A Membership

Do you have people in your life that you love? Do they live near you? When something is wrong are they there to help bare your load? When something is right and beautiful are they there to celebrate it with you? Are they family? Are they your neighbors? Are they a part of your everyday life?

These are the questions that I ask myself, especially when I read Wendell Berry's stories of the Port Williams Membership. Set in agrarian Kentucky, Berry writes about how the people in this fictional little corner of America work together, live together and love each other. Mom gave me his latest book Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Like most of his books, this one is written from the perspective of an older man looking back at a particular time in his life. Andy is nine-years-old, gone to spend a week alone with his grandparents. Looking back at his life, he wishes he had been more attentive, longs for the touch of his grandmother, the teaching of his grandfather, the simplicity of the smell of biscuits baking in the kitchen.

While sometimes overly nostalgic, Berry's work always leads me to a place where I long to give my boys a life that they will look back at and love. It also makes me think of the "membership" that I am a part of and the one that I came from. I could write many stories about the people that I held hands with and sang songs with at Ripley Blvd. Baptist Church. I could write the story of the people who came to our house when my father died or the people that came over and cleaned our house when it flooded. I could write stories of the people that I talked with for an hour on the beach last week.

One thing that I long for in Minnesota is a "membership". It takes longer and is more difficult in a metropolitan locale. Things are different in a place like Port William or Alpena or Upland or ___________.

Go to the library or click on the links above and take a trip to Wendell Berry's Port William and join his "membership" as you seek one of your own. Thanks for reading.