deep and runs
across the entire front of the cottage, railed and low-eaved and sheltered even
in the worst weather. I never saw it empty of people, never saw it
without a partly solved jigsaw puzzle spread out on a card table and the swing
full of dominoes, rummy, and Chinese checkers, rarely saw it without someone
playing bridge, either Aunt Emily teaching some children or Aunt Emily and George
Barnwell engaged in their intent, competitive afternoon rubbers with Uncle
Dwight and Aunt Heather.
The bridge table is at the far end, out of
the traffic, which is incessant. Though the Ellis daughters are grown,
Charity out of Smith, Comfort halfway through. There are innumerable cousins,
nieces, nephews, grandnieces. grandnephews, neighbor children, and the children
of visitors and guests. Just inside the door is a circulating library of
wholesome books, among which I have noted The Wind In The Willows. The Boy
Scout Handbook, the entire Pooh canon, Black Beauty, Little Women, The
Yearling. There are also piles of the National Geographic.
Aunt Emily believes in the freedom of
summer. She doesn’t much care what the children do so long as they do
something, and know what they are doing. It is idleness and randomness of
mind that she cannot abide. When the children go on a hike, she packs
bird and flower guides into their knapsacks, and quizzes them on their return
to see if they have learned anything. When she accompanies them on an
overnight camping trip, sleeping in her own worn pup tent, they can count on
instructive fireside talks on the stars. And on rainy days such as this
she sits like a confident spider in the midst of her web until boredom drives
all the children on the Point to her porch, where she reads to them or teaches
them French.
What she is doing now is reading
Hiawatha. She is fond of Longfellow, whose house is a landmark on Brattle
Street hardly a block from her own, and she perceives the rightness of Hiawatha
in this setting of northern woods. She reads loudly, to be heard above
the rush and patter of rain.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
All the little Indians in a half circle around
Aunt Emily are getting an imprinting that will last for life. The sound
of her voice reading will condition how they look upon themselves and the
world. It will become part of the loved ambiance of Barttell Pond, a
glint in the chromatic wonder of childhood. These small sensibilities
will never lose the images of dark woods and bright lake. Nature to them
will always be beneficent and female.
When he heard the owls at midnight,
Hooting, laughing in the forest,
“What is that?” he cried in terror.
“What is that?” he said. “Nokomis?”
And the good Nokomis answered:
“That is but the owl and owlet,
Talking in their native language,
Talking, scolding at each other.”
Some of those children, years later, may awaken in the night from a dream of that strong voice chanting Iroquois myths in Finnish trochees, and their souls will yearn within them for the certainty and assurance and naturalness and authority of the time Aunt Emily dominated.
Please,
do not ever sell yourselves short. You
are providing Milton kids – our kids – an imprinting that will last for
life. Your voice, your lessons, your
treatment of them will condition how they look upon themselves and the
world. Their souls, too, will yearn
within them for the certainty and assurance that you provided in your
interactions with them.
After all, Kids Matter!
#cruzan4milton#WEAREMILTON
