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  INVICTUS

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

WILLIAM E. HENLEY (my spell check says that bludgeonings is not a word... no poet, my spellcheck)

I grew up in a house in New England that my father’s father had built for his family. It was a very turbulent household. My Dad was bi-polar and he would fly into rages at the drop of a hat. My mother was a shy, uneducated mouse who was terrified of him… and me.

(I was bi-polar too. She didn’t understand this, but she did understand that I was every bit as unstable and unpredictable as Dad was. I think that she saw me as some kind of aberration. She kept her distance from me as much as she could. So… besides being bi-polar, I grew up without any real intimacy.)

The Universe was very kind to me. When I was about 9 years old, (That was the life-altering phase of my young life. Everything there was that made me who I am, happened around that time.) my aunt and her husband built a new house on the other half of the property. They were a professional and childless couple and my grandfather lived with them. We ended up with a sort of family compound and I got a special blessing out of it. I got my Uncle Jimmy living right next door.

My Uncle Jimmy was a bean counter by day… literally. He was an accountant and totally boring, but on the weekends, he became a master gardener… with a half an acre of bare dirt in the city which he would transform, during the rest of my childhood. He wasn’t very affectionate either, but he was a teacher by instinct. I spent a lot of years following him around, asking questions. We spent a lot of hours on our knees together in the garden. (He also taught me how to pray.) He was my best friend growing up.

I remember vividly the day he told me about the Portulacas in the rock garden and how they would close up every night to reopen in the morning. To my young mind the idea that a silly little plant could actually be smart enough to tell time was the most amazing thing. I tried for about a week to get up early enough in the morning to catch them opening. I never managed it. He showed me Praying Mantis and how they fed themselves… and how to drop Japanese beetles off of the roses into a can of oil so they would be gone forever. He showed me which weeds were bad news… and which ones we could put in our salads.

He taught me to identify every bird in New England and how they behaved. He showed me how to mix peanut butter, beef suet and wild bird seed to hang on the trees in the winter to feed the birds. He taught me that if you want to have finches, you need to put out thistle seed and that Cardinals preferred sunflower seeds.

My Uncle Jimmy taught me all that I know about gardening. He taught me all the mini-miracles of nature. He taught me how to have faith... that what was today... would be different tomorrow. My Uncle Jimmy taught me to live… and in doing so, he probably saved my life.

He’s been gone a while. I think he was born in 1912. I guess he would be almost 96 years old now? There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of him…

and miss him...

and "thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul."