Rosarium

     How often we saw Father Panayotis walking on the sidewalk in front of the Greek church on the west side of Macy Street, or sitting on that bench in front of the Paradise Grocery talking with his parishioners. He, too, would notice the imposing Catholic church across the street, it’s high towers shielding the morning sunlight in an almost imperfect way, as he paced back and forth during his meditations. And many times he could be seen standing there on the sidewalk, his arms thrust into the sleeves of his riasa, the stove pipe hat on his head, looking wistfully at St. Looey’s Church.

     We seldom walked on the sidewalk in front of St. Looey’s. Generally, we crossed the street after we had walked past the Hinn Coal Company buildings, and then we continued our journey on the west side of Macy Street. We, too, often saw St. Louis Church from the same perspective as Father Panayotis: its towers raking the pale blue sky, the sunlight glinting between the crosses. Indeed, the Second Coming itself would pass through those towers, some thought, like a long field goal at Fruth Memorial Field.

     We would remember the last days at the Paradise Grocery as well: the shelves were bare, the room was dimly lit. An old woman, clutching at the threads of her black shawl, sat behind the counter like a tiny bird. It was she who would demand to see "da picture card" when someone attempted to buy beer from her. She would stand there and shake her finger, saying, "Letta me see da picture card," with a voice cracked and calloused with age. She viewed each one of us with skepticism and with a lack of trust. "No picture card. No beer!" she warned, as we entered the store. And even were we to go in there and buy a few rolls of toilet paper, she should stand behind the counter with her arms folded across her chest, with the word no slowly forming on her lips out of pure reflexive spite.

     But in many respects, it was only the sale of beer in the evening after 9 p.m. that kept the Paradise Grocery Store open. One by one the cars would come and park in front of the store. From the cluster of three or four young men in the car, one would be chosen to go inside to attempt to buy a case of beer. If he was 18 years or older, he would smile when the old woman asked to see the picture card: he knew she couldn’t challenge him because he was of age. If he was under 18 years of age, often his raw nervousness entered the store well before he did, and she always seemed to sense that. He would buy no beer from her. She would say, "You baby!" And then pointing at the door, she would add, "No beer! Out!" He would slink out of the store and return to the car like a furtive mouse. Then one by one, the young men would decide who would go back into the store to try again. Often, the youngest man in the group was the one who was successful in buying the case of beer, less for his powers of persuasion and more for his charm, because he looked at her and smiled as he brought the case of beer to the counter. She could see at once that he wasn’t wearing the tattered uniform of fear. She wouldn’t even ask him for "da picture card." Instead, she would ring up the sale on that old brass cash register and hold her hand off to the side, waiting for him to put his money in her hand. "Six dollar fifty."

     Some years ago I met an nun from a local Orthodox monastery who was hospitalized for surgery. She had been suffering from chronic health problems that required surgery to alleviate the symptoms. She told me, at the time I visited her in the hospital, that she needed the surgery but the monastery lacked the funds to pay for her operation. As a result, the woman suffered for many years with those health issues until the monastery was finally able to gather sufficient funds to pay for her surgery. I truly felt sorry for that nun and for the ordeal of her suffering.

     A week or so after I had visited her, I walked past a Christian bookstore and noticed some items that had been arranged on a sidewalk sale table in front of the store. One of the items there was a small picture of Noah’s Ark. It was clearly intended to be given to a child because the style of the picture was almost cartoon-like in character. For some reason, I felt compelled to purchase the picture and to send it along with a short note to that suffering nun. I told her that the picture was for her "rainy days," and exhorted her to follow the advice of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans: "Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer" (Rom. 12:12).

     After I had sent the picture and the note, I felt as though I had done something really foolish. The thought had occurred to me that it might not have been wise to send a child’s picture to an adult - and to a suffering adult at that. Moreover, I had sent spiritual advice to a monastic and that certainly smacked of high arrogance for someone like me to be telling a nun how to behave.

     I was quite unprepared for the response I received from that nun. She wrote that at times she felt the despair that a long illness often produces. My picture of Noah had arrived during one of those times of deep depression. She said she was particularly grateful for the way God had reassured and comforted her with His love during her illness by His acting through me. This little "icon" of Noah, as she called it, had cheered her up immensely and had filled her heart with great joy at "the mercy of God." She received permission from the abbess to keep the icon in her cell and she told me that everytime she looked at it, she was reminded again of the immediacy of the presence of the Kingdom of God in her life. And that filled her with immense joy.

