Haiku in the Gardens: Seasonal Celebration

Speaker

• 

  David Watts
  

  David Watts

  Some Little Boy Stuff:
  I began life as a very small child.

  I had boots, too. And a horse.

  Dad grew up on a farm. Naturally, he thought his boys should know how to care for animals. I admired my father greatly so I milked a cow every day. I bought my French Horn with the proceeds selling milk in those silver milk cans to the creamery down the road. Dad was a scoutmaster so I became an Eagle Scout, 12 years old. Dad was a home run hitting catcher and got offered a position playing for the St. Louis Cardinals so I played baseball. Pitched a no-hitter to a bunch of bad batters. Tennis in high school and college. Dad ended up a Professor of Religion and Philosophy. So I became a writer and a teacher.

  Mother taught herself to play piano when she was little and ended up with a Masters Degree in Music Theory and another Masters in Theology. She taught me music. So I won a bunch of medals on my French Horn and was first chair All-State Band. She played original ditties on the piano so I composed a Christmas Carol performed by the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and, recently a musical meditation for orchestra and chorus built around the German Carol “Lo How a Rose ‘er Blooming.”

  She supported my decision to take the role as Harlequin in “The Wonder Hat,” which ended up winning first place in the All-State One Act Play Competition and getting a small spread in Life Magazine. That’s me on the left below, invisible in my magical hat.

  I’d say I was lucky in my choice of parents.

  Some Adult Stuff

  In college I majored in music for two years before switching over to pre-med. Nobody in my family had been a doctor. I just liked the combination of science and people.

  Mother and Dad had that Texas “I’ll Try Anything” attitude. If a well needed dug, dad dug it. If a room needed to be added on the house, he built it and built it well. If a kindergarten needed to be founded, mother created a successful one in her front room. Never mind that they had no training. So when the idea of medicine came along, I took it. A Professorship at UCSF, I did it. Radio and Television on a national basis, yes sir! Producer of award winning videos, yes! Storm clouds gathered, but Joan came along and opened up my life. And when I stumbled into poetry I morphed through NPR commentaries to short stories, memoir, mystery novels and westerns. People ask me, “Why don’t you just be a doctor?” and I tell them, “That’s what I’m doing.”

  Naturally, I wanted to do for my children what my parents did for me. I hope I did.

  Well, my children have made me proud. They’ve all become well-adjusted, interesting and productive adults: a Pediatrician, a Professional Violinist, a Registered Nurse, an Attorney, a Musician and Landscape Artist, a Stage Manager for Theatre Productions fluent in Japanese, and an Artist and Musician in training. I like to say they each took something I did and did it better. That’s the best.

  Most are old enough to have raised their own families now. They don’t live in Texas. But every now and then I see a little of that “Texas I can do anything” attitude popping up: a cross-country bicycle trip, forming a musical group of sisters that tours the country, traveling to South America to improve the health and sanitation of the underprivileged, winning the World Series of City Baseball Teams, singlehandedly stage managing a complicated theater production without a slip up, accompanying his father on guitar playing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah on his French Horn at the Methodist Church Christmas celebration. Things like that. Really good people.

  Now the grandchildren are pushing out into the world with their own great attitudes and their own marvelous talents. So it goes.

  I have to say I’m pretty happy about all that.