"But in the rising sun You can feel your life begin Universe at play inside your DNA You're a billion years old today." --George Harrison This line occurred to me as I was raking leaves in our front yard. The primary culprit is a large red maple, whose multitudinous leaves are a sort of purple from spring to autumn, then fade to a pale brown, and fall to earth in copious amounts as winter approaches. I say "culprit" mostly in jest, because most days in most autumns I find joy and relaxation in raking leaves, or sometimes, a burst of macho enthusiasm if I get out my leaf blower and herd them into a large pile. Either way I am reminded of the metaphor they provide of life and death. I can observe them coming to life each spring, watch as they reach their peak, and gather their dried remains once life has left them. Or has it? Should the line be drawn at the point at which the leaves connect to the tree? Or is it the tree who is living, growing and shedding the leaves in season? Or is it the DNA that comprises the tree, which directs the way that collection of cells grows and takes shape? Or is it the earth that nourishes the tree, and finds expression sometimes in vast and beautiful forests, or in single landscaped trees, or even in the scraggly little "junk" trees that show up in almost every vacant lot or abandoned barn? And then there's the life of the forest, large trees dominating, then dying, and their massive trunks falling to earth, where they decompose into softening brown heaps with their toadstool toppings and many mushrooms, all moving toward becoming the soil that, if left alone, nourishes and becomes more trees. including the smaller trees that, by nature or by chance, never tower above, but instead scrabble to find light in the places left open by their larger cousins, all of them ultimately becoming soil again, regardless of size or years of existence. And of course I'm out there raking leaves around rocks that border the tree, those rocks being the cooled manifestation of long-ago (in human terms) volcanic or deep-earth heat and pressure, atoms and elements cooked and molded into mountains which wear into stones which sometimes fall into rivers where they are tumbled until their sharp edges round off. And then there's the earth as a planet in the solar system that floats (if that's right word for drifting in the emptiness of space) at the edge of the Milky Way, and then the galaxies turning in the immeasurable immensity of the known universe. And then there's me, standing in the autumnal sun, raking leaves and wondering at the passing of another season, and almost shivering in thoughts of the earthly and metaphysical winter to come, reminding myself that the me who feels the chill is but a particular manifestation of the cosmic dance around me.
I’ve mentioned Adele before, our long-lived twenty-five cent goldfish. My daughter accidentally won her in some school carnival, and brought her home. We got out an old gallon fishbowl, but the fish quickly outgrew it. So we resurrected a 20-gallon tank and bought a filter. She (I mean the fish, not the daughter, though I suppose it’s true for both) continues to thrive and grow. I sometimes watch her (the fish), the shining orange and silver pattern, the smooth glide through water, the fins, the flowing tail. I see her picking up and dropping gravel, looking for food. Sometimes I look down from the top of tank, amused by the distortion of diffraction, and catching a hint of the smell of inhabited water (pleasant in small doses). Especially when I look down from the top I recall the numerous goldfish that came and went when I was a kid. I saw the same things, but with young eyes. Colorful gravel, colorful fish; all was new. The colors and smells and everything related more than mildly interested me, they fascinated me. I see them still, though I can’t name or individualize them, and I know the images have morphed and modified over time. But still, I see the fish of my memory in a way I don’t see Adele. I think the difference is that the young me was absorbed by the images; the older me sees them intellectually. And I’m thinking that if I want my writing to be sharp and memorable, I have to be sure my descriptions go beyond the easy words. It’s too tempting to describe a scene with solid but dull words that have meaning to me, but are essentially intellectual concepts. I need to write, not as a well-seasoned adult who sees and categorizes and describes with those terms, but rather with the fresh eyes of a child. Easy, of course, to say. Hard, of course, to do.
I seem to recall an axiom from my road biking days that you must be careful to focus on where you want to go (e.g. follow the road), rather to focus on where you don't want to go (e.g. off the edge of the pavement), because your mind will take you in the direction of your attention. Today I got tired of driving my old car with the damaged driver-side mirror, so I went online to see how hard it would be to fix it. I came across a You Tube video with my exact car and a promise that it only takes a few minutes to replace it. After watching it, it occurred to me I could do one better -- I could take off the damaged mirror, glue it, and put it back, saving $40 or so dollars. So I followed the diss-assembly instructions carefully. Or, rather, tried to. At one point the narrator pointed out the three nuts to remove and in doing so noted that one must be careful in doing so, because it's possible to drop one down into the door panel and that doing so "will needlessly complicate your life." I immediately wished he hadn't said that. Because as I unscrewed the first nut, ever so carefully keeping my fingers on it, keeping in mind his admonition, it slipped past my fingers and down into the door. As I knew it would as soon as I resolved not to let it happen. Because I let my mind lead. Silly me.
