That’s Nebraska’s current tourism slogan, and it seems perfect to me. Most people from the state (at least among those I know) will freely admit there are no obviously sublime sights, no real mountains, no towering redwoods, no massive canyons, only one real waterfall (and it ain’t much by Niagara standards). But then they will say something like, “it’s got a lot of subtle beauty.” And so it does. I was born in ranch country, way out in the northwest corner of the state, in the shadow of a rock formation known as Crow Butte, in the small but once raucous town of Crawford, which had grown up adjacent to a major Old West cavalry fort, Fort Robinson. I only lived there the first three years of my life, but that butte and that landscape seem to have been seriously imprinted in my consciousness. My next 20-some years were spent in the eastern half of the state, in farm country rather than ranch country, and later in the city of Omaha. For one glorious year in my late 20s I moved out west again, a little further south, along Oregon Trail landmarks of Chimney Rock, and Courthouse and Jail rocks. I left due to the little issue of having to make a living, so returned to Omaha. I have spent the last 20 years in Wisconsin, a state with many redeeming features and nice landscapes. But it doesn’t feed my soul. This summer I’m planning to make what may well be a farewell tour of my Nebraska roots. Solo. I’ll spend the first long day driving some 600 miles to Grand Island, about a third of the way into Nebraska, along good old boring Interstate 80. From there I will pick up Highway 2, which wends its way through the wondrous Sand Hills, “a place like no other,” and, according to the old TV commentator Charles Kurault, one of the ten most scenic drives in the country, past ranches and open land and rolling hills, sagebrush and tumbleweeds. I’ll end up that day around Crawford, and the next morning I will climb up Crow Butte, and look down on Crawford, and say hello and goodbye to the toddler me who looked up there from the streets below. Perhaps I will drive to the White River canyon, which I know was one of my father’s favorite sites; perhaps I’ll catch the image of the young man he was standing on the banks, his flyrod flicking, and the line curling out into the water. I'll try to visit Toadstool Park, a southern extension of The Badlands. Next day I’ll head south, to Scottsbluff, and climb up Scotts Bluff, then out past Chimney Rock, and to Courthouse and Jail rocks. If time permits I will climb up Courthouse, and say hi to the younger me who loved to hang out there. I recall the summer of my year out there when a friend came out from Omaha to visit. He asked what I liked so much about being there. We climbed up Courthouse and iooked west, over open and barren landscape and felt the wind and smelled sage, and I said, “this is why.” And he agreed. That night I may camp in the Wildcat Hills, an area of bluffs and canyons. Next day I’ll wend my way back to civilization, perhaps making an overnight in Omaha to see my daughter and grandkids, and finally to Wisconsin. I won’t have any fabulous photos to share, but perhaps some subtle ones. But mostly, I’ll feel like I’ve done what I needed to do, and perhaps eased some of this deep and perhaps irrational longing to soothe my inner child. And have made a real goodbye to someplace only some people, myself among them, could love.
I've been reading H.L. Mencken's A Choice of Days, selections from his autobiography that deal with his early adult life, culminating with his work as reporter and later city editor of the Baltimore Sun. Engaging, clever, sometimes painfully casually racist, but all in all a good read. But what I am most taken by at the moment is the cover photo of him as a young man, at a desk, corncob pipe in one hand, a stack of typed paper to one side of an old-fashioned typewriter, with his other hand poised above the keys. Reminds me of a chapter of my own days, when I was briefly the general news reporter for a small but venerable weekly newspaper out in western Nebraska. I had a desk with a manual typewriter, and I used it for all my stories. Crank the paper in, start typing, try to keep the keys from locking up, sometimes X-ing out errors and so on, slogging and writing. It never occurred to me that there might be an easier way. I'd turn my stories in to the editor, he'd read them, make some changes in writing, let me look it over, then we'd send it back to the typesetter. At least she did not do the old-fashioned actual lead type-setting, she did have a sort of massive word-processing machine. But the chief printer was also the typesetter for ads, and he did do manual typesetting. Then on Wednesday evening into the late hours he would run the presses, and we would help load the raw paper and stack the output, every once in awhile the head printer reviewing a random copy to be sure the ink was still dark enough. Then we'd drive around town and fill the newspaper boxes, and the outstate copies would go to the post office. How long ago that was, though it must seem even longer ago to Millennials and beyond. I left that job because I couldn't live on $125 a week, with no benefits. But I still miss it, manual typewriter and all. Flash forward a few years, after I graduated from law school and had my first job, as law clerk to a federal judge. He was in his late 80s, a senior judge with a reduced docket, and a secretary not a whole lot younger who had been with him throughout his legal career. When I showed up all spiffed and ready to go, she looked askance at me. She pointed to my office and said, "I don't do typing for law clerks. And your typewriter is broken." So my first month or so, until she warmed to me, I spent writing out my memos and draft opinions by hand on yellow legal pads. Bottom line: I sure missed that old manual typewriter out west. Eventually all the judge's offices and clerks got word processors (nascent computers, but then there was no internet) and I became adept with that. And I moved on and up the digital ladder, so these days I am quite nimble with my Microsoft word. But at least I have a memory of that old manual typewriter, and I miss it. Or maybe I just miss the me I was back then, in the technological dark ages.
