Mattie's Pillow

Past the equinox now and the light increases daily. By the end of April, light will begin to compress the deep dark of night to a few hours and we’ll be restless for the heady time of summer with nearly endless days and fizzy energy.

But now, we’re still firmly frozen in March; for us, it’s the cruelest month. The light brings promise of spring, but even a week ago the temperatures dropped to 30 below and we know more snow will fall. This is the month of divorces and suicides-not to be too dreary about it all. We know that other places are already past crocuses and daffodils. We start our seeds inside under shop lights or in south facing windows and hope for the best, for the garden is still covered in two feet of white stuff. Now is when hope fails some of us, when even all the love and care we can spare to others in our small community is not enough and, each March, a few drop away.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I heard the news of the death of Nick Hughes, here in Fairbanks. I first heard of him in the 80s when his father, Ted Hughes, came to the Midnight Sun Writer’s Conference as faculty. It seemed like a great coup to us young writers that we had gotten such a “presence” to come to our conference–though we also had Ray Carver, Tess Gallagher, Annie Dillard, and others who were rising at the time and are the literary establishment now. There was the usual gossip of writers’ conferences–who got special favor, a private reading, and why–but among the buzz was the astonishing news that Hughes was here in part because his son, Nick, was a Ph.D. student at the university and was working as a biologist and researcher here.

“Nick?,” I said, “of ‘Nick and the Candlestick’?” Yes, that Nick, whose mother, Sylvia Plath’s, passionate poem about his birth meant so much to me as a, then, young mother. The child that figures so prominently in what’s shocking, poignant, and fascinating in Plath’s own death. I don’t want to dwell on this; what’s been important about Nick in our midst is that he lived a life as remote as could be from all this history. Those of us in literary circles who knew of his presence among us, knew, too, that he wanted nothing to do with the literary world. For all I knew, he lived among friends, was loved, loved the plant and animal life of the Interior and the wild, expansive beauty of the landscape much as all of us do who live here. For all I knew, that and our careful mindfulness not to bring the past to him, was enough. Sadly, it wasn’t.

So, now, March drifts toward April. We look around, emerging out of winter cautiously. Who is still among us? This is the time to smile at our neighbors, to give that hug–flu or no flu–to share what we can. We remember who we’ve lost and the lessons of their lives. We live with them; we incorporate them into our vision. We plant seeds; they emerge, threadlike, vulnerable, pale; we hold them in the light and hope they grow.

(To read more about Nick Hughes, here’s a link to Dermott Cole’s column in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner http://newsminer.com/news/2009/mar/23/poet-sylvia-plaths-son-prominent-fairbanks-biologi/

and a link to Plath’s poem, “Nick and the Candlestick” < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178967>  )

Tags: Alaska, Fairbanks, Nick Hughes, poetry, Psyche, spring, winter, writing

This entry was posted on March 25, 2009 at 2:11 am and is filed under View from Mattie's Pillow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.