I've read many times that the sense of smell is one of the most basic, and that smells can induce powerful memories. I believe it. This morning I bought a bag of safflower seed for the bird feeder -- I've learned that safflower is one of the few grains squirrels don't like, so they leave the feeder alone -- and I don't have to spend time trying to scare them away or put up some sort of shield. As I stood in the dim garage, emptying the bag into varmint-proof containers, the smell of the grain dust wafting up in the pale light powerfully brought back the childhood image of being inside the storage shed at my small town's Purina granary, where farmers sold their grains and bought seed for the next year, and where farmers bought feed for cattle and poultry and so on. My best friend's dad owned the granary, so we spent a lot of time there, climbing on the seed bags, and hanging out in the office, with its posters and other miscellany that was common in the 1950s. I took the smell for granted then, pleasant but hardly in the forefront of my awareness. As I watch the fireplace burn inside my house of today, the pop of burning wood reminds me of the night the old granary went up in flames, how we stood near it and watched the firetrucks try to save it, and the noise and flying sparks when the elevator finally collapsed. And then came the new elevator, all shiny and clean and somehow lacking the character of the one that burned. That was in the days when it all made sense, our dads did what they did, our moms were home, we spent long summer days walking "downtown", following the train tracks, putting pennies down to get flattened (never remembering to come back the next day). We spent a lot of time near the train depot, too, throwing rocks at the old water tower that, in my early lifetime, had been a vital part of railroad function, when steam ruled the rails. Somehow those days became the old days. We grew up, parents died or divorced, we all married (or not), the world became more business than simple living. My friend's dad ended up in prison for trying to sell grain he didn't yet have on hand -- and suspicion grew that perhaps the elevator fire was not quite as accidental as it had seemed, but an easy way to get rid of an old facility. But that was all in the future those days when we played on the grain sacks. When life was simply life, new and fascinating and full of promise. It's all so long gone, and while I miss a lot, I know that if I were to be transported back, none of it would feel right. Because that boy is gone, he became me but I am no more him than an oak tree is an acorn. It's a one-way street, but it's still good to remember. My God, but I suddenly sound and feel old. How did that happen?
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.
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.
As I've mentioned before, I come from a line (on my mother's side) of carpenters, and sometimes the urge to make something from wood overcomes me, though I'm not sure any of the talent or ability comes along with it. But, I remind myself, they must have made a lot of mistakes while learning their craft. I remember once talking with an uncle (by marriage, not blood) about his work. I mentioned the old adage, "measure twice, cut once." He shook his head. "No, it's measure right and cut." . Okay then. Anyway, I find making things is therapeutic, and certainly pleasantly absorbing. I've made a few bookcases, and even a printer stand. They're all serviceable, but also they were relatively simple to make. Looking around for something else to make, I came across an allegedly easy plan for a media table; simple but more complex than anything I've made thus far, and requiring more work. We needed one for our "family room." So I set out to make it, a few months back. Without going into boring detail, I can say first of all that because I was using pocket-joints to screw it together, I needed to clamp the sections before proceeding, so the screws would tighten correctly. But my clamps were all too short. I tried all sorts of things, like putting it against a wall or using some concrete blocks to hold it, but that didn't work. I set it aside for awhile. Finally, I went out and bought two new clamps: a "pipe clamp," that consists of two separate clamps on a long piece of pipe, and a "band clamp," a long fabric strip that tightens when I turn a handle. Those seemed to work, and as per usual, buying them was a sort of reward to myself -- I try to get something new every time. Anyhows, the cuts sometimes required precision I still lack, so nothing fit quite like the pictures, and from time to time I made stupid bonehead mistakes, like drilling holes in the wrong end of a piece of wood, and so on. But I soldiered on, making adjustments, and adding supports in places where my misjudgment made for poor joining. From the outside and above it looks like the picture -- but from underneath it looks like a sort of Rube Goldberg contraption. As I studied it I recalled another old carpenter adage, "the wood always wins." It sure did here. Then I stained it, dark "Early American," since darker stains conceal more errors. And it was done. It also weighs a lot and I was faced with the problem of getting it off my basement workbench and up