Another Day in the Country
Wreck of the Hesperus
© Another Day in the Country
Normally, early in the morning, still snug in my bed, I think about the day ahead.
What’s going to happen? Are there appointments to meet? Is the weather still bad? Can I get to the street? Are there tasks to be done? (Of course.) More important, will I do them? Is there anything urgent or coming due? (Then again, will I pursue them?) Is it still so cold? Does it look dreary? Should I be wearing something cheery? (This wasn’t meant to rhyme, it just happened.)
What sounds good for my breakfast, I ask myself. Rarely do I get up before I decide. The anticipated meal is motivation: pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs? A muffin, some coffee? What about fresh orange juice? Do I still have those mandarins in the fridge?
After all this mulling around, my decision is made — partly on availability and partly on what I am hungry for.
I’m going to make another frittata with a leftover baked potato, fresh peppers, and farm-fresh eggs — the hens are laying again — and add an English muffin with homemade strawberry/blueberry jam.
That sounds good enough to get me out of bed. So, I trek to the kitchen, make the above-mentioned meal, serve it on a lovely white china platter, and carry it all back to the bedroom, which is the sunniest room in the house on a cold winter morning.
My breakfast was so good! The potatoes had been fried to crispy perfection before the peppers and eggs were added. Parmesan cheese was the right choice, adding a little tang to the concoction.
Blueberry / strawberry jelly — who would have thought of that combination? That would be me, using left over fruit from some other breakfast and discovering that with the addition of blueberries and all that purple color, there was no need to add food coloring to winter strawberries when making jam. It’s naturally this lustrous, luscious, deep burgundy color and so yummy.
If I were at a restaurant this morning, instead of perched on the side of my own bed in my own bedroom, I’d be thinking, “This was really yummy!”
The English muffins were toasted to perfection and still warm when I sat down to eat. The eggs were fluffy, fresh, and cooked the way I like them, and the potatoes a crispy, crunchy, delicious addition to the dish.
“What a lovely breakfast. We’ll have to come to this restaurant again. It’s delish.”
Just then — reality check — as I looked up and caught sight of myself in a mirror hanging on the wall.
I saw this old woman, dressed in a raggedy gown, uncombed hair, no glasses, a mess.
“You look like the wreck of the Hespers,” I mumbled to myself, and the phrase stopped me in my tracks, breakfast dishes in hand — because at this restaurant, I am the head chef, the wait staff, and the dishwasher as well as the consumer.
Where does “wreck of the Hespers,” come from, I wondered?
I hadn’t heard that phrase in years. Who even says that anymore? I remember my mother saying it if she felt untidy, below par.
“I look like the wreck of the Hesperus,” she would say.
Who the heck were the Hesperus?
I googled it. I must say that googling is the greatest invention! Even though it deserves to be double-checked at times, it usually gives you good information.
Who knew, for instance, that there once was a ship called the Hesperus, and it was wrecked.
William Dugan did a painting of the shipwreck, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about it.
I had never heard the story. I just knew the saying.
The story goes that a skipper took his young daughter out in his sailing ship to have a lovely day with her, and a storm came up.
The skipper was confident in his ability to handle the ship, but for safety’s sake, when the storm got rough, so she wouldn’t be washed overboard, he tied his little girl to the mainsail. When the ship sank, they all drowned. A terrible, sad tale.
While I’d never heard the story, seen the painting, or even read Longfellow’s poem, the phrase was part of my family’s culture.
Was the phrase carried on by my great-grandma from current events or my grandma? Would she have read Longfellow in school? I doubt it as she finished only third grade. It might have been Mom, doing plays at Ramona High School.
Then here I am, having never heard the story, in my 80s, and the phrase comes bubbling to the surface, and I say to myself, after looking in the mirror, “You look like the wreck of the Hespers.” I didn’t know it was really the “Hesperus.”
Who reads Longfellow anymore? Who reads poetry, period? I do, and this morning found me reading Longfellow’s sad poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus.”
It was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company….
The skipper, he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now west, now south.
The description sounds like Kansas, blowing hot and cold. I can relate.
Come hither! Come hither, my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
The poem goes on at great length to tell the story of the ship going down, everything and everyone lost.
But today is another day in the country, thankfully not a day on a storm-ravaged sea. I’ve had my breakfast, and you’ve read a portion of a very old poem, which I hope reminds you to be grateful to be living on the wide-open prairie, with courage enough for whatever the day brings.