     I think how many thirst for joy, not because they are filled with strange and tangent sorrows in their lives. Rather, they thirst for joy because they feel unloved, as though no one "out there" cares for them. The atheist, smug in his convictions, wears a notch between his brows because the sorrows of the world have dimmed his joy to nothingness. The suffering nun smiles because God loves her enough to send her a get well card.

     Then, too, it is very difficult to go to Wisconsin on vacation for another reason. Beyond the near impossibility of even getting there in the first place, one has to participate in the endless fantasies of others once the actual arrival takes place. One is carried along on the winds of another’s fantasy like seeds from a dandelion. You will find that, although you may call it "Your Vacation," it really belongs entirely to someone else. Wisconsin is a place where you always dance to the tune of others.

     The last time we went was no different. There was the usual mandatory trip to Salchert’s Meat Market in St. Cloud. And, yes, we went to Vern’s Cheese in Chilton as well. A trip to Wisconsin would not be complete without those two trips. Somehow we missed going to Widmer’s Cheese in Theresa. I don’t know how that could have happened. After all, her cheese shelf in the refrigerator was empty when we left on vacation.

     We went to relatives’ houses and found that we had to visit several times before we began to pall upon one another like the wilt on a Mother’s Day bouquet two weeks after Mom had first clasped it tenderly to her bosom.

     Foolishly, I had planned to watch the breeze that came in off the lake to see how it played tickle with the trees. But others wanted to pull me from my chair and make me stare at pictures taken in a different time, and guess who might be whom in the sepia corduroys of yesteryear. I just wanted to sit and watch the wind. I wanted to watch the clouds clambering up the face of God. I wanted to walk along the road and study the plants and trees - and the blue-flower chicory - that he had planted there. They, however, wanted me to run to the Piggly Wiggly and the Pick-n-Save. And you should have heard how they raved about the watermelon cluttering the aisles there. I was surprised at the things that brought wonder to their eyes. Wonder? You want wonder? Look across the lake at night, when the stars and the lights dust the shore with magic, and speak to me no more of grocery stores. Verily, rutabagas do not populate the Milky Way.

     Of course, we had to look at the things that weren’t there anymore. We do that every year. It’s a kind of game to figure out what’s been leveled flat and what’s just risen from some farmer’s field. Last year our attention was focused upon the hospital. Half-bulldozed and half brand-new, the things inside the hospital made you shake your head and ask, "What were they thinking?"

     I looked at the lobby that was a day’s journey away from the gift shop by telephone, and thought about the infirm who would shuffle down those twenty-foot aisles like hapless victims at Auschwitz. It would take them a month to get to the other end, passing through two time zones, and again as many cultures. What fool would build a structure that big, that useless, that expensive? I’m surely glad that I’m not paying their heating bills.

     And that chapel! An atrium at the Holiday Inn wouldn’t look very much different from that. You’d have to search pretty hard to find God in a place like that. Yet, I seemed to be the only one who found that architecture odd and out of place, much like a mathematician’s nightmare, filled and zigzagged with permutations and summations. They, however, professed to like it. But they couldn’t explain - exactly - what attracted their admiration. I suspect that they may have been pretending.

     Then, one morning we got up early and drove away before anyone could notice that we had stirred from our beds. We left a note to say that we were going "to look at things." But we were really going to smell the countryside. Of course, if you didn't grow up in Wisconsin - if you have never lived around a dairy farm - you probably cannot understand this fascination with "smelling the countryside." Cow manure has the most wonderful smell in the entire world, you see. Oh, I know you won't agree with that. But, as we drove through the Holy Land (that's really what they call it), we saw herds of cows standing next to the barn, stomachs full and udders empty, swishing their tails in the early morning sun. They had just been milked and turned out into the corral next to the barn. They were deliriously happy at the prospect of spending the day under the hickory trees along the highway.

     For a moment - lost in the strong whiff of this bucolic scene - I had forgotten all about the Piggly Wiggly and the Pick-n-Save. Hey, I was on vacation, man.