a long flight of stairs. The wife is a petite thing, and besides I didn't especially want her to get a good look at the underside or to study the staining too closely. Today, while she's out of town, I decided to bring it upstairs alone, and have it place before she gets back -- and before she can say, "umm, maybe we should stick with what we have." So I carefully slid it off the bench and got out my "dolly" (a two-wheeled device used to move heavy objects), stood the table on edge, worked it onto the dolly, strapped it in place, and set out to bring it up 13 steps alone. It was not an easy decision to make; I knew that once I started I couldn't change my mind, since I could not easily lower it back down; and also knowing there was a good chance I would lose my balance and plummet back down, to become a news item about an old geezer who should have known better. Thing is, I did know better, but I also come from a line of "should have known better" people. Like my father, who always insisted on standing at the window or in the doorway when tornado sirens were sounding and every other person was scrambling for cover. His line goes back to the Grahams of Scotland, a clan so contrary and troublesome that the entire bunch were either hanged, imprisoned, or exiled to Ireland. But I digress. I did get it up the stairs, one thump at a time, with only one brief moment of crisis, which I overcame by sheer determination. Then I moved the former table aside and put this one in place, put everything where it should be, and stood back to study it. I have to say, it doesn't look too bad, if you don't look too close and anyway most of the worst of it is on the back, against the wall, where it can't be seen. A solid piece of workmanship, with the emphasis on "solid." We'll see what the distaff side thinks when she comes back tomorrow. I think she'll be happy with it, or at least accepting. I do know two things. One, I'm not moving it back downstairs alone. I'd rather chop it up for firewood. And two, in my gut I feel pretty good about it, I set out to build something useful, and I succeeded. I made mistakes but I learned from them. And when I was working on it, nothing else mattered. Sort of like on a writing project, it absorbed my attention in a good way. I was in the flow. I like it there.
I know that @paperbackwriter thinks I go overboard on the Taoism/Buddhism stuff, and probably sometimes rightly so. Regardless, it occurred to me this morning that most Buddha-like scene I ever observed involved a Lutheran minister. It went like this: because my daughter befriended the son of the minister at preschool, our family became social friends of theirs. The boy's father, Mike, was the minister at an old inner-city Lutheran church; in it's heyday it had been a well-attended, well-established, well-sustained smaller church, but the 1960's came and so did the exodus to the suburbs. What remained was a nice old brick building, with a shrinking congregation made up of older people who had grown up in the city and continued attending the church despite having moved away, and some members of the local population, some of whom had mental issues and all of whom had money issues. And there were a couple others, like my family, who came because, well, just because. I even became a member of the church board. Anyway, as time went on I drifted away from that church, from Mike, and from Christianity in general. Later I ran into some serious interpersonal issues, and felt the need to talk with someone who I could trust and who I thought would have something meaningful to say. I thought of Mike, but I was reluctant to go to him, because I had in essence abandoned him and his mission. One summer morning I drove over to the church, and noticed they had planted a few small trees outside. As I sat in my car, trying to decide whether to go in, the door opened and Mike came out. He didn't see me, but went around watering the trees. As he did so, totally absorbed in his task, he wore the most beatific smile, and moved with such grace and ease that I could only think of the image of Buddha in which he radiates peace and tranquility. In that moment, so was Mike, and somehow that comforted me. I still wasn't ready to make the visit, so once he went inside I drove off. But I have never forgotten that moment and sometimes, when I try to meditate or even out of the blue, I see that totally content image and it gives me encouragement. I did go back a few days later and we did talk; it was of value, and I think he forgave me for leaving without saying goodbye, if he ever had resented it. But I never saw him again after that. As the years have gone by I learned more of Mike's backstory (he died a couple years ago). He was adopted and had hard childhood, and later developed a problem with alcohol, so serious that he spent some time drying out in Hazelton. In other words, he was, like all of us, a flawed person, but he was someone with a good heart I suppose a Christian might say that the image he presented was Christlike (after all he was a minister at his church), but somehow the Buddha seems more appropriate to me -- there was none of the saviour involved in what I saw, only that image of contentment. I didn't feel saved, only comforted without words. Then and now.
