Come again no more

I spent a few days back in my hometown last week, celebrating my brother's 50th birthday and hanging out with family and friends. And though the visit was full of cheer and good times, it was difficult for me to go over to my parents' house (now ours). For starters, without our mom around to remind him of his chores, my brother has let the yard to go hell. The hedges have grown scrubby and skyward and weeds are pushing the bricks in the back walkway apart.

When my mom and dad first bought that house, we lived crowded into an apartment on the same street. The day they got the keys, mom and dad took us kids across the street and we waded into thigh-high weeds and started pulling them out, exposing good damp earth that would one day hold a lawn and flower beds. The place doesn't look as bad as it did that day, but it has never come closer to reminding me of then. That sight, as well as having to go through the garage storage in search of important papers, left me restless and angry, sad and weary. And today, I've been close to tears a number of times. I bought a used CD of appalachian music while I was there. It's called Appalachian Journey and features Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor, with guest artists James Taylor and Alison Krauss. Track 3 is perfect for my sentiment today:

Hard Times Come Again No More
(by Stephen C. Foster)
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all swap sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting by the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Draft submitted

I finished Draft 2 of the short story I finished over Labor Day weekend, and sent it off to the fiction group for dissection and review. It was the longest stretch I've spent writing in oh, I don't remember how much time. And it was painless. There were no itchy urges to mop, dust, straighten, hem, pluck errant eyebrows, or to do anything other than write, snack, write, browse for facts, and write. Whew.