Some days it's hard to get motivated to write, suspecting that it doesn't matter what I write or how well (or poorly) I do it. There was a time when I had visions of publication, or at least the idea that I could accomplish something of somehow lasting significance. But even back then I suspected I was chasing an illusion. One of my favorite poets has long been Stephen Spender, and one of my favorite of his poems is "What I Expected." He writes that What I expected, was Thunder, fighting, Long struggles with men And climbing. After continual straining I should grow strong; Then the rocks would shake And I rest long. What I had not foreseen Was the gradual day Weakening the will Leaking the brightness away, The lack of good to touch, The fading of body and soul Smoke before wind, Corrupt, unsubstantial. The wearing of Time, And the watching of cripples pass With limbs shaped like questions In their odd twist, The pulverous grief Melting the bones with pity, The sick falling from earth - These, I could not foresee. Expecting always Some brightness to hold in trust Some final innocence Exempt from dust, That, hanging solid, Would dangle through all Like the created poem, Or the faceted crystal. I know now that nothing is "exempt from dust," that nothing "hangs solid," that there is no lasting finality. Knowing that, it's hard to keep from wondering why bother to do it at all. Why spend time and toil on something that in the scheme of things, means nothing? But even as I write this, at the risk of touching on some deep darkness, I sense the answer. It's not really the writing that matters, though it's possible sometimes to write something that can make a reader pause and feel touched at some level. It's not a seeking of praise or lucre, not anymore. But what does matter is the writing itself, the doing, the edits and re-edits, the unexpected sense of joy that arises when I create a sentence or phrase that makes me pause, that matters not only because I like it but even more because I didn't know I had that within me. It's that flow of creative energy that matters to me now, not the result, in the same way that a river is not defined by the water that flows through it or even by the shapes it carves in the landscape, because in the fullness of time, those shapes, those banks, will be lost, will merge into some future world. And though it's possible some future geologist or archeologist will be able to re-imagine that river, it will never flow again. In the same way, my stacks of written stories, and my even more expansive set of unprinted electronic files, are out there in the world, at least for now, but even as I read them -- or on the rare occasions that others do -- they aren't real anymore. If I've done it right, there may be some residual value, but only that it might trigger myself or that rare reader to reflect at least momentarily on the wonder and mystery and simple being of the world in which, temporarily, find ourselves. But what mattered is ultimately lost, the same way those rivers have run dry. But it matters enough that the rivers did flow, and it matters to me that I have been immersed in the flow, that I have, however briefly, found myself in the endless moment of the now.