I sometimes sincerely ask myself, why bother to write? I've moved past the point of feeling like I have something new to say, and have tried to be at ease with simply finding a slightly new way to say some things that have been said and observed before. As the Prophet said, "there is nothing new under the sun." At one point in my life I thought that getting successfully published would be a deep life-changing event. That is still only a distant and remote possibility on my horizon, but more and more I begin to believe there is no real transcendence there. I'm no longer in a position where anyone is paying me to write, so I am forced to look within for purpose, and that cupboard sometimes seems a bit bare. Having said that, I know my truth. I write because, once I begin writing, I get absorbed in it, and I find I do have things to say. More importantly, I find some deep unexpected connection with what, for want of a better phrase, I will call my subconscious. Perhaps the word "my" is wrong there, because I sense that the subconscious is really a communal thing underlying us all, the way some mushrooms on the surface are really simply the above-ground manifestations of a huge underlying organism. When we communicate we are simply acknowledging a shared truth. But that is not to understate the simple and pleasant sense of fulfillment I get from the writing process, watching my fingers tap a keyboard and capture my words that surround my thoughts. There's something there that fills a need I never know I have until I begin the writing. Sometimes I think about my autistic son in this context. Twenty-three, almost 24 years old, he lives with us and since the pandemic he has nowhere to go during the day, his part-time filing jobs being on indefinite hold. Which is all right with him, since he always regarded the jobs (and school until he graduated) as unavoidable and mostly boring nuisances. The pandemic also ended the semi-daily trips to the library, which he does miss. These days he spends most of his time in what was once the "home office" (back in the days of a desktop computer), a room that has now become "his office." He sits there with his Chromebook open, an I-pad open, and his phone open, each to its own site; often the Chromebook is playing You-tube videos of the elements of the periodic table or various languages, or mathematics, kind of in the background. In the foreground he has a stack of blank paper, and on each page he writes out either lists of numbers or alphabets or the various elements with their atomic number and weight, and perhaps a slight commentary. He does the same thing almost every day, emerging out for meals and sometimes surfacing for a semi-social visit, morning to dusk. From time to time he takes a stack of papers to a "his" desk in the family room and stashes them in a drawer. He calls them "his papers" and he seems to know every one of them, something I re-discover each time I try to slip some of them into the recycling bin, lest they overflow the desk. And he can go back there and pull out a specific one when, for reasons only he knows (or perhaps doesn't consciously know) and takes it back to the office. That seems to me the epitome of both the point and non-point of writing. He finds satisfaction in the writing, but the writing itself communicates nothing new (and is not intended to communicate with others), only reiterates things he already knows, which comforts him. The value, the point, of his writing seems to lie solely in the doing. And it works for him. And I guess, at bottom, that's what works for me.
Working on my family tree, I am sometimes amazed by how many tantalizing gaps show up. That doesn't surprise me when working with far-distant lines, when records were scarce. But sometimes lacunae appear far closer to present day. For example, my father's mother's line is fairly clearly defined in census and Ancestry records back in the latter half of the 19th Century, from Clermont County Ohio to central Iowa. Things seem pretty clear, children popping up every few years, parents and grandparents passing on, and so on. But even that relatively recent past can get a bit odd. For example, there's a girl, Clara, born in 1880 and gone from the family census as of the 1885 state census. Child mortality was high back then, so that's not unusual of itself; my grandmother was born in 1884 or so, so she would not have known Clara and may not have ever heard about her. But it's interesting that a Clara Smith born the same date as the one in our family would have died in 1885 some 40 miles north of their hometown. Other data suggests it's the same Clara, but why would she have died that far away, at the age of 5? Forty miles was a major expedition back then, and there's no indication of family up there. A family trip gone bad? Not likely that story will ever be told now. Then there's a tantalizing bit from my uncle's memoirs in which he mentions that his mother -- my maternal grandmother -- talked of an older, unnamed brother who died at the age of 8. All the brothers listed in her recollections lived to ripe ages, but I find one loosely-connected family tree that suggests a Charles was born in 1876 to my maternal grandmother's family, but Charles never appears in any family state or federal census report until the 1900 federal census, when he springs forth, full-grown as it were, in my grandmother's family, at the age of 23 (obviously not dead at 8), single and working as a livery driver. So where was he in all those other state and federal censuses? And even more interesting, a 5-year-old grand-daughter named Tassie appears in that federal census. It's tempting to guess and presume she is his daughter from a failed or widowed marriage, but no way of knowing. Especially because Charles and Tassie seem to disappear after that. I look around me, at all the detitrus and debris of my life, and tend to presume that my existence, and that of my near and dear (and I suppose far and annoying) family will be an open book, and that any descendants trying to reconstruct days past will have a fairly easy time of it. But that, I think, is pure hubris and vanity. They may be able to draw up a basic map, reasonably reliable, but there will always be gaps and guesses. Because nothing is clear forever. And in the end only nothing is clear.
