Things are not always what they appear to be. During the weekend, Linda and I toured the Thoreson House in Westby, the home of the Westby Area Historical Society. It was their Christmas holiday tour and all the rooms were decorated. The theme was “Victorian Christmas Through the Eyes of a Child.”
In one room there was an antique cradle, built in the style of old Norwegian cradles we’ve seen. We were told that at one time this particular cradle was thought to be haunted. Many times when the family returned home, they would come in the door and find the cradle rocking back and forth. It was very unsettling and the family thought that some spirit was using the cradle while they were gone. It would slow down and quit rocking soon after they came in the house. It was as if the spirit left the cradle when it heard them coming.
One day they decided to be very quiet when they came home and maybe they could catch the ghost or spirit still in the cradle. They slowly opened the door without making a sound, and tip-toed over to the cradle that wasn’t moving at all. As they peered into the cradle, they startled their dog that had been sleeping in it. The dog jumped out of the cradle and quickly disappeared into the next room, leaving the cradle rocking back and forth, just as it always did when they entered the house. So much for a ghost in the cradle. Things are not always what they appear to be. There’s usually a simple explanation.
There’s one incident that I’ve never been able to explain. It involved my friend Dennis. He was a big, bear of a man with a heavy beard and always wore a cap. I kidded Barbara, his partner, that he probably even wore it to bed. Dennis looked like a tough lumberjack straight out of the Northwoods. He was one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever known.
I mentioned in an earlier story how he called me when he found out that he was dying from cancer. He wanted me to know, but didn't want me to tell anyone else. He didn't want sympathy from people. That’s when he gave me his peace pipe.
I had decided that I wanted to give Dennis something too, as a token of our friendship. At one time we had talked about a watch that I had worn in Vietnam. I took it off the dead body of a Vietcong in the early days of my tour and had worn it for many years until it finally just quit running. It was an American watch that the Vietcong soldier had probably stripped off a dead American at one time.
In our talking about it, he likened that insignificant watch to the broader picture of the total connection of all things in the universe. The dead American, the dead Vietcong, and I all had a connection. Not just the watch, but we were all part of creation, all made of the same material, and in another time and place we could all have been friends instead of enemies. We could have been sitting around just as he and I were, discussing the mysteries of life and death. Instead, I was the only one still standing, at least in this world.
There was something about Dennis that I couldn’t put my finger on. He seemed to have an energy force that flowed from him and made things happen that were hard to explain. That day, Dennis, Barbara, and I walked out to the point of the plaza of The Highground near Neillsville, next to the Vietnam memorial statue that holds the wind chimes with the names of all the Wisconsin men who died in Vietnam.
As we stood at the point, I took out the watch and explained to Dennis that it was the watch I had worn all those years–the one we had talked about before. It hadn’t worked for years, but I still wanted him to have it because of its significance. As he took the watch in his big hand and looked at it, he smiled and held it back out toward Barbara and me. He didn’t say a word. The second hand of the watch was going around again. The watch that hadn’t run for years was now running. I took it from his hand to look at it. The hands stopped. Barbara took it and held it, and the watch was still silent. She handed it back to Dennis. As soon as it was lying in his open hand, the watch returned to life again. I have no explanation for it. He seemed to have an energy source within his touch that Barbara and I didn’t possess. There was something about him that always seemed mysterious, beyond normal explanation. It was as if he was in touch with a higher power or energy force that most people don’t have or don’t know how to access.
There’s probably some simple answer, just as the cradle wasn’t inhabited by a ghost, but by the family dog. Things are not always what they appear to be, but some things defy all rational explanations. That’s OK with me. The world needs to have things that remain a mystery to us and have no rational explanation.
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