My kid sister died about a month ago. I'm still processing it. I tried to capture it below, but I'm so close to it that I can't tell if it's worth reading, or it's TMI. I didn't want to post it in the workshop, because it's not meant as a project but as an effort to understand. I recently touched death, touched it when I held the icy-cold, blackened, hand of my dying kid sister and learned from her the art of dying right. Susan (not her real name) was diagnosed with cancer about four months earlier, but had been on a chemotherapy regime that seemed to be working. Whenever I asked how she was doing she said fine. And I asked her relatively often, since she and I had only re-established real communication about a year earlier. Our 20-year estrangement, pointless and unnecessary as it seems now, had been nonetheless real. But once we’d broken through that, we began to catch up on what had been lost, and were texting and calling on a regular basis. Since we lived 500 miles apart and my weekend visits were always crowded and crammed, we hadn’t yet sat down alone and talked. I was about to write her a long email saying all the things I th0ught needed saying when I got a call from my daughter suggesting I come down immediately, because Susan was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. After a 7-hour drive I went directly to the hospital and up to Susan’s room. Walking in I saw my nephew John, Susan’s 35-year-old firstborn. A big, bearded man, taller than me, he walked over, put his head on my shoulder, and sobbed. I looked around the room and saw Susan’s other son, her daughter and son-in-law, her ex-husband, and my daughter all standing with red-rimmed eyes. Susan lay in her hospital bed, looking with almost childlike intensity at her hands, which she held out in front of her, red blotches forming on the wrists and palms. Her lower legs and feet were uncovered and also blotched, which I wrongly presumed was due to some medication. She recognized me and greeted me softly as I bent down to her tired face. My memories of the next two days are a blur of friends and family and medical personnel coming in and out, phone calls, cold pizza, and short nights. I held out until my two oldest and closest friends, a married couple, showed up. When the wife asked me how I was doing I tried to answer but couldn’t speak when reality welled up without warning. I lay my head on her shoulder and sobbed as she hugged me while her husband stood by. But soon the grief melted again into love. I got myself back together, and we stood by Susan’s bed and talked with her. As time went by it became obvious Susan was not going to get better. The doctors explained that the cancer and chemo had combined to weaken her immune system and she had developed a massive infection that was causing severe and untreatable blood clotting throughout her body. Her hands and feet had hurt because the blood had pooled behind the clots; they no longer hurt her because they had, for all intent and purpose, died. The doctors said they had done what they could, but the only real option at this point was palliative care. They said she could live for a few months, or could go any time. Her sons began contacting local hospice providers, a challenging task on a Thursday. Palliative care meant generous use of painkillers and on the third day Susan actually seemed to be better. At least she was awake and not in pain. And almost miraculously the sons had found a hospice ready to spring into immediate action. That afternoon her kids, her two closest friends, and I gathered her up into a wheelchair and took her down to the cancer ward’s private garden, where we enjoyed the warm September sun, sat and talked, even laughed a bit. All the while her hands and feet were blackening, dying for lack of blood flow. But at least they didn’t hurt her anymore. One thing she said, one phrase she often repeated, was simply, “it’s all good.” She smiled every time she said it. After we took her upstairs again, the hospice said they were ready to help out in any way they could. When they asked Susan what she wanted, her answer was simple. “If I can’t get well, I want to go home.” The hospice immediately ordered up a hospital bed and sent that and medical supplies to her home, and promised to take her there first thing in the morning. The hospice people were good as their word, transported her home and put her in her bed, which had been set up in her dining room, with a view of the backyard she loved. But Susan never saw it. She had fallen into a deep sleep that night in the hospital and never opened her eyes again. But they say the sense of hearing is the last to go, and if that's true, she knew she was home, knew she was loved. Later that morning our 97-year-old mother was brought over, and she sat on a chair beside Susan’s bed, holding Susan’s blackened hand and talking through her tears, revisiting scenes from Susan’s childhood. Every time Mom took a break, someone else came over. When I was there I said, haltingly through my own tears, how much I loved her, and, recalling what I could about Buddhist and Quaker teachings, advised her to trust in the universe and always seek out the bright light. I quoted her own words back to her, “remember, it’s all good.” And as I looked around the room, felt and saw the love emanating from all those caring and concerned faces, I knew it to be true. When I look back, more than anything else I marvel at the way Susan’s slow death brought so many of us together, how rooms filled with grief and tears also teemed with love and openness, and how all that rekindled bonds between family and friends. It hurt awfully, of course, and it still hurts. When I think back at those days, the image that invariably comes first to my mind is the sensation of holding her cold, blackened, hand and looking into the those closed eyes destined to never reopen. Until Susan’s passing I never could have pictured a scene like that with anything other than dread. But now that image invariably fades into warm memories of hugs and tears, even laughter through those tears as we remembered the old days. I know that Susan would be pleased to know she left such a legacy. To know that in her own way, she was a woman of her word. That she showed us how it is, indeed, “all good.”
