A poet’s singing voice rises from the Northport orchard
By Madeleine Hill Vedel
Sun contributor
This story was published in our May 13, 2021, print edition.
Julia Brabenec lives up in Northport, just off M-22, in a stone house that was built by her own hands, her husband’s and their children’s hands. The house sits in an organic orchard beside a vineyard. Petite in stature, eyes large and vibrant inside her heart-shaped face, Julia’s ever-present smile framed in fly-away silver and white, a vibrant shawl of orange and gold gracefully draped over her shoulders. Her voice, whether over the phone or in person, is assured and melodic, liberally embroidered with gracious notes of self-deprecation, gratefulness and humor.
Born in Dearborn, Julia has lived and traveled afar, spending large chunks of her life in Colorado and Canada. It was the treasured memory of their honeymoon that brought Julia and her husband John, in their 50s, their three children grown, to settle in Leelanau County. For some, that might have been a period of slowing down and adopting quiet routines, but for the Brabenecs, it was a period of growth and creation, of gardens and orchards, of building and planting. Forty years later, Julia, alone since her beloved husband and soul mate John passed 11 years ago, continues to tend her garden, to sing in her church and village choirs, and to spin words into poems. The orchard has been sold, the garden reduced to what she can manage on her own.
But Julia is not one to sit at home (unless compelled by a pandemic), nor to sit idle. Her life story, and the story of her organic orchard, are told in the first chapter of Emita Brady Hill’s book, Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming. However, only those closest to her know of her love of words, whether spoken or set to music.
I first learned of Julia’s poetry at her 90th birthday party in 2016, celebrated at the Northport Inn amongst friends and family (She was born in 1926). There, she spun the yarn of her arrival on this earth, as the sixth of eight children, on a cold December morning: nine stanzas in rhyme and verse. It begins:
My Story
I came into this big world on a cold December morn,
My daddy called the doctor to help his son be born.
He didn’t know that Lady Luck was up to her old tricks
And Daddy was about to greet his Daughter, number Six.
While Dad brought out his homemade wine to celebrate the day
My Mama knew there was work to do, cuz I was on the way.
So Ma and me we labored while Dad and Doc drank wine
And we girls got the birthing done and everything went fine…
Until I came out wrapped inside the amniotic sac.…
and I was scared cuz I thought they might try to send me back.
But Mama told the doctor when he came to cut me free,
That sac was a Good Omen, and good luck would follow me.
…
“It started out as a little song,” Julia told me. “Spending most of our lives in the gardens and the orchards, I had no time to really do any writing. But I would make up little songs out in the orchard, and hope that I could remember the tune when I came back into the house and plunk it out on my auto harp. And that was one of my songs, and instead of singing it [at the party] I recited it. I have a little notebook where I wrote it out by hand. I would play with it in my mind for a while, and then try to remember it while I went, to put it in a little bit more solid form when I went into the house. It didn’t come out immediately, I was trying to remember it, doing the rhymey stuff. It’s tedious work being in the orchard, doing that work, so it was a past-time to do while we worked.”
Deprived of church choir this year, of the Village Voices, of gatherings at the Leland Old Art Building for Poetry Month, or the Share/Care Follies, Julia has been observing her world and capturing it in verse. She has shared many of her poems with friends via Facebook throughout the pandemic, with the total topping 100. For some, the muse began over breakfast tea as she looked out her windows upon the ever shifting world of birds and foliage, some in her clawfoot bathtub, some on a walk through her former orchard, or tossing a ball for her devoted canine companion.
“There have been times when several [poems] will pop up during a week. I don’t post everything. I hesitate, especially when I get depressed with the world. My poems tend to get a bit overwhelming and preachy. So I limit what I post to something light and humorous, not too heavy duty. When I have decided I’m just going to do it, I don’t get too many ‘likes’.”
“People don’t want to read someone’s dark thoughts. But I have them.”
Poetry and song hold a special place in Julia’s life. Her elementary school years were spent in a one-room school house near Richmond, Michigan, where one teacher, creative and capable, taught all eight grades. There, Julia’s instruction included memorizing poems such as The House by the Side of the Road by Sam Walter Foss; all five verses of which still come readily to her tongue:
Let me live in a house
by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
There she participated in little plays and music programs. At home her sisters shared their love of song and performance, leading her to master most every song Shirley Temple sang. In later years she and her husband John would participate in local theater and follies.
Birthdays, celebrations, the seasons and world events inspire. Every family member has their poem. Upon her bookshelves a quick glance reveals the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet whose words continue to inspire her:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit, Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
She also has many volumes of her fellow Northern Michigan authors, Anne-Marie Oomen, Michael Delp, Kathleen Stocking, to name a few.
As we speak, spring is emerging outside, the first flowers, the Phoebes singing in the branches, geese honking as they fly above, inspiring Julia’s Poem du Jour:
Spring Fragrance
A Persian poet once wrote on his scroll,
“Had I two pennies, with one I’d buy bread
and with the other, Hyacinths for my soul.”
This flower’s fragrance has the power to
awaken and extol a mystic spell of Spring
and conjure up a poet living centuries ago.
Daffodils, or Jonquils as they’re often called,
have so delicate a scent that surely they’re
behooved to be especially bold – enthralling
Sun’s bright rays to paint April with their gold
Spring’s messages abound; The season of
Awakening! As certain as the world is round,
so clearly shown is our profound connection
with everything in all of Nature that is known.
As for me, I’m happy understanding; In that
long ago formation of this Earth, the cells that
would one day create my body at my birth are
known to be in kin with the Flowers of Spring.
March 23, 2021
Looking forward to future open mic nights, to a return to song and connection, Julia for the moment contents herself with gathering via Zoom until more friends and villagers are vaccinated against COVID-19, and we can again come together in person. May that day come soon.
