Sometimes, a little serendipity is all you need
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- January 11, 2025
- 707
In the winter 1961, when I was about a month shy of my sixth birthday, Robert Frost, an American poet, was blinded by the sun.
My mother said something like, “That poor man needs some help.”
She had gathered her three children around the television set so that we might, in her view, witness an important historical event.
It was Inauguration Day, John F. Kennedy was about to be sworn in as the 35th president and Mom was a jumble of emotions. I could sense her excitement, certainly, but there was a nameless fear that lurked in her behavior, one that hinted something could go wrong.
And when the 86-year-old Frost couldn’t read the poem he’d written for the occasion, owing to the glare from the snowdrifts in front of the Capitol building, she let out a deep sigh, as if to say, “Let this be a lesson to you. Always expect the unexpected.”
What ended up happening was Frost flipped the script and recited, from memory, “The Gift Outright,” a work the incoming president had requested when planning the big day.
I think Mom began weeping at that point, but memory fails.
My father was at work, doing his job, which was with state government, although I was never clear on precisely what it was he did. Something to do with taxes, I think, taxes and maps.
The only thing I knew for sure was that when he got off the bus every Friday afternoon, he would hand us each a shiny 50-cent piece with Benjamin Franklin’s jowly image on the front, and that gesture, modest as it was, was my introduction to an allowance.
That was what Dewey family life was like, a combination of learning, listening and buying a pack or two of baseball cards.
The next time Robert Frost made an appearance in my life was in fall 1969 when, as a ninth-grader, I was getting used to the public school system after having spent eight years in Catholic education, a transition that required a major adjustment in my outlook. Everything — from homerooms to locker partners, gym class to study halls, up-and-down staircases to Nicotine Alley — was unfamiliar, and naturally, I struggled to find my way.
But English class provided me with solid footing, and given the chance to finally excel, if only for a small slice of the day, I could contribute to the discussions and ace a few tests, no small thing when the shame of not being able to shinny up a rope cut so deep.
It was “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” that opened that door, and I know I wasn’t alone. Every freshman English class across the country probably featured the Frost poem, and even though our analyses were flawed, a lot of kids felt better for having the ability to grasp, if only tenuously, the meaning of the words.
Any “Sopranos” fans out there? You’ll probably remember this.
There’s a small scene in an episode of the third season that features Meadow trying to help A.J., who can’t figure out “Stopping By Woods.” Eventually, she lays down the premise that snow symbolizes death, to which her brother says, “That’s (messed) up.”
So even in early-21st century America, Robert Frost still resonates.
An old high school friend of mine was in town around Christmas, and we got together for a few hours. He was on a tight schedule, what with family and the holidays, but we managed to make the most of it. He wanted to take a walk — as we age, we all want to stay active — so I drove to a field that has a paved path, something folks use to jog or to walk their dogs or just enjoy the fresh air.
That particular expanse of green grass and the woods that border it had, I knew, a special place in our memories, for it was there, in our sophomore year, he and I — along with three other guys — spent a night quaffing Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and smoking Tijuana Smalls, the very first time I’d ever gotten seriously drunk. We had cranked up Black Sabbath and Deep Purple before setting out across the field, had sleeping bags and cans of Sterno for warmth, and had an experience that stays with you years down the road.
We were reliving that night — the highs and the lows — when I realized that, quite by happy accident, the organizers of something called Candy Cane Lane were testing the lights of more than 700 Christmas trees, a feat the Guinness Book of World Records was expected to acknowledge later that week. As my friend and I walked along, sudden bursts of festive illumination, accompanied by the happy sound of piped-in carols, kept us company, the kind of cosmic coincidence that signals the loving hand of God at work.
The path took us deep into the woods, and we were alone with our thoughts, the past and the present colliding in an unexpected way, but it was a time for quiet reflection, an almost sacred silence. Our town has changed a lot since we were students, but it didn’t take much to feel the awesome beauty and addictive allure of nostalgia.
My wife and I returned home a year ago to this very week, and while I’d be the first to admit her re-entry has been more smoothly streamlined than mine, I have faith I’ll get there.
As Robert Frost has written, “I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.” With any luck, I’ll be able to do better in 2025.
In the meantime I’ve still got Deep Purple and Black Sabbath to fuel the long nights of a dark Ohio winter, though my days of cheap wine and tipped cigars are over, much to everyone’s relief.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where poetry and heavy metal coexist quite peacefully.