Last Sunday the temp in Omaha Nebraska reached 101 degrees Fahrenheit. And the weather nannies were telling people to stay indoors and all that. So why was I, at age 72, outside, in or near my tent much of the day? Even though I had pitched it in the shade of a large maple, the humidity and air temperature combined encouraged a lot of sweating. I was there because I had scheduled the trip a couple weeks earlier. My mother at 97 is still lucid and on stubbornly on her own, but barely on both counts. So I make it a point to stop by (if driving more than 400 miles each way can be construed as "stopping by") every couple months. And I like to camp at a site a couple miles from her apartment, for the outdoors experience and the solitude -- and because the money I save over hotel rooms quickly pays for the cost of my camping equipment. To be honest, it's not like I was sitting in the sun. I visited her in her apartment for relatively short visits (she tires after an hour or so), spent a lunch hour in nice restaurant with an old friend, drinking beers and reminiscing. And another few hours in the home of another old friend and his wife and, after an insincere protest, let them convince me to stay for dinner. But -- and despite the sincere invitations by my friends and my other to spend the night in air-conditioned spendor -- I spent both evenings and nights at my campsite, in splendid solitude. The first night I even built a roaring fire, though I was careful to stay out of radius of its heat. That was a rather long night. Because the sky showed no hint of rain, I left the rain fly off the tent and lay atop my sleeping bag under the mesh top. Finally, around midnight, a few breezes sprang up, enough to cool the air and allow me to drift off. That morning I made a freeze-dried breakfast and allowed myself the luxury of a shower to rinse off the sweaty residue. The second evening I returned to my campsite under graying clouds and against a backdrop of heat-index warnings and impending severe weather. Not a pleasant prospect, to likely be forced to lay inside a tent with the flaps sealed against rain during a heat wave. But I resigned myself to it. But as I was settling in I realized I had made an error in setting up my tent -- Nebraska winds are usually from the west, and in the case of storms, always from the west. And I had my tent oriented with the door/window sides facing west-east, which could only enourage rain to slip inside. So I partially dissembled things and turned the tent so the solid side faced west. Then I looked above me and realized the same tall maple that provided shade during the day might be a lightning risk during a storm. And I recalled that maples are not the world's strongest trees, and are prone to dropping large branches in high winds; in fact, that had happened to a large old maple in my backyard the year before. Then I checked my phone again, and saw that the storm warning had been cancelled, and the night would be hot and still. Good. Still, I kept glancing up at the heavy gray skies, with darker clouds scudding along beneath, and began to have doubts about the weather forecast. I convinced myself the weather people must know things I don't, with their radar and all, so I opened the flaps of the tent and set about preparing for another fire. Then the sound of distant thunder reached me. Then another. Then lightning cracked and forked across the darkening sky, and thunder began booming. Rain began falling, so I crawled inside to wait things out, with no option of moving away from that tree. The tent flapped and rustled as the wind began lashing it, and rain pelted down, while lightning flashed and thunder roared. One friend texted me reminding that if things got too bad, a bed awaited me. I declined the offer and lay there atop my sleeping bag, enjoying the tumult of good old Nebraska storm, occasionally praying that the tree behave itself. After a couple hours, the thunder faded, booming off to the east, and the rain became a drizzle, then the occasional drip. I opened the flaps and cool breezes from the lake drifted through. The sky faded to partially-clouded and the temps dropped into the upper 70s. I had, to turn a phrase, weathered the storm. And I was glad to have done so, on every level. I soon drifted off to sleep, to awaken around 4:30 a.m. I climbed out of the tent and made myself a cup of tea. As I sat there in the impending dawn, an owl called from across the lake. I watched the sky lighten and the, to turn another phrase, the rosy rays of the rising sun. Once the light was adequate, I set about breaking camp, dissembling the cot and packing it away, along with the sleeping bag and air mattress, then packing up the tent-- which was already dry. I put it all in the car, and drove off toward the early morning sun, heading east and north, toward home. And grateful for all of it, the heat, the storm, the dawn, old friends, and for having seen the mother who bore me, and having another chance to tell her I loved her, before she heads off, as I know she will soon, on her own journey, before I finally, after all these years, become an orphan.
