Su mmer
pleasures

SWINGING

e are in the midst
the dog days, so
sticky and absent of
promise. In the morn-
ing, mist rises from a
soaked lawn, dissolving
into oppressive after-
noons bent on turning us
all into thermal statisticians. "It's
not the heat, it's the humidity,"
leaps off the tongues of all those
who have not escaped to the
mountains or the beaches.
The knot of summer days un-
ties itself invisibly like a thief,
and I am left swinging with a
baby in a hammock, a present
from the boy and his older broth-

W

BY STEPHEN VICCHIO

il of

ILLUSTRATION WILLIAM E. DUGAN IV

Stephen Vicchio teaches
philosophy at the College of
Notre Dame of Maryland.

er on Father's Day. For a teacher a land of silence, a place where
there is little to do in these surface is the essence. No strip-
days— a steamy nether world ping down is needed, no insis-
somewhere between the spring tent teacher-student questions
term's final exams and the first about what is absolutely here.
blush of September's new stu- Just the silent understanding
between us that there is love,
and a certain stillness, in the
swinging.
In winter so much is dosed
and hidden. The landscape
stands bleak and static. It is
best for us to stay inside,
even if it means moving
—John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
about in an atmosphere of
claustrophobia and noise. In
winter, at least for the fa-
dents. And so, to avoid the heat, ther, the discerning eye so often
and perhaps to recover some- is left to find its way in an in-
thing lost, I swing.
ward night.
In this dog-day swinging, the
But here, in the heat— and in
boy and his father have found the hammock— I am nourished

Thou foster-child
of silence,
and slow Time.

as by sound sleep after deep
pain. The smallest of my veins
drinks slow-time and I can
breathe again. In summer, time
beats as truly as our hearts, but
it beats by a slower rhythm. Its
pendulum swings silently, lan-
guidly, like a small boy and his
father in a hammock full of hap-
piness.
We swing and silently rejoice
in the outward forms of sum-
mer's light: a sparrow hopping
from branch to branch; the an-
cient shadow of an old shed
splaying its dark geometry
across a green field; the sun and
trees repositioning themselves
with every tilt of the head, every
swing of the hammock. The
green seems a mysterious liquid
that moves from one tree to the
next, like tender words passed
between lovers in the making of
a child.
After a few moments, I can
feel the boy's breathing syn-
chronize with mine. Our chests
rise and fall together, our hearts
slow together, we swing... and
swing... and swing— and in my
mind the motion and the smell
of the boy become silently, eter-
nally married to summer.
Some day this boy will learn
that we live between two great
silences— the silence of the not-
yet and the stillness of the grave.
If he is like his father, he will try
to make sense of these silences,
so full of nothing. But the silence
of the here and now, the silence
amidst the lattice-work of this
rope hammock is of a different
kind, for it is made of something.
In this silence the boy seems to
understand as well as his father
that sometimes for hearts to be
filled to the brim they must first
be made still.
For so much of my life, I have
understood how often the heart
forces us to speak, sometimes
more to wound than to heal. But
today, in the hammock, perhaps
for the first time, it has insisted
on this new silence... and the
stillness... and the swinging.

❑

STYLE • SUMMER 1995

•17