Found this in the Tao te Ching: “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.” From Chapter 48. When I started off on my so-called Year of Tao, I wasn’t sure what that entailed. I thought I would probably read the TtC everyday (which I am doing) and gain more insights or at least a better sense of it or be confusingly impressed by it (one or another or two or maybe all three of which I think I am doing). I also thought I would be posting some thoughts on what I might be learning. That one, not so much. To even begin to pontificate seems pretentious. Like this for starters: How do I learn if the key is to “unlearn”? My younger self would have had no hesitation charging in with opinions, but I like to think I’ve learned much since then. But a lot of that learning involved moving myself away from following the Tao. Somewhere in the Bible it talks about putting aside childish things, and that's what I thought I was doing. Being a common-sense rational grownup. I was so proud to do it. But I begin to have doubts about my so-called adult learned self. Again, I think the Bible talks about being as a little child. (@paperbackwriter, you can flesh this out). And the TtC itself says, "The sage is shy and humble -- to the world he seems confusing./Men look to him and listen./He behaves like a little child." Chapter 49. Now I feel myself drawn back, without knowing how to come back. Certainly without being able to clearly articulate it. But here I go anyway. What the hell is mythical mystical master Lao Tsu saying? For starters there is trust in the way things would happen if left alone, a big thing in the TtC. Jung called it synchronicity. Or as one book back in the 19970’s proclaimed, “Don’t push the river, it flows by itself.” So I decided to sit back and wait. This morning I saw a book in my library, one I had bought long long ago, and read so much that the spine broke (of course 40 years might cause the glue to dry out in a paperback). Then Iput it away in a box with my other "childish things", to be unpacked only recently . The book is Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, a collection of ancient Zen and pre-Zen writings. (Zen being a cousin or descendant or sibling of Taoism). I opened it and found this as the opening story: A Cup of Tea: Nan-in, a Japanese master. . . . recieved a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.” So there’s my first glimmer of answer. My cup runneth over.
I've got a photo on my desk, it's maybe 18 years old, and the "boy" in it is now 24. A lot has changed over the years, I've aged and he's grown up, but many things are the same. He still lives with us and will as long as we can care for him; he is still sweet, loving, and challenged. Anyway, this is what I feel and remember every time I glance at the photo. A small boy sits on a brown horse, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a black riding helmet. Sunlight streams into the barn through an open doorway highlighting the boy, the horse, and four young women against a black background. The boy’s face is half-hidden, but he is looking toward his right, downward, toward three women standing off to that side. One of them, a teenager really, loosely holds a lead rope attached to the horse’s bridle. The horse’s body is facing the camera, but its head is turned to the boy’s left, in the opposite direction that the boy is looking. The horse is nuzzling a fourth woman who stands close by, her hands on her hips, looking at the boy and horse, a white hairband shining like a halo in her dark hair. The horse, too, nearly shines, his bridle sparkles silver, and sunlight glints off the boy’s helmet and the hair of three women. The woman facing the boy has her hair tucked beneath a red kerchief, her face and one arm bathed in sunlight that comes over the boy’s shoulder. That arm has one hand slightly raised, one finger pointing. The horse’s name is Snuffy. Three of the women are volunteers at this equestrian therapy center, the other is the owner and one of the teachers. The boy is my son. He comes to this place once every week, where he spends an hour on horseback, developing coordination, muscle tone, and confidence. My son's face is not clearly visible in the picture, but if you could see it, you would notice, want to or not, that it’s not quite right. The eyes are a little off, the mouth and nose too small. His skull fused while still in the womb, so that instead of having a soft spot, his growing brain pushed against the bone, trying desperately to find room, turning solid bone into nothing more than papery thin Swiss cheese. He was born with bulging eyes and a "conehead." He is better now, after major surgeries at three months, six months, and 18 months, all to open up, reconstruct, and brace the skull and pull the forehead forward. Three times we were led into pediatric ICU area, where we saw our little guy, ensnared in tubes and wires, the top of his head covered by pale yellow vinyl, like a puffy shower cap, his eyes swollen shut, immobilized by drugs and swaddling, his soft breathing accented by the quiet beep and whir of machinery. He wouldn’t care if you noticed his face but, truth be told, I would be thrilled if he felt a bit self-conscious, even as I tried to