My neighbor directly across the street died a few weeks back, at the age of 92. His wife died about five years earlier. They lived in the same house for about 50 years,and raised five kids in it. He died at home, the fact that he was able to stay out of nursing home was due to the willingness of his sons to come and stay with him until the very end (his one daughter did too, as she could, but she lives in California). Anyway, once he died and things settled down, the kids decided to sell the house, but first they needed to empty it. They went through and gathered things they wanted -- and, since I had been good friends with him -- gave me some things too. Then they had St. Vincent de Paul come and take what the organization wanted of the furniture. The grand piano they sold. Then they took various things and piled them in the driveway and advertised on Facebook that they were free to any takers. I went over and picked up a couple things, but, being strongly reminded of the risks of accumulation, not very many. After all that, a couple weeks's worth at least, the kids turned the house over to the realtor, who, for a fee, did a final clean-out. I watched them do that yestereday and today, several truckloads of things, more furniture, carpets, and almost everything one could think of. I hope they do a further winnowing and sell or donate more things, before making the landfull trips. It made me realize how much stuff those of us privileged enough to own a home can accumulate given time enough. And I look around my own house and my own basement, and decided to start unloading things now, for a fair price if possible, for free if need be. But there is so much , residue from when the kids were little (and which the wife is not ready to let go) and so many other things, including, I must admit, scraps of wood from various projects of mine, and tools I have rarely used but "just had to have, just in case." But what struck me more than anything else in this whole affair of my neighbor's passing is how much the value of things depends on the people who own them, that suddenly small treasures and bric-a-brac become nothing more than junk store items. At one point I was talking to the daughter and she suddenly became teary-eyed, saying she'd begun to realize her parents were really, truly, gone, and so was the life of the house. So I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It's tough to realize that things of themselves are just that, things, and they will rarely matter as much to anyone else. And also how easy it is, if one stays put, to pile up things either because they might prove useful or are not longer useful and are too good to let go, and things that simply pile up because there's room in the basement. So, like so many people, I have seriously resolved to let things go, even the one's that hurt to release, maybe especially those. It won't be easy, but it would be right,
Maybe 10 years ago my daughter won a goldfish in some sort of raffle or such. Cost her one quarter. 25 cents. She named the fish "Adele" and we put her into a small fishbowl. She outlived my admittedly pessimistic expectations, and soon outgrew the bowl. We got her a bigger one. Ultimately, we bought a nice 20-gallon tank, with filter and a gravel bottom. Which is where she's been for the past several years, in a corner of the "family room," where we enter and leave from the garage, and walk past her. When we are not watching television or movies on bigger screen, no one spends much time in there anymore. I don't know much about goldfish mentality, I know they are not schooling fish, so I doubt she got lonely. But she sure seemed like she did. And it just began to seem unnatural, and I told myself that it was somehow cruel to keep her in that fashion, and have her grow old and die in that tank, or whatever replacement we provided. We humans wandered the house and the world, while Adele patrolled the relatively small, and getting smaller, realm of her tank. Daughter left for college and is now living on her own, stopping by only rarely (especially in pandemic times) and my only contact with Adele was to notice her swimming toward the front of the tank when I walked by, a reminder to feed her. Which I did, a couple times a day. Anyone who has had goldfish knows that they are a fairly dirty fish, and her excrement maxed out the filter every couple weeks. And the buildup of other waste meant that the water had to be mostly replaced every couple months, which involved a siphon and bucket and long trips with said bucket sloshing as I walked. Finally, recently, and reluctantly, I decided it was time for a breakup. No one I knew wanted her and anyway transferring her would be a struggle. It's illegal -- and ecologically unsound (and dangerous to the fish) -- to release goldfish into the wild, even though there is a nice pond not far from my house that doesn't drain into any stream. Then I discovered a pet store that has a large display tank for goldfish that also sells them to stock koi ponds. And that accepts "donated" fish. So I scooped up Adele in plastic container (realizing just how big and hefty she had become, relatively speaking) and we went for a car ride across town, the first real interaction we had had in years. I walked in, talked briefly to the fish lady, who commented on the beautiful veil-like tail and bright colors, and transferred Adele into a small bucket for acclimation. And I said goodbye, faster than I had intended to, because the symbolic magnitude of the moment, this end of a an era, threatened to rise up beyond my control, and I'd be damned before I would openly cry in front of a stranger over some stupid goldfish. And that was that. Now every time I enter the house I see that empty tank (which will soon be donated to St. Vincent dePaul) and I recall her, and the once-little daughter who loved her so much, and I am saddened at another ending in my life. G'bye, Adele. Wherever you end up, I hope there's a good ending to your story.
