August 4, 2024

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

Once, in season, there was a quiet in then country Rockland, a county north of New York City. Now suburban, parts urban-suburban, there is a continuing, deepening blur between Gotham and the old rural land. Those with bare summer feet once on the corn fields and orchards and country lanes remain tied to roots no matter how much growth and change marches past.

It is as Edna O’Brien, the late controversial and highly gifted Irish writer, described living in London so far removed from her County Claire upbringing. She had to write in another land to be in touch with her footing. For most, because time changes it all, you cannot go home again. But neither can you leave it – ever.

This is so whether you are country or city, suburban or hermit rural. The cast that is made in the delivery of soul at birth is never broken, and whatever gifts you are given, revealed or not by circumstance and free will, are part and parcel of your existence.

Author O’Brien, who passed last week at 93, wrote “Sometimes, one word can recall a whole span of life.” I come now to “quiet,” that one word recalling a whole span of life in my country time.

You have a word, too, for your time and place.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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