June 12, 2016--Journal Entry in the New House

             I love, almost more than anything, the wind in trees. This neighborhood has tall trees, oaks, maples, and in our yard there is a very tall locust, and so many other trees, that at this  time of year the back yard is all shady. I sat out there this late day on the light-dappled lawn under a tree with heart-shaped leaves (what is it?) and read.
            How often in Brooklyn I hungered, literally yearned in my mouth and throat and being, for the sound of wind in a tall tree, a pine maybe. I would escape to a park or all the way to Bear Mountain, but I couldn't hear the sound from my home. I couldn't hear it from Fishtown, either.
           Now I am here in paradise, in Elkins Park. It has been a perfect early summer, not yet hot, plenty of rain for the lawns and gardens. Peaceful people walk their dogs as I stroll around in the cooling evening air. Children's laughter comes from back yards, a boy runs by in stocking feet, holding his sandals. A family holding ice cream cones from Sprinkles around the corner gets ready to load into their car.
           It's hard to believe there was a horrible massacre in Orlando today, one man mowing down scores of people. It's impossible to picture the madness and rage in the Middle East and Africa, and in the violent, poverty-stricken areas of Philadelphia only a few miles from here. How did we get so lucky, and why are so many others not lucky at all?
            I feel guilty, but I also don't know how to equalize it or if I can. I'm not made of heroic material. I will be open to some possibility, but I also want to fully appreciate this gift, this "reward" after my own struggles. The struggles were nothing, comparatively, but it is also ungrateful to do less than seize the joy of wind in the trees and a catbird singing and mewing in the dogwood tree.

           I'm so glad for Dad that he had the farm for so long--so glad for all of us. He worked and fought for teachers' rights, taught those recalcitrant kids for  little money, worried about whether he could support us all, and then he really did. What sweet triumph for him to look over his acres, the vegetable garden, the family gathered on the screened porch, the sunset between the barns.