I'm not much of a Biblical person, not because of animosity toward the Bible or the faith, but because of unfamiliarity. As a kid I only rarely attended Sunday school, and when I did I invariably got lost in any reference to a particular book of the Bible. Later I learned to understand and appreciate Christianity, but never really the Bible per se, especially the Old Testament. Anyway, the above words popped into my mind the other day, as I was rooting through long-sealed cardboard boxes in our basement, seeking a ceremonial Chinese tea set given to us as either a wedding or first anniversary present. It was alleged placed, along with other paraphernalia and clutter of our lives, in one of those boxes moved from one city to another, many many moons ago. I never found the tea set. But I found lots of my past in there. Specifically, old certificates of accomplishment during law school, my law school diploma, my appointment as a federal judicial law clerk, my admission to a couple state bar associations and to practice in federal court, and photographs of me and of some of the judges I worked for. All carefully framed (except for the appointment, which was simply folded up and creased and yellowed) and all carefully packed away. And not much missed, obviously. It seemed a shame to consign them back to darkness, so I mounted them on the wall immediately behind my basement writing desk. I sometimes glance at them, and sometimes, rarely, remember something from those days. At least two of those judges have passed away, probably all three. And all of that stuff, so important to me at one time, is of only passing relevance to my present life. And once I have gone, will be of only less relevance to my survivors. Then of no value at all. I know that for a fact. I know, for example, that I once had a framed certificate of my paternal grandfather's, an honorary appointment to the (obviously) mythical "Nebraska Navy." It was an honorific for his participation in a gubernatorial campaign. That's all I know about it, now that my father has passed on, that and the fact that I cannot find it anywhere, which shows how little it really mattered to me. Sorry, Dad. But back to that Biblical reference. I went to my Bartlett's Famous Quotations, and looked it up. It's in Psalms, and reads: "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone. And the place thereof shall know it no more." Psalm 103, 15:16 Which is totally appropriate. All that stuff once mattered much, now matters little, and will soon be nothing but flotsam and jetsam of a life once lived, the photos probably donated to St. Vincent de Paul for the frames, and perhaps someone somewhere sometime will see one of the photos and wonder who the heck that person is. And no one will know.
I have a secret addiction. I cannot pass by a jumble of river rocks -- those small stones gathered together and sold for landscaping purposes -- without glancing down at them and, at the risk of seeming odd to any passerby, picking up one or two that momentarily pique my interest. And I've found some intriguing ones: a small agate (not of commercial value), some fossiliferous limestone (seashells and the like that have accumulated and become incorporated into stone), a piece of conglomerate (mostly sandstone with some pebbles and fragments of shells incorporated into it, debris left in some ancient riverbed that had current enough to move the "larger" rocks around on the sandy bottom), not to mention things like shale and glistening granite, and so on. One thing I like about them is that they tell stories about the world that was, so many, many, years back. If one takes the time to read them. My latest find is a piece of what seems mostly quartz, half dull gray, half dull white, but at one end there's a small quartz crystal -- its glistening is what caught my eye -- and, barely visible to the naked eye, that crystal is surrounded by tiny sinuous reddish lines, their details visible only under a magnifying glass. That's another thing I like about these rocks, the way that careful examination reveals hidden beauty. And I think it's not only a matter of hidden beauty, it's also a matter of familiar beauty. The world around us is filled with things that have something to say, if we only take the time to savor them. Not only river rocks, but rivers themselves, and hillsides and meadows and mountains, sunshine and storms, a faint summer breeze or a harsh winter wind, wormholes in decaying stumps and fabulous patterns in frost and ice, the sparkle of the sun on still lake. Imagine if the sun somehow rose only once a year, how we would look forward to that event and watch for the growing rosy shine on the clouds. And the same goes for the people around us. It's so easy to look through and past them. In the aggregate we're just a jumble of river rocks. But each of us is an agate, a diamond, a history. A miracle waiting to be seen.