reassure him. Because his deformed skull is not our little guy’s only birthright. If you were in the photo with him, and you looked him fully in the face, he would not look back at you. He never makes deliberate eye contact, and rarely talks in full sentences. He never plays with other children, other than his "neurotypical" twin sister. My son is autistic, which means he is with us in his own way, on his own terms. On a very few levels he is like any other boy, busy with school, swimming, and playing (usually alone). He loves reading and slapstick humor. He’s great with numbers and calculations and abstract facts, and seems impervious to what other kids think of him. But he does have fears, wants, and needs, which he doesn’t express well or often; his laugh is infectious, and his tears, rare as they are, will tear your heart out because they are so honest. He has rarely lied to me, not because he is a saint, but because he finds it hard to picture or describe the world as other than it is. He seems without guile or guilt, likely because he can conceive of nothing else. Back to the photo. These four women, like so many others -- therapists, teachers, doctors, relatives, babysitters, parents, and us -- have come together, been brought together by this guy. We all work to draw him out of his world and into ours. We give of ourselves to give him, this sweet little boy, an entrance to society. All as he, in his innocent way, is as naively accepting of all efforts as is the horse in the picture, taking some of what is offered, and, rarely (though more and more lately) reaching back out and letting the others in. Every time I see the photo I am reminded that sometimes, even in an apparently random configuration of otherwise unrelated people and events, we can make a beautiful picture against an unknown and uncaring blackness.
We bought our son a roulette wheel one Christmas, because he likes numbers and calculation, so we figured he might get into it. He didn’t, but it sits on his dresser and every once in a while I spin it and ask him to make a call. Today he said “red odd.” I called “black even” and he changed his call to match mine. I warned him that it might not be the best call, but he stuck with it. It came up “red odd.” He lost because he followed my lead. I hate when that happens. It wasn’t the first time I’ve led someone astray either. Many, many years ago I was one of six students, three men and three women, from our university who spent the summer in Kabul, Afghanistan as exchange students at Kabul U. This was before the Russians invaded, but after the Communists took power, so it was a time of tension. Of course we didn’t pay too much attention, and mostly had a good time. One weekend we took a bus from Kabul to Peshawar, Pakistan, through the Khyber Pass. The next day when we tried to return, we found that our bus had been double-booked, and we had no ride back. After a brief pow-wow we decided we’d have to hitch a ride with someone, ideally on one of the “painted trucks,” garishly decorated vehicles that plied cargo back and forth across the border; we needed to get to the border, and our contacts back in Kabul would send a cab to pick us up. For some long-forgotten reason I got irritated with the other two guys, and refused to go with them on the truck they selected. I said I would find my own. One of the women made the ill-advised decision to stick with me, and we watched the other four take off. The moment the truck left we were surrounded by men offering us a ride, at various rates. I had to size both them and their vehicles up and negotiate a price. I was especially concerned because I had a young and beautiful American co-ed with me, in the middle of nowhere in the midst of machismo. I finally selected the guy who made the best price, and who was especially proud of the fact that he owned an American pickup truck, a black Dodge. He even showed me the manual. And he didn’t care that we had no Pakistani money; he said he knew a good money-changer at the other end. We go in, and off we went, winding through a mountain pass on a narrow highway; it soon became obvious that his steering wheel had an unhealthy amount of play in it, which made things even more exciting. We arrived at the border okay, and parked. He gestured to follow, and we all walked down some narrow winding streets between brown mud-walled buildings. We were introduced to the money-changer, who quoted me an exchange rate that ended up doubling our fare, but I was in no position to bargain. So that we barely came up with enough money to pay. So we made it to the border, with our lives, but with almost no money left. I didn’t mind so much, because of the adventure, but I don’t think my lady friend was either impressed or happy. Just relieved. The story ends well, though. We found our friends and were indeed picked up by a taxi, that drove us back to Kabul, through the Khyber Pass. The best part of that was, though it was Ramadan (the Islamic fasting holiday) our Afghan driver brought a six-pack of beer, I made up with my buddies, and it was a very happy ride home. But that woman, wisely I think, never followed my lead again. In fact, I haven’t seen her now in over 40 years. I don’t think she misses me. I wouldn’t.
