A Still Moon and Stars: Early Columns, and More

By David Rooks

In early March, Michael, my nine-year-old, called me to come outside. From my easy chair in front of the television, I hesitated. It was late evening and it was chilly out there. My son came in, took my hand, led me into the backyard and up the steps to our deck. It was very dark. I could barely make out Sandi, my wife, bundled in a blanket on a wicker chair. A little further away, equally enwrapped, sat Jenny. Michael, whom I lost momentarily, had by now climbed onto a pallet bed covered with blankets and a pillow on the deck floor.

A comforter draped chair awaited me. For a few minutes we spoke about events of the day. We then moved on to concerns, at the time, pressing. Eventually, we seemed to settle on old milestones: vacations, reunions, the like. The space between our whispering grew. Soon we were silent.

I became aware of how the pine trees formed a colonnade around the edge of our backyard; shadow sentries between us and the canyon below. Above the pines were the stars and a crescent moon over the Seven Sisters to the east. There were so many stars, so many; and planets, too, coursing overhead like an hour hand across the Zodiac. We were all still as a lake, and welcomed the galaxies in.

The universe is an unconquerable mystery, and so are we; both can be so beautiful, so achingly beautiful: ourselves, the still moon and stars. We try to decipher what few answers we can about the questions they pose. Not from some noble quest, but simply to know.

Over the past sixteen years, at my best, Ive tried to chronicle the beauty and the questions as theyve come to me. Mostly, Ive had to be satisfied with the mysteries big and small. And that is what I write about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449772475

David Rooks

David Lawrence Rooks was born the second of premature twin boys in Phoenix, Arizona in 1956. He spent 10 formative years near there in the valley towns of Chandler and Tempe, Arizona. He then moved with his family to his father’s Native land of the Oglala Lakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where he graduated high school at Red Cloud Indian School in 1974. He attended College at Mount Marty in Yankton, SD on an academic/ athletic scholarship, and later attended Chadron State College in Chadron, NE. on the GI Bill. He learned life lessons on the oil fields of Colorado, Utah, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. He also served our country with the First Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas for four years. Dave has worked at Red Cloud School, and written for several newspapers and magazines, including the Rapid City Journal where he has been a columnist from 1997 up to the present. In his spare time he has coached soccer for a decade to young boys and girls across Western South Dakota. He currently lives in Hot Springs, SD where he and his wife are raising their six children, two cats, a dog, twelve fi sh, and one black widow spider.

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Copyright © 2012

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-7247-5 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-7248-2 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919826

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/19/2012

Contents

Dedictation

Acknowledgements

Preface

Winter

Absence and separation

A wave and a sigh

So, it’s come to this

The backward view

Mother Teresa

Left on the floor

Uh, Jingle Bells?

Faith in winter

Spring

In the beginning

A bowl of moonlight

An eagle’s view

Choosing love

My reel life

Lessons at six

Training days

A Lakota warrior

Summer

Life abundantly

The Friday night fights

Chaos theory

Heaven sent

We meet at Jericho

No two the same

Neda

A rainy sidewalk

Autumn

Communication and communion

Taught and learned

River mists

Living broken

The seeds appearing

The King’s good servant

One still grateful voice

Some scale mountains

Hope over experience

Echoes of Hope*

Dedictation

To my lovely wife, Sandi,

who endures the worst to nurture the best.

Acknowledgements

This collection of columns, the brunt of which are from my first year in the Rapid City Journal in 1997, is the result of multiple requests. Over the years, it was my fortune to gain readers simpatico with my views and affection for how I expressed them. Many thanks to them. Then there is the coterie who made this collection possible: Ted Brockish, my first editor, who read my first frail attempts and still said yes; Peg Sagen, long time managing editor and dear friend – who now resides among eternal stars; Clark Sowers, publisher and best friend. To all these: heartfelt gratitude.

Preface

A Still Moon and Stars

Early Columns, and More

In early March, Michael, my nine-year-old, called me to come outside. From my easy chair in front of the television, I hesitated. It was late evening and it was chilly out there. My son came in, took my hand, led me into the backyard and up the steps to our deck. It was very dark. I could barely make out Sandi, my wife, bundled in a blanket on a wicker chair. A little further away, equally enwrapped, sat Jenny. Michael, whom I lost momentarily, had by now climbed onto a pallet bed covered with blankets and a pillow on the deck floor.

A comforter draped chair awaited me. For a few minutes we spoke about events of the day. We then moved on to concerns, at the time, pressing. Eventually, we seemed to settle on old milestones: vacations, reunions, the like. The space between our whispering grew. Soon we were silent.

I became aware of how the pine trees formed a colonnade around the edge of our backyard; shadow sentries between us and the canyon below. Above the pines were the stars and a crescent moon over the Seven Sisters to the east. There were so many stars, so many; and planets, too, coursing overhead like an hour hand across the Zodiac. We were all still as a lake, and welcomed the galaxies in.

The universe is an unconquerable mystery, and so are we; both can be so beautiful, so achingly beautiful: ourselves, the still moon and stars. We try to decipher what few answers we can about the questions they pose. Not from some noble quest, but simply to know. Over the past sixteen years, at my best, I’ve tried to chronicle the beauty and the questions as they’ve come to me. Mostly, I’ve had to be satisfied with the mysteries – big and small. And that is what I write about.

David Rooks

April 9, 2012

Winter

My first column. This appeared in the Life & Style section of the Rapid City Journal on January 9, 1997. Courtesy of Journal Editor, Ted Brockish.

Absence and separation

Passing Sarah’s room the other day, I glanced in and stopped. The afternoon light hushed the empty room. Her door was ajar, and I saw on the carpet her worn blue jeans, three small plastic horses from her collection, and a few other odds and ends. I knew a few steps down the hall this scene repeated itself – except there it was the paraphernalia of 7-year-old Jessica.

Pale afternoon light has always been for me like the certain songs we have from our youth. It conjures memories. One year ago, in this same yellow light, I knew the melancholy of this scene. Sarah and Jess had gone to their mother’s for the school year. I remember how I could neither completely close nor open their doors. Not an inch either way. Nor could I pick up their clothes, wash them, or put them away.

That afternoon I meditated on how completely reality outpaces our imaginings. When the girls’ mother and I were divorcing I only vaguely perceived its consequences. I knew, as much as my angry selfishness would permit, that the split would lead to real sorrows for Sarah and Jess. While periodically my ex-wife and I are without our children, unceasingly our daughters are missing either their mother or father. Occasionally, I get to pretend at wholeness; for them, it’s never there.

What fixes the vagueness to our perceptions about divorce is our national mania for viewing it in cold statistics (for example: the percentage of marriages that fail, or the number of children growing up in single-parent households). At the very least, this approach fails on two counts. First, our penchant for the statistical view is at best an autopsy seeking bland and sub-human categories. Second, how long we endure the daily barrage of numbers before we capitulate to seeing divorce as normal becomes the only question. Not if, but when.

My own mother and father are within a year of their 50th wedding anniversary. Not for them the ghost of the half-light, the long strung together months when their children were missing. Nor has there ever been, for me