WHISTLE PRAYERS
On warm summer nights you would lie awake and listen to the frogs and the crickets and eventually you would hear the whistle which signaled the start of night shift at the old Colver mine. You never let your parents know, but you waited for that whistle and whispered a tiny prayer that your dad would return to occupy the kitchen rocker with a cup of coffee the next morning.
Funny how you rarely heard that whistle whenever your dad worked a different shift. And coal mines were little on your mind during the day whenever the sun warmed your brain. You never asked questions about the mines. It was just a way of life for too many in Pennsylvania. You just put on your uniform and went to school each day.
Your dad coughed until you were almost crazy just listening. Your mother said that he smoked too much, and he did. But still you scrubbed that black dust off his lunch bucket and scrubbed it out of his clothes. And if you closed your eyes, even now, you would picture him with coal dust around his eyes.
You admired your older sister; fought with your younger sister; and envied your brother's position as one of a kind. There was nothing like the taste of the first garden tomato each summer, or the thrill of the first and last snowfall of the winter. And somehow, you could feel your bones grow during each grainy mountain springtime.
You lived with the layoffs, the strikes, and the rumors of mine closings. Your youthfulness often resented your dad's ups and downs and looked beyond his weariness. Through it all, that whistle was your only real contact with the unspoken pit.
On your wedding day, you saw yourself in the wet-green of your father's eyes. You saw that the whistle prayers were as much a part of his life as the sweat and the coal dust. And although your life moved on and away from that old country road, you still listened hard into the night whenever you opened the windows to summer sounds.
And then one hot sleepless night in June you wished yourself home because you hadn't been, and when the phone rang before dawn you somehow knew that the whistle prayers were over.
Time rolled in slow motion, at least for a while. There was much bitterness and disbelief with retirement so close. There were tears, and his mine clothes to be washed one last time. Once more, you moved on with your life far away from the late night whistle. And now, with each June comes the crickets and the memories. Nights are hot, and often restless. You close your eyes to patches to purple and black; your mother's hair streaked with white, the latest photograph of a niece or nephew.
Occasionally during a very light sleep, you startle to the harsh sound of walls crashing down. For a few moments your body feels heavy as you try to breathe. Then you listen hard but the frogs and crickets seem to call in hollow voices.
You get up and check your young daughter and even younger son. Sometimes in the stillness, you catch your father's shadow as you creep into their rooms. You whisper, "Thanks Dad," and promise to someday tell them about the whistle prayers.
Copyright © 2009 Carol Larese Millward
