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December 4, 2009

Jim Atwell: Chance or plan?

What about the swirling currents that move us through our lives? Sometimes, like a floating leaf, we tumble over shallows and rocks; sometimes we snub briefly against a shoreline. What about those currents? Is some plan spinning itself out, or are we carried on and to the end by sheer chance?

Beats the hell out of me, friends! But when I look back across my decades, I’m awed by what has brought me (so far) and has beached me happily in Fly Creek.

Maybe I’m only snugged temporarily here; maybe some errant wave will swing me out and on, down the stream. I don’t think so. I believe Fly Creek, more like home than any previous place, is where I’m beached for good. But, oh, how I got here! You know much of the story: a boy from Annapolis, Maryland, a sleepy southern town back in the `fifties, goes off to be a monk. Then thirteen years praying, studying, teaching. Then two-dozen years at a fine Maryland community college as professor and dean; eighteen of them happily married to another academic, Gwen Vosburgh.

After cancer took Gwen, a few more years at the college, and then answering an urge to move north, to what had been our planned retirement home in Fly Creek. And, months before leaving Annapolis, meeting Anne Geddes, product of her own sweep of events that had carried her, south and east, all the way from Calgary, Alberta, to southern Maryland.

And then our happy marriage, already a dozen years old, and our blessed life in our hamlet, our town, our county, our home.

It dizzies me to think back on my sweep down the stream, and the improbable surges that moved me from one setting to another. I’m tempted to change the image, think of myself as a pool ball, caroming from other balls and from cushioned sides till I come to a temporary rest — only to be rapped and sped on my way again.

Here’s an example, not from my life but from Gwen’s. For her childhood’s events ended up defining my later life, and Anne’s, too.

Gwen’s dad, pastor of Edmeston’s Second Baptist Church when she was small, accepted a call to a church in Cameron, South Carolina. That’s a village about the size of Edmeston, though its wide streets and lawns are shaded by live oaks festooned with Spanish moss, and the old houses all have deep porches and rocking chairs. Rev. Vosburgh had moved his family a thousand miles south, from peaceful Edmeston to another village of peace.

Cameron’s peace had been shattered once, though, a decade before. Sheriff George Tilley, a man in his thirties, had been called out of bed in the middle of the night. An escaped murderer had been recaptured and needed to be hauled back to the jail. A generous man and widely respected, Tilley dressed and headed out to do the job.

Whoever turned Willie Gideon over to Sheriff Tilley had not properly searched him. Out on the highway, though in handcuffs. Gideon pulled a pistol from his boot and shot Tilley. The mortally wounded sheriff was found in his wrecked car. Rushed to the hospital, he died soon after. Gideon was later caught, still in his handcuffs, and returned to prison, now to face a second murder charge.

That story was already legend in Cameron when the Vosburghs and their three daughters arrived in town. And the sheriff’s widow, Miss Johnny Tilley, as everyone called her, rocked on her front porch as the Vosburgh girls played around in the shaded yard with her own adopted niece Nancy.

The Rev. Vosburgh, by all accounts, was a selfless pastor; he took on two poor country churches as well as his Cameron charge. And he was a witty man and a practical joker, too. But strong of will, he began to lock horns with his oldest daughter as she entered her teens. That was my Gwen.

When Gwen was fifteen and the tension was high, the pastor still carried on a practical joke that had long since become old hat. He’d come in, exhausted from his schedule, stagger towards the bed, and fall on it, gasping and holding his chest. ``This is it! Goodbye all! I’m gone!’’

This act had long since brought only a dismissive ``Oh, dad!’’ from the girls and his toddler son. But one dark evening he fell on the bed, gasped, and fell silent. It was ten minutes before they realized that this was no joke. He was dead of a coronary.

My Gwen, shocked, grieved, guilt-ridden that she’d somehow caused this, ran screaming into the moonlit streets. People poured out of houses; and down her own porch steps came Miss Johnny, the dead sheriff’s .38 revolver in her hand. If something awful was happening again, by God, she was going to stop it!

Gwen ended up moving north again to spare expense to her widowed mother, two sisters, and a baby brother — and perhaps to flee undeserved guilt. She lived with Edmeston’s Chesebrough family, who generously supported her first years in college. Gwen eventually earned an M.B.A., taught first at Alfred, then was recruited down to Anne Arundel in Maryland, the same year a young ex-monk joined the faculty.

That’s how an awful night in Gwen’s childhood changed the current of her life, made it overlap with mine, and brought me to Otsego County. From grief over her death, I later fled north, too.

Mere chance or plan beyond grasping? I don’t know. But, sharing life with dear Anne, who gave me life again, I’m awed, humbled, grateful.

Read about Jim Atwell’s book, From Fly Creek--Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country, at JimAtwell. com.

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