Whipoorwill Evening

A Collage of Recollections from My Childhood


“Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill!”

The twilight summer evening was still except for the cry of the whippoorwills. My father’s lap was warm and somehow comforting, though the air was also warm.

“Dad, do you hear the whippoorwills? Why are they called that? It’s such a funny name.”

“It’s onomatopoetic.”

“It’s ono-what? What does that mean?”

“Onomatopoetic. It means that the bird is named after the sound it makes. Hear it? It calls, ‘whippoorwill!’ Do you hear it calling itself?”

“Yesss… I do!” I breathed in wonder.

I settled back contentedly against his broad chest. My nine-year-old body was tired from a full day’s play. I had been the first awake that morning, opening my eyes about thirty seconds before my seven-year-old brother. We ran out into the living room and plotted in whispers how to wake Mr. Bob, sleeping soundly in the loft.

Mr. Bob had been staying with us for some time. He was a member of our church, and one day, for reasons unknown to me, he moved in and made his home in the small loft over the kitchen and dining room. My brother, my best friend Heather, and I helped him make up the extra bed, clear away the dusty photograph albums, and build a wardrobe. I always figured that the reason Mom and Dad let him move in was his cooking. His deep-dish pizzas and homemade cinnamon bread were delicious, and he was always trying something new and exciting. Oh, and he was also responsible for saving one of our many kittens from abandonment in the woods by his mother. Mr. Bob fed him raw eggs and named him Edgar.

Eventually, after much noisy whispering, my brother and I formed a plan. I picked up an elastic hair band left lying on the floor the previous day, and shot it up over the rail into the loft. We giggled and hid behind the leather recliner.

“FEE FI FO FUM!” we heard, punctuated by stomping on the wooden stairs. “I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISH MAN!”

As he stomped into the living room, we jumped out from behind the chair and yelled, “Ha! Got you!” and “We’re not scared of you!”

After a breakfast of cinnamon oatmeal, we went outside, as usual. Our small log cabin was surrounded by an acre and a half of pine-needle carpeted woods, a perfect playground for imaginative children.

First, we explored. We each took a banana and one spool of thread, and went to the woods behind the house, which were thicker than the woods on the side. We hardly ever ventured there. I tied the string to a tree on the edge of our yard, and we ventured out into the great wilderness. The spool of thread ran out about ten feet in, so we sat down and ate our bananas. That was enough exploring for one day.

Later, we played with the cats. I don’t remember exactly how many cats we owned at the time, but I do know that at one point, we had sixteen. Of course, that included at least two litters of kittens. They all lived on the front porch and they were more than cats. Oh, yes, they were. Each of them had not only a name, but a personality and a story. One of them even had a birthday. In fact, they were a community, a small village of interesting individuals. The doghouse, currently uninhabited by canines, was their church. We made a cross of two sticks, tied together with grass, to decorate it. Polar, a large, grayish-white cat with striking blue eyes, was their priest. My brother claimed that he had seen Polar in the doghouse, holding a whole audience of cats spellbound with his blazing eyes, and I think that through wishful thinking, we both came to believe it.

We had gone exploring, played with the cats, and played tag and hopscotch. Yes, it had been a busy day. As I listened to the creaking of the two large rocking chairs against the boards of the porch floor, I planned the activities of the next day. We could pick blackberries and bring them to Mom for a cobbler. I didn’t like blackberries, and the chigger bites always gave us much misery later, but what imaginative games we could play! We could be Indians, gathering berries for the rest of the tribe, who were sick and on the verge of death by starvation. Or we could be slaves, secretly plotting our daring escape while being forced to work in the fields (or thickets), until we fainted from exhaustion. Or I could be Laura Ingalls, pioneer, picking blackberries for Ma Ingalls’ pie, while Pa ploughed the field for planting.