I just saw a brief news story about two New Jersey boys who drowned in farm ponds during the last week. Sad, but not stupid. Adolescent bravado, a sense of daring, and the misplaced certainty that bad things cannot happen to them. I know, because I was there once. I was probably 13, wandering nearby farm fields on a cold winter day. Eventually I ended up on the shore of a pond not far from some farm buildings -- this was on land then=owned by a convent who had a small cow herd. It was a gray weekend day, no one around anywhere, not in obvious sight of anyone. Windy, flakes of snow, good day to be wandering. It had been below freezing for several days, and the pond seemed frozen over. I tested it carefully, one foot at a time, no creaking. I walked onto the ice, just because it was there, because I wanted to. I ventured further, toward the center. I heard a sudden cracking sound, and felt the ice give beneath my feet. I dropped into icy cold water, holding onto the sides with my arms. I wasn’t especially worried, we’d waded in that pond in the summer and it had been only waist deep at most. I lowered myself down to find bottom, to push push myself upward. But I found no bottom. My boots, filling with icy water, touched nothing. I began, in my adolescent way, to sense that this could be serious. Still, and fortunately for me, I didn’t panic. I spread my arms on the surface and pushed myself onto the surrounding ice which, for a reason I don’t understand, did not crack under my weight. I crawled out onto the ice, walked to the shoreline, and ran home, about half a mile away, my clothes becoming stiff with ice. I got home, shed my wet clothes, gave some half-true explanation to my mother, and crawled into a hot bath. While I was in the tub, a man came to the door of the house. He worked at the convent farm, and had seen me fall into the ice, but by the time he got near I was gone. He went from house to house looking for the boy. Two things motivated him. One, he had lost a brother to a pond-drowning, so he was very upset by this, and two, the pond had been dredged and deepened over the summer, so that it was no longer the safe play surface we had presumed it to be. So, for no better reason than fate I suppose, I sit here typing this story, while two families in New Jersey are mourning the loss of their sons. Life is like that, and sometimes I forget to feel the gratitude I should feel, for the simple fact of still being alive.
I've reached the point in my life at which I seriously think about my bucket list but, at the moment, I find it devoid of dreams under my control. That is, I'd love to have my autistic son break free, and I'd love for the world to be a better place and safe for all. I'd love to somehow keep the squirrels out of my bird feeder. But I have no power over those things. A few weeks ago, on impulse, I set out to climb a small mountain that had always been in the back of my mind, somewhere I had always meant to go, a dream I meant to conquer. So I did it. A couple years back I went sky-diving, something I'd never expected to do. After it was over the instructor asked me what else was on my bucket list, and at that moment I couldn't think of anything. Can't now, either. I know it's not travel. I've walked the Great Wall and climbed the Eiffel Tower, seen the Grand Canyon and Mt Rushmore, the Tower of London, wandered the Rocky Mountains and the Smokies, explored Afghanistan before it went to Hell, been to South America and eastern Europe. Not that there aren't places I've never seen, but no place that lures me. The closest in that sense would be the furthest, e.g. Australia and New Zealand - and Alaska. But I don't feel it in my gut. Maybe I'll get a motorcycle, but that seems a bit on the dangerous and expensive side. Maybe a biplane ride, or a guided fishing expedition. None that really trips my trigger. Even the idea of publishing a book no longer grips me. And you know what? For that I am extremely grateful. My health is good, and in a world full of chaos and killing, I can sit in my quiet kitchen and write this, and I can glance out my window and watch a blue jay and a downy woodpecker gathering seeds from my feeders, and I can ponder what I want to do next. No boss anymore, except my better half, who's at work. In a way it seems I've done a full circle. Back in my misplaced youth I once tried to live on nothing, and more or less succeeded -- found an apartment rent-free in exchange for minimal maintenance, got food stamps and unemployment money. And got so bored I went back to school and day-to-day America and more or less "made something of myself." Now I've gone through all that and have a chance to do nothing again. Maybe that's all I'll do. As Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." I'm free because I have nothing, all of nothing, at my disposal. And that's a lot.