The Kindest Words

Brian the Beautiful!
Donna, given of God!
Your open hands offer
the question of spring:
'Who came here but we two?
out of earth's deepest pockets
bringing ancient secrets:
white blackberry bloom,
green leaf, exuberance,
and the ancient truth
that equals "beauty,
and beauty, truth".'

Oh young girl and boy,
house made of old framing
and the loose air,
May your coming here
out of earth and sky
ever be fluid.
May you float like a pale blossom
over the town, the mountains,
and the green road forming.

-Liza '95

Writer, columnist, poet and naturalist Liza Field wrote the above poem after having seen a photograph of Donna and me taken at the Chautauqua Festival in Wytheville, Virginia. I cannot sing Liza's praises loudly enough and, thanks to her ever growing reputation, I should instead recommend that you Google her to see the tireless work she does to make our world a better place. She has been widely published in the United States and in England, yet she writes with a humility that is truly inspirational. She also wrote the adorable story below when Sage was still a toddler.

Once upon a time, a girl named Sage was born dancing, with stars in her hair and sun in her eyes, to a knight and lady, named Sir Brian and Lady Donnafleur. ("Donna" means gift, in an old language called Latin. "Fleur" means flower, in a happy language called french! "Sir" means that a man is brave and helps people and animals and trees.)

The little girl Sage LOVED to GIGGLE! She loved to laugh and dance and sing funny songs! She loved the ocean and butterflies and water! She was just like the silly and wonderful and kind Sir Brian and Lady Donnafleur.

One day young Sage was sitting on a stone in her pretty forest, with a butterfly on her hand. A wonderful bird was singing and squawking in the ancient tree--the big tree that smells like a fresh cloud! Sage found that the more she listened to the woodpecker bird with his black and white coat and crazy hairdo, the more she understood what he said.

"Sage! Sage! The trees are your friends and they are my friends! When you are sad, you can sit among the trees and they will love you until you feel happy! When you are happy you can dance among the trees and they will wave their leaves and nod their high branches, for this is their way of dancing! They will remind you that you cannot make others happy enough to dance, but when you find happiness and dancing yourself, others will be happy as well. Even birds know when you are dancing and singing and sitting under the trees!"

And the little girl Sage twirled and twirled, until she fell down kerplop, and looked up through the trees and clouds and giggled. And the bird flew away, full of joy and singing, for he had made a friend Sage and was going to eat cake and pebbles and lemonade at the garden party of birds and trees.

And Sage went home to tell Sir Brian, her father, and Lady Donnafleur, her mother, about the butterfly and the bird and the trees, and they would dance and sing with pineapples and bells and pretty red and blue lamps, under the stars.

The End and Beginning!

Jennie Neighbors and her husband, Dr. Jim Neighbors, teach in the English Department at Wofford College in Spartanburg. Jennie, a vocal atheist, received her MFA in Writing and Poetics from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. As such, the poem she wrote for Sage in 2003 is way over my head, but since she used the word "salvia" in it, which is another name for Sage, the poem is at least partially accessible for its intended audience. This poem humbles us in still more ways, yet we are grateful all the same. In 2008, Jennie had her first book of poetry published by Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, and she has also had a poem included in the anthology "Still Home - The Essential Poetry of Spartanburg," which was published by the Hub City Writer's Project.

The two stories below were written by our dear friend Laura right after her first visit to our fourth home in Spartanburg. I met Laura on my first day of college in the Summer of 1984, and I immediately recognized that she was a cut above the rest. She is one of the most talented writers I have had the chance to get to know personally, and I will always be puzzled as to why she, as far as I know, has never sought publication.

Our trip through the Upstate this past weekend was a blast. I had many wonderful moments. Will had one. We visited with the Kuhens (more on that later). As we were saying our good-byes, thanking our hosts for their wonderful hospitality, I mentioned that I wanted someone to research how many mothers have died tragically teaching their sons to drive. Will proudly displayed his permit, only after flashing the photo of his sweetie for all to see.

Brian says, "You have your permit? If I'd known, I would have let you drive my car while you were here."

