Spring Emergency

"Here bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunterbury.

"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendered is the flour;
..."

In An ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound instructed us all in the fine art of syllabic music that Geoffrey Chaucer had absorbed from the French poets of his era.  Chaucer brought into the English language the perfect elision of sound wedded to a perfect choice of words to define true lyrical poetry in our language.

I usually recite this passage aloud at this time of year, in my garden, as I rake the leaves off the emerging green shoots of my beloved daylilies.  There is a guilt I have felt in late March each year during my employed life.  It is the guilt of being pulled away from my desk work by the "other master" I serve, the master that is the mystery of my garden.  I am a steward of an environment of 'thworms, as every good gardener must be.  I care for the health of soil.  This husbandry of soil, creatures, and plant life is a calling.  It is in my deepest memories of tending a huge vegetable garden with my retired grandfather in New Jersey.

The emergence of malevolent weeds among my plants is like a state of emergency to me.  I prioritize what I must do with the limited time after my work day.  I look for ways to quit early, take work home for later.

And so, by stealth, and to avoid the embarrassment of a big retirement party, I announced my retirement Saturday, seven weeks ahead of schedule, after my succession was assured, and changed my status to volunteer.  For me this is the perfect solution.  I can face the diminishing workload without any guilt now.  I need show up at the office only when one of my few final projects needs attention, and then when I have them safely in harbor or approaching there, I can fade from the scene entirely to make space for my successor, who will be formally introduced in the next edition of the MHC Passages newsletter.  I can still enjoy the fellowship of my colleagues and assist Patricia Zahn, the finest colleage I have ever had, who is now the Interim Director, until my chosen successor moves to St. Louis next month.

Most of my attention right now is on my daylilies, which are just now declaring their survival or injury from the severe stress of this particular winter.  Many new plants I gambled on in the Lily Auction last summer were not hardy enough to take what St. Louis reality dished up this time.  The living center of their crowns is gone.  If there is any life at all in those tissues, it will emerge from the side and bottom of the crown several weeks from now.  But I won't let them have that chance.  I only consort with the fit.  The unfit are relegated to the yard waste bag to make room for another gamble.

If you hybridize, you are a gambler.  The only question is how much of an ante you dare to put up each year.  You can see how serious I am about this by checking my garden web site at daylilylay.com. Here is a special new one that I bred in 2001 and flagged for keeping in 2003:

I'm going to name this one LIZ PAINE, for one of my longtime professional friends at the Federation of State Humanities Councils in Washington, D.C.

Today, Palm Sunday, it's a bit rainy, but not much more than a drizzle.  I must go dig several plants of my GOODNIGHT KISSES and DAVID AND ALAN to send to buyers who begged me for plants as early as possible.  Both of these are frostproof and hardy, as I hope I will be for a lot more years.  I like telling garden club audiences that "you'll love my Goodnight Kisses."  It's important to have something to laugh about when you're sitting on a chair you would never actually want to own and use.  Do you know that type of chair?  It's standard issue in community centers.  They are designed to encourage brief meetings.

I am designed for life, and I'm going out now to affirm that in my garden.

Grandfather of Eight

"They all got married and they didn't hesitate,

I was, whoo!, Oh, Lord, the grandfather of eight."

I am called toward retirement.

With the beginning of another school year, this lifelong teacher is feeling the rush of possibility. Every year since I began Kindergarten I have felt a surge of positive energy at the end of the Summer. That energy was intense last year. I was bursting out of the cloud of grief over San’s death in June. This year I feel it and savor it as one savors the last sip of a good bottle of wine, because this year is my last as the leader of the Missouri Humanities Council. Each opportunity to shed light, to liberate creative energy, feels like a chance to pitch for a World Series win or to write a line as good as “Fourscore and seven years ago.”

I will retire on May 15. I am not leaving because the work has grown predictable. To the contrary, in the work of discovery, nothing is predictable, nothing is done by formula. It is all done by meeting people who want to be effective, who want to work their way out of knots and pockets of discouragement, and by thinking with them about “what if?” This work is done by learning about this or that town, or this or that subject, or this or that challenge, and seeing what can be done that is uplifting, constructive of human intelligence, and constructive of relationships.

I am “called” to my retirement as I was called to music, to writing, and to teaching. I am called to create what I hope will be a happy closing section in the story of my life. San felt that death cheated her out of sharing this part of life with me. We had been thinking of how and where we might spend it, and then we were suddenly focused on negotiating for the best quality that could be wrestled away from a quickening shortage of time.

In one sense, I owe it to San to live that wished-for final chapter, and I owe that chapter to Kathy, who married me in July. Before she died, San blessed me, and whoever would become my next love and marriage. Kathy and I feel as if our departed spouses nudged us toward each other. We belong together. Our life honors the lives of Tom Wofford and Sandra Bouman, and their parents and grandparents all the way back to Adam and Eve.

I think of retirement as a lived blessing. One of life’s miracles or graces is that an imagined good is instantly transported from the future to the present, so that it is spilled liberally on our path, a libation of goodness.

My cup of goodness includes eight grandchildren. The baby girl in the picture is my youngest, Arianah Wofford. This time last year, thanks to my daughter Jennifer's marriage in 2006 to Jared Steagall, I had two teenage grandchildren. Now Kathy has brought six younger ones into our big family. Until last month, when I met Arianah and her three siblings, I had not actually held and entertained a baby in thirty-six years! It was as if no time had passed. I am called to be a grandfather! Visiting my big family is now a calling.

In my new chapter, I imagine I will join the Y, and that I will volunteer in some form of teaching capacity. I would love to be a tour guide in a fine art museum, for instance. I would love to conduct a workshop on collage and Cubism in which the song lyrics of Bob Dylan were part of the mix. I would love to lead book discussions. I would love to write a form of music criticism that I haven’t seen much of since I last wrote a bit of it 35 years ago. I think the music critic has a social function to fulfill and that the function is to expand the intelligence of the reader.

Naturally, I will sing as long as I can with the St. Louis Symphony Chorus. I will take Kathy to the opera, here, in New York, in Santa Fe, and who knows where else? She and I will develop our gardens and I will breed daylilies in the summer and dream about their beauties the rest of the time. If you want to see some of mine, just Google for Daylily Lay, and sing that name, don't just speak it.

Retirement is eight months away now. Until then, I'm going to have the time of my life in this work I love so well.