Back in the ol' hometown and I decided that rather than staying in and paying for a hotel -- and rather than accepting invites to crash at friend's houses or sleeping on mom's couch -- I'd take my tent and sleeping bag and camp in a city park. It's a nice tent and a nice park, though my little tent is dwarfed by rows of RVs. But the night was quiet and calm, no rain and no noise. But it's hard to make the compromise between hotel and home. The tent's too small to do anything other than sleep, and there's no place to stash and unload a suitcase. So I'm more or less living out of my car, fetching stuff when I need it, stashing stuff when I don't. There's a bathroom but only a cold-water shower that sells time, e.g. so many minutes of water for each quarter. So I'll shower at mom's. No internet there, of course, so this is being posted from Starbucks, fueled by a mocha, on a decent laptop that I own. , What comes to mind is simply how hard it would be to be really homeless and on a very tight or nonexistent income. My "sufferings" are all self-induced. I could afford a decent hotel and I have the money for Starbucks and restaurants and gas -- and in a couple days I'll be home to my house in semi-suburbia. I'll be glad to be home, and will quickly forget how it felt to be temporarily without a solid safe structure. Tonight, after making a few visits to friends in their nice American homes, I will head back to my small tent (bought from REI and not stitched together from old canvas and cardboard) and crawl into my clean and warm sleeping bag on an air mattress and cot rather than old newspapers) and will be grateful that it's all but impossible for me to comprehend how hard it would be to be at rock bottom with little hope for any decent future. And I hope I never will. NB -- another way it helps to be among the privileged. I went to a nice greasy spoon for a good old American breakfast, but when I went to pay I learned the place did not accept credit cards. I had no cash or checks, and didn't want to incur a fee from an ATM. The cashier called out the owner, who after pretending to be pissed off, told me to forget about it and said he would write it off. I was pleasantly stunned and appreciative. It was only while writing this entry that it was another example of the rich getting richer -- if I'd been without cash and without credit cards, e.g. broke, I suspect he would have called the cops. Even though I could afford to pay I got a free meal..
I thought of those words -- the second half of the title to John Lennon's Norwegian Wood -- this morning as my lovebird as flitting around the kitchen while I cleaned his cage. In putting the cage back, I recalled how before she left home my daughter used to insist that I rotate the bird's toys lest he get bored (sound advice according to the bird books, I later learned). So I went down to the basement to dig out the box of bird paraphernalia, visions of my daughter in her younger years dancing in my head. Made me a bit sad to think she's left home, I recalled telling my wife that in many ways those would be the best years of our lives, when the kids still thought of us as their world. The bird box was on a shelf in one corner and as I pulled it down I glanced over to see a couple dust-covered bicycle helmets, left over from when she and her brother were small. Seeing her old purple helmet, a vision of her as that little one burst into my world, and I couldn't help it. I was so overwhelmed with the realization that my little girl is truly and forever gone, gone into an independent young woman, and never really coming home again. And I couldn't help it. I cried, real tears, and trembled. And sobbed at the forever finality of it. That bird had flown, and my role now is to stand back and watch her fly. And I miss her so much.
But it's doing all right. A ceramic frog attached to the bottom of a ceramic mug. A gift from my father many years ago, packed away in a box during a move, and unseen until recently. I've begun using it again, and it brings back a lot of memories. I'd half forgotten his sense of humor, his appreciation of the absurd, and had totally forgotten how much I miss it. And him. Delving back further into those memories, I recall that when I was in grade school he was always "threatening" to put fried grasshoppers in my lunchbox. And one time he did. A flat green can filled with black fried grasshoppers. They caused quite a commotion in the lunchroom. I took half a bite of one and nearly threw up; Bill Christopherson, a strapping farm kid, ate two of them sandwiched between two potato chips. Then the teacher took them away. He loved the Rocky and Bullwinkle show for its sly humor, and proudly wore the "Wassamatta U" sweatshirt bought him, though he would never buy such a thing for himself. He was a good man, and like most kids (I hope) I took him for granted, didn't listen too much to his memories, and knew almost nothing of his inner hopes and no doubt frustrated dreams. As usually happens, during my teen years and early 20s I moved away from him, physically and personally. Fortunately we mended bridges well before he passed away. He was a good man, and tonight I'll raise a toast to him with my ceramic frog.