Will looks at me incredulously. An opportunity to drive had slipped through his fingers. It was too much to bear. Then I told him, "Brian has a convertible."

"Oh, Momma, you've got to let me..."

I look at Brian.

"Go on. Let him take it up your driveway."

Brian's eyes twinkled with mischief.

"Follow me. I promise I won't waylay you by more than five minutes."

He opens the garage door and Will's jaw drops. What is sitting there is NOT the Dodge Caravan no one uses anymore that he is allowed to learn to drive in at home. Oh, no. Not by a long shot. Brian gets in the driver's seat and says, "You follow me."

Will walked to the passenger's door and climbed in, never glancing away from the car.

"I guess I'm riding alone," I say, and walk up to my car.

I follow Brian to an empty parking lot. The larger, newer Wal-Mart is down the road, and what is left behind is flat, empty asphalt, just begging for fresh tire marks. Not that there aren't already some there. I don't hear it, but Will later tells me that Brian pointed to the black donut circles and said, "I made those last week."

I thought, I thought, we were here for a little slow paced lesson. Give the boy a little joy with a slow cruise in a cool convertible. Silly, silly me. Will moves around to the driver's side. I get the camera out and take a picture of the two, head bowed together, as Brian shows Will what's what.

Then they pull away from me. They pick up speed. The car noses right and, just at its deepest part of the turn, it jumps forward and the tires squall in response to, I later learn, Brian's direction to, "Punch it, NOW!"

Several figure eights later, with me yelling as they passed, "Brian Kuhens, You are a BAD influence!", Will pulled up to me and smoothly stopped the car. The grin on his face was tugging his cheeks up so high, I knew his facial muscles would ache the next day. He was on a cloud.

For the next 24 hours I would hear him say, seemingly for no reason, "Figure eights." On the ride home, doing his best "Cameron" from Ferris Bueller's Day Off impression, he said, "Brian Kuhens, you're my hero."

Sage is petite, 4 years old, blonde hair, blue eyes. Will is a full grown man of a boy, 15, 5' 10", green eyes, brown hair.

Sage is an only child. Will, the oldest of five.

"Prepare yourself to experience a household centered around a child," I tell Will. His eyes widen.

"I'm kidding," I say, "but it is a household centered on family."

We arrive, and she is standing beside Brian. She looks reserved, a façade that will drop when I lower myself to her eye level. She flings herself into my arms for a hug. This is our first meeting. Will watches respectfully behind me. I introduce him, and he greets Brian with a handshake.

We are led over the front and side of the property, Sage leading the tour. She is a bright, verbal child, comfortable in her own skin.

As we enter the house, she leads us through the doorways to her varied universes. When we enter Brian's office, she stands back and allows him his own space. In the play room, though, it is her element and she leads me and Will in, through, and to the back wall so that we have an immediate overview. Only then does she point out this ("see, air hockey") and that ("my tadpoles").

"Play her a game of air hockey, Will."

They begin and Brian and Donna lead me to the master suite.

Oh, dear god, it's beautiful. I don't mean the room. Don't get me wrong. The room is nice. It's well put together. It's comfortable. But, it's difficult to look at the room. The view takes hold. A waterfall, visible upon waking? I'm in awe. I'm in love. It's not just any view. It's a waking view. Of a waterfall. Oh, my.

"Wait. Will has to see this."

He is impressed. Who wouldn't be?

But back to Sage. Will has asked, "What's in there?" just before leaving her domain. There is an insect cage. Home of Sage's Hissers. And she wants to pick up the conversation where Will was ready to let it drop.

"Do you want to hold one?"

"No."

"They won't hurt you."

"No."

Small, soft hands cup, cradling a hisser.

Large hands withdraw, upheld, palms out.

"No, thank you."

A bit of coaxing, he takes the roach in his hand. He's not convinced, but he has caved.

After our tour of the inside, Brian takes us out the back way to see the falls firsthand. Sage follows him, Will and I behind her. The steps give way to a trail, then a down slope that has some loose rock at the top. Brian strides past; Sage stops.

"Daddy, help me down."

"You can do it, honey." He doesn't glance back. This is not a spoiled a child. She is expected to make her way.

