Microwunderkammer

 Parental artifact #22 (I think, it’s been a while) : a “Western” shirt

Given that it’s styled as “western” or “ranch” wear, I suppose it’s appropriate that I wear this on my farm in the West. It is one of a bunch of similar shirts that I inherited from my dad—very light weight cotton/synthetic blend, mother-of-pearl snap buttons, western-styled details such as the pocket flaps and collar. They cry out for a bolo tie or kerchief, and I often wear a bandana when I wear them. They are ideal for my work, providing protection against the sun and hay dust on a hot day without being too warm. They’ve gotten a lot of use, and are slowly succumbing to the indignities of farm life—mysterious stains, gruesome tears from getting caught on fences and the like, and a bit of fraying from being chewed on by goats.

These shirts date from the second-to-last chapter of my dad’s life—after retirement, after driving became kind of dicey, but before the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease grew so thick that he was permanently lost.

In a much earlier chapter in my parents’ shared life, when they were in college in the 1950’s, they enriched their lives by joining a couple of clubs. They were members of the UC Hiking Club, and hiking and the outdoors stayed a part of their life until almost the last chapter. Their time in this club produced hundreds of photos, dozens of lifelong friends, their marriage and three sons. They also did a lot of international folk dancing. I don’t recall them ever talking about a folk dance club, or friends from such a club. But, they knew lots of folk dances (I have fond memories of my mom trying and failing to teach me the Hambo), and I grew up listening to their LPs of international folk music (I still listen to some of these regularly—“Kolo Party” and “Bikel and Guill Sing Songs from Just About Everywhere” have been providing pleasure for going on five decades). Obviously folk dance was important to them as a social outlet, but I just don’t know how.

When I went off to college, my parents were pretty hands-off. Unlike some of my classmates, they didn’t place many regulations on what I could do, nor did they push me to do many specific things. The only injunction I remember was that I must not, under any circumstances, play bridge. The only things that they pushed on me were a weekly admonishment to “STUDY HARD,” the suggestion that I should meet and marry a [rich] doctor, and I should look into taking up folk dancing. In those four years, I never played bridge, I studied hard but never hard enough, I took up a hobby that helped me meet and marry a doctor…but I never took up folk dancing. During this time, they themselves did not dance, though they still were hiking and camping regularly with their club friends.

When I went to graduate school, my social situation was considerably different. I lived off campus, and while I met a few people as an avid bicyclist, I didn’t socialize much. When the weather was pleasant, there was a recreational folk dance club that I would do its thing out in one of the plazas, and some of the tunes were very familiar to me from my parents’ LPs. A friend, one of my fellow grad students, was there dancing with them, so after a few times watching them I figured, heck, I’ll give it a try.

Well, I liked it. I really, really liked it. After a few weeks, my friend commented that I danced like someone who really NEEDED to dance, and I suppose I did. During my time in grad school, I danced with the recreational club, and started dancing with the associated performing group. It just felt good. I loved the music, the motion, the rhythm, and most important, the society. There is something very essentially human about getting together in a circle or snaking line and moving in synchrony with a drumbeat—whether 2/4, 3/4, 5/4, or some exotic Bulgarian rhythm like 13/16. For ten years I was dancing twice a week or more.

My parents still hiked and camped a lot—though to be sure, they didn’t hike quite as far, and their camping got cushier. They had annual reunions with dozens of friends from their days in the Hiking Club, and went on hiking expeditions in Tasmania and New Zealand and other places. However, it was getting more difficult. My dad’s joints started crapping out on him, the unfortunate sequel to a back surgery that hadn’t worked well twenty years earlier. He developed a definite list to port, and would tend to want to hike uphill and to the left rather than downhill or to the right. My parents’ friends were aging too, and the Hiking Club reunions started tending more towards hanging out at a cabin with a smaller group of people and some mild walking rather than dozens of folks camping in tents and ten mile hikes.

I think my parents realized that, having retired, they needed to do something sociable. I don’t remember when they joined the square dance club that met at a nearby church (“Heels and Souls”), but it became a weekly event and a major social outlet for them. They formed new friendships and got a regular night out and some good exercise. As my dad’s joints got worse and his cognition started to decline, he still participated, looking after coffee and such. And, as members of the group, my mom got a square dance skirt and my dad got these shirts.

When I left grad school, first for a teaching gig and then for a postdoc, followed by another teaching gig, I completely stopped folk dancing. My social circle atrophied, as my work took over an increasing fraction of my life. As a postdoc, one mainly sees the four walls of the lab and the inside of the library. As a lecturer, one can socialize some with students—but definitely not too much. I rode my bike and skied a lot with my sweetie, and occasionally with a club, but the number of people I socialized with outside of work just plummeted.

A decade later I departed from academia and moved to this farm, and my parents’ condition deteriorated markedly. My dad mostly disappeared into the obscuring fog of dementia. My mom attended one more Hiking Club reunion, and it was a bit of a disaster as she was unsure of where she was and why her husband wasn’t there. They became more homebound, and stayed that way until their deaths, most of a decade later. Their last regular visitors were a couple they had known from the Hiking Club for over sixty years, and some newer friends from the Heels and Souls.

Here I am now, living and working on a goat farm in Oregon. In a typical week I will get off the farm once or twice, to go to town for feed and groceries, and maybe do some special errands as needed or go to the dump. Plenty of weeks I don’t talk to any other humans except my sweetie and the couple that works here. The farmer’s life can be extremely isolating. From March to July the farm is all-consuming, and for most of the rest of the year, dairying and farm work will keep one busy all the hours of the day. The isolation can play havoc with your psyche, and honestly, it has at times.

During the summer months, I wear these shirts that my dad got for square dancing. As did he, I trace out patterns of squares and lines and circles, but unlike him I am doing so in a tractor, mowing the pastures. As I drive around and milk and shovel manure and fix fences, I think about how he wore this shirt as part of a conscious, deliberate effort at socializing. I know it was difficult, but he knew that it was necessary.

Now that the pace of the year has slowed somewhat, and I can go to shows and fairs, I can socialize a little—but this is an odd sort of socialization, meeting with friends that live far away and that I see but a few times a year, at events that are dominated by the work of showing our animals. I communicate with a bunch of friends by email and various social networks. But it’s not really adequate. This shirt is telling me I should make an effort—maybe return, as my mom and dad did, to folk dance, or maybe join a music group. It’s ridiculously difficult to do this as a dairy farmer, but it was difficult for my dad, late in life with bad knees and hips and a fear of dementia, to meet new folks and learn to square dance.

I still haven’t played bridge. I still study hard, and it’s still never hard enough. I met, and married, a doctor, and we just celebrated our 25th anniversary. And, I think there is a contra dance group that meets every month around here.