As of now, my creative well seems to have run dry. The best I can do is dig through half-finished stories and see about finishing them, or at least dressing the up differently. I hope it's a temporary thing, but, like most writers I know or know of, there is always the underlying fear that the pump will never again be primed. So I decided to write here, in hopes of doing some priming. Trick myself into writing, as it is; sorry if that seems self-indulgent, and I will take no offense if you stop reading here. Still here? Okay, let's go. Sometimes I feel I have reached the point at which I "know" too much. That is, I've seen enough of the universe unfurl that I understand what that Biblical prophet (whose name I forget) said, perhaps Ezekiel, that "all is vanity." That is, that nothing material really matters. Writing essays seems pointless; even if I do manage to get a fresh spin or take on something, so what? If it's fiction, what again is the point? Who was it that said, "anyone who writes for anything other than money is a fool." Well, what is there other than money, except perhaps the distraction of writing itself? Which, of course, may well be the point. A theological writer name of Michael Novak once wrote a book called The Experience of Nothingness, which loudly called out to my angst-riddled post-adolescent self; in it, he observed that there was something odd in having existentialists and nihilists writing books, that is, in committing the time and effort necessary to write them. If nothing matters, why do anything? Of course nothing matters. It's the starting point for everything. When I get off my butt and back to work (actually I mean on my butt and back to writing) things will flow, so long as I don't try to sketch them out ahead of time. I know of nothing more absorbing than to have fallen into the rabbithole of writing, nothing more rewarding than the feel of a fine-tuned and -turned phrase. I was going to end this with a pithy quotation I found recently, but I can't find it and will paraphrase: "For the man hunched over his motorcycle, trying to fix something, nothing matters but that. He has no time or need to worry over the so-called bigger picture" I'm also reminded of friend who loves bicycling, who pointed out that one reason he likes multi-day bike trips is that he go the entire day thinking of nothing but the road beneath and ahead of him. Okay, as Paul Harvey used to end his radio broadcasts, "my time is up, thank you for yours." And thanks for stopping by.
My mother is dying. Not of any particular affliction, but, as she will be the first to tell you, of old age. She's 97 years old, curled up by back issues, knees shot, only one kidney, wispy white hair, eyes that reflect light in brightness, wrinkled skin, and a smile that is both sweet and pensive. She's blessed -- or perhaps cursed -- with a genetic tendency toward long life. Her dad died at 95, her brothers lived into their 80s, and so on; they all kept a full head of hair all their lives; I appear to be of that line, since my hair is as full as ever, at 71. But mom is dying now. On her birthday a few weeks past she suddenly slipped into panic-filled confusion, and went to the ER, and from there back home, then back to ER the next week, and is now waiting an opening for assisted living, the part of life she always proudly avoided. But that's where she'll have to be now. She can't be on her own anymore, and soon, I'm sure, can't be anywhere. And she's good with that. I drove down to see her and we had some gentle and warming conversations. Memories of old days, talk of her grandkids and great-grandkids. At one point she looked at me and said, as though remembering something important, "you were my first-born." That's a chronological fact, but I think she meant more than that. We both found ourselves looking back at those first three years of my life, when she was everything to me, and I was everything new to her about being a parent. The vague memories that rose up in me brought me to tears and to gratitude. And being able to see her again like that was a gift I will never forget. After three days I had to leave, and I doubt I will be seeing her again, except at the very end or very near it, since it's obvious the light is fading. But she's at peace about it and, because of that, so I am I. She had me dig out a shoebox full of pictures out a cabinet and take it with me, so it didn't get lost in the shuffle of closing out her apartment. It's a mix of things, most from the 70s and 80s, a few much older. The house I was born in, and so on. Many of the photos are from the ten or so years she and my dad spent on a rural farmstead after he retired, a place I loved and wish now I had had the money then to buy and keep in the family. And there's dad and my aunts and uncles, and the barn cats and mom and dad's dogs. All that I expected and am glad to have found again. I didn't expect the way my own earlier life welled up from those photos, the dog my first wife and I had, my oldest daughter in her youngest days, photos I hadn't seen in years; all of a time I had largely walled away in my heart. I'd forgotten, I'm sad to say, the power that a first-born can pull from one's heart. It's so easy to lose that magic in the everyday life that follows, and I so glad, so blessed, that I have been able to re-discover that now, before I'm at the edge; when I have time to remember and make good use of that magic. I'll miss her greatly, but I'll always treasure having had the life with her, and the chance to re-discover the magic. And I have my own first-born to treasure.