"Daddy, I can't." Only slightly more emphatic.

"Come on, Sage."

"Daddy, please." This is no four-year-old whining. She speaks clearly and in earnest.

He comes back, looks down at her sandals, the loose rock, then her face. She is not looking for favors.

"Ok." He lifts her, turns, and sets her down in front of him. She explains as he does so that, "It was really slippery, I didn't want to fall."

"I know, honey. I know."

Barefoot in the falls, I am happy.

"Brian, some day, you'll be entertaining guests in your dining room," I look up to the second story where it is located above the bedroom," and you will be asked, "What is that in your creek?" You will answer, "Oh, just ignore her. That's Laura. She doesn't hurt anything, but she won't go away."

Sage continues to point things out to Will. I think she was quite taken with him. He thought she was wonderful.

I can't help but think, though, that someday as grown-ups, they will have different views of how the world works. Sage will be amazed at how cruel people can be. Will will be stunned at how kind.

Dr. Chao Wei Lam is known as a reductionist poet and master calligraphist. When I first met him in his studio in Guangzhou, China, he served me ginseng tea that came from the United States, and he proudly showed me the American flags emblazoned on the box to prove it. My friend and partner, Chow, had taken courses under Dr. Lam in college back in the 70's, and they have been close friends ever since. After drinking the tea and getting a delightful tour of the works in his studio, Dr. Lam gave me one of his business cards that also listed his other studios in Berlin, Paris, London and Beijing. I had been told that Dr. Lam was quite famous, and the number of studios he maintained across the Northern hemisphere lent much to this reputation. As I admired some of his most recent works, he told me to pick one to keep. I was floored. Since he retired a few years ago he has not created any works for sale, and I was offered a few anecdotal stories including one about a Chinese pop star who tried to commission Dr. Lam to create a poem from one of his hit songs. Even after the musician offered him 150,000 yuen (about $20,000), Mr. Lam declined. I picked one that warned of the dangers of hubris that another person in our party told me hung behind the desk of a Hong Kong billionaire he knew. I thought it looked nice.

The next time I had the pleasure of Dr. Lam's company, there were eight of us going to dinner in a palatial hotel that had one of his works hanging in its stunning lobby. We were seated in a large, private room for dining, and the mood was festive. One of the men from Hong Kong was very familiar with Dr. Lam's work, and he could not contain his excitement at the opportunity to spend time with this venerable poet. I had the honor of being seated at Dr. Lam's right for what was a very lengthy and scrumptious meal. The evening's conversation was almost entirely in Mandarin and Cantonese, and I was happy to enjoy the indecipherable yet spirited conversation as a din to accompany my supper. As our plates began to show through the food and our stomachs filled, I decided to ask Dr. Lam, through an interpreter, how he would translate our family motto, "Jamais deux sans trois."

The motto, which means "Never two without three," is from the Blason de Venteuil, which is the crest from the Champagne region in France where Donna's family has been vintners and proprietors of the same soil since January 13, 1722. It is a rare day in our household that someone does not invoke this motto, with Sage using it most.

After a long pause, Dr. Lam said that there was no translation into Chinese. Even after my best efforts at explaining its meaning and its significance to our family, the consensus at the table was that the only way to translate it was to treat it literally, making it essentially mean "Two bad; three good." Oh, well, it was worth a shot, I thought.

The dinner conversation continued on, but for the next twenty minutes or so, Dr. Lam stayed quiet. Then, when he returned from his reverie, the words he spoke made one person at the table gasp and the rest were stunned into silence for what seemed like minutes. Then Ming told me that Dr. Lam had created a poem from the motto. Since I don't know Mandarin, I'll never be able to appreciate the beauty of his words, but about six months after I returned home, a two-foot by three-foot calligraphic rendition of his poem was delivered to my door. The original of the above image is now proudly displayed over our mantle at Hidden Falls. The literal translation of the eight characters, which I am certain does the work a terrible injustice is (as read from top right down to bottom left): Three people together walk sky long ground eternal. It is truly a thing of beauty that we cherish deeply, and we are grateful for Dr. Lam's profound talent and generosity.