What a dream world I lived in! My days were filled with Indians and settlers, slaves and queens, adventurers, discoverers, explorers--filled with play and with books, dozens of books. My mind could transform each object around me into a hundred different amusements. And the woods, the trees! My house was made of trees and surrounded by them. The trees gave more than shade--they provided pirate swords, tasty salads, escape from murderous bandits, and fur-brushes for lucky (or unlucky) birthday cats.

As the moon rose in the still blue sky, the chorus of whippoorwills was joined by crickets.

“Whippoorwill! Whippoorwill!”

“Chirrup, chirrup, chirrup, chirrup…”

Breeze blew gently across my face and ruffled my hair. I was almost asleep.

Then my dad broke the music and the silence--broke it as I had never known music or silence to be broken.

“How would you like to move to Florida?” he asked solemnly.

My mother’s chair stopped rocking. My brother returned from his search for poisonous spiders in the cracks of the porch, and stared wide-eyed at my dad.

“Ha ha,” I said with annoyance. “I wouldn’t like it at all. I’m staying right here.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’m not joking. Did you know that the bishop can tell priests where to go, or at least ask them?”

The music of the crickets and the whipoorwill's cries became distant yet loud, as something fading away, perhaps already lost, but threatening. Through the clamor, I vaguely heard my dad explaining that there was a church in Florida in need of his help, and the bishop wanted him to switch with the priest there.

“But… why couldn’t you just say no?” I asked.

“Well…” My dad shifted uncomfortably under me. “I haven’t said yes or no, yet. He gave me time to think about it. But I think it might be a good thing to do. God will decide. Here, get up for a second. Let me show you something.”

I stood on the porch, displaced from my father’s lap and from my childish world of games and dreams. I had thought of moving before… onto a mountain or into a teepee in the backyard, but Florida!

My dad returned with a map in his hands. He lifted me back into his lap and my brother leaned on his right arm. He spread the map open and pointed.

“See, that’s called Lake County. That’s where the church is. There are over two hundred lakes there!”

I looked at the map. There sure was a lot of blue.

“Are there alligators in the lakes?” my brother asked curiously.

“Yes, lots of alligators. Little ones and big ones.”

“Really??” Nick began to get excited.

I thought about Florida and envisioned flamingoes and palm trees. Now I began to be excited. Maybe this was just another adventure!

Then I thought of the little white church with red doors and dome-shaped windows. I thought of the rose-colored carpet, cream-colored pews, and the new, polished wood altar rail. I thought of the icons of the western saints on the back wall. I remembered the huge magnolia tree that my brother and I often climbed. One cold day, we went into the tree (the branches were so low that it was like a room) and buried ourselves in the blanket of leaves to keep warm. I envisioned the winding paths and the pile of sticks that was our “campfire.” The carpet of periwinkles in the wood, the big hill in the back, the dogwood tree in the middle of the white gravel parking lot… how could I leave these?

And our home… Pachelbel’s Canon playing in the high-ceilinged living room, light gleaming on the yellow pine floor; spaghetti cooking in the kitchen, warming my hands by the half-open oven; the dimmer switch for the chandelier in the dining room, the cobwebs on the back porch, the “tunnel” connecting Mom’s and Dad’s closets… these things mattered. Running screaming through the trees with Heather, our hair braided like Indians’; sitting on a stool in the middle of the woods, reading the original, illustrated Winnie the Pooh stories; the stars shining clearly above the pines as the family went for walks in the evening; Queen Anne’s Lace growing by the red clay trails… No. I couldn’t go. Never.

Then I relaxed, and again learned my head on dad’s shoulder. He had only said maybe. And now the moon had risen, the breeze was blowing; the sound of the crickets was peaceful and rhythmic… This was now. And tomorrow, Nick would draw a treasure map, rubbing it in the dirt to make it look old; and I would bury a bead necklace, and we would take the map and look for it. And the day after… Well… who cared? This was now. So I closed my eyes and enjoyed the whippoorwill evening.