I see us, my siblings and I, coming to this world together as one long, and long-awaited, debut. First I jump through a hoop, and I'm carrying a baton and dressed in some sort of Uncle Sam costume, with the big hat and all. I bow and point the baton and here comes Marybeth, a little girl in this show, with an oversized lollipop (it's for the stage, after all!) There's a pause and then Kathy jumps in, bowing -- everyone knows her already, the applause is spontaneous. Marge is self-effacing, blushing perhaps at the attention; then we all huddle together to welcome Mike, cute Mike, and there we are now, the cast, the ones the people came to see.
Our Mother died early yesterday morning, and I came to work, waiting for the bus under a too bright, almost bleached out, sky, and I felt so lonely. I guess the grass is always green in memory, the sidewalks clean where we played and rode bikes, the stomachs full, the nights restful. Even after you don't need your parents to provide for you any more, they do, they do.
Dad died 4 years ago. I'm almost 60, and only now am I an orphan. I guess that's pretty lucky. But the point is that being able to take Mom for granted, being able to rest my head on the certainty of her existence, has been a comfort, the base comfort, the foundation of other comforts, all my life.
Years ago I had an insight, a jokey insight, that the basis of all philosophy, of all religion, of all yearning is: "I want my mommy." Maybe.
I talked to her Sunday night, hours before she passed. She sounded eager to talk, despite her obvious weakness. She addressed me as "Sweetie" for the first time since, maybe, kindergarten, and was rambling about an intersection near a forest preserve -- maybe there was a favorite restaurant near there, or it's near KiddieLand -- and recipes for Irish dishes. (I don't recall that she ever did any Irish cooking, unless it was corned beef). She said she assumed Skylar was in bed; he wasn't, and I was going to put him the phone but before I could she handed her phone back to my sister and fell asleep.
That night, Sunday night, and for days before, I felt like she was with me when I chanted. I've always been able to commune with (not necessarily communicate, but commune) people (alive or not) when I chant for them. I felt good those days with Mom; she felt okay, happy, full.
Then Monday morning Marge called with the news, and I called Mary in Mississippi and woke her up. She said Tennyson, the youngest great-grandchild, had woken up, disturbed, in the middle of the night, and he was sleeping with her. We talked, Mary was shaken, and I wished she could be here, with us.
Then I chanted and, oddly, I couldn't find Mom. I couldn't. I searched the universe, Berwyn, our living room, Cicero, Ireland. Nothing felt right.
Mari dropped me at the bus stop, and there I was lonely in the sunshine, chanting silently, and I thought about Tennyson and found Mom. She was in Mississippi. Duh. That's when the tears came. There was Mom, at the tail end of the line, with the newest performers in the act, the youngest children in her family -- and most of all with Mary. Mary and Mary, my bookends.
Now that I know that, of course, she's everywhere. We're clinging to each other, and we're both, mostly, happy and curious.
It's wonderful how she affects people, even if the effect at the moment is grief. Mari is the most sensitive and loving person I've ever met, and she went right to where my mother is, felt it with me, maybe even before me. Samie too. It's been years since my mother visited Omaha, but Omaha's not really a place but a family, not a destination but a feeling. We're all feeling now -- each of us is feeling, and feeling is what there is.
I've been fantasizing for a long time about being able to play "Let It Be" at her funeral -- you know, "I wake up to the sound of music/mother Mary come to me". But that's someone else's song. I think instead I'll just whisper goodbye, and I'll address her as what I imagine is the highest title to which a woman can aspire. I call her what I called her in kindergarten, what I called her the first time I knew her real name. I'll whisper: "Bye, Mommy."
She'll answer: "Oh brother."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Children in Literature
In that previous entry, I was hoping the link would show up live. It didn't. I'm disappointed. I don't know how to insert a live link here. Let me try another one, though:
sgi-usa.org
We'll see.
The price of gas today was $3.66 at the big Bucky's the bus goes by. That's down from yesterday -- down! Will our kids be riding horses and stage coaches? Are they still making buckboards? Because if they don't soon -- immediately - start being serious about alternate fuel, what choice will be left. (And by "alternate fuel" I don't mean "oil dug up in America instead of in Arabia".)
Let's look at, not children's books, but some books about children.
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini:
This is a very popular book, very famous, much loved -- and, I guess, on the whole, it deserves all that. Anything that introduces Americans to day-to-day life in other cultures is great, and I suspect an awful lot of these incidents actually happened. It's also good to remind ourselves of the utter depravity we, as humans, are capable of. I remember that a few years ago someone was making a movie about Hitler as a youth, and there were objections because the movie intended to portray him as a frail human being, rather than as a monster. But that's exactly the point: criminals aren't born with guns in their hands, society doesn't send some children to school and other to Monster Camp. We, all of us, have the capabilities for both great good and great evil: it wasn't a Space Alien who conceived the Holocaust, but one of us, one of our own. Thus here we have Amir as a loving husband, a good friend, a traitor and a redeemer. We have Amir's father embracing life with an expansive spirit, and the Taliban squeezing life out the earth they tread on. There is Hassan's unbreakable compassion, Aseff's unbridled hatred. All human beings. Which one am I?
I got into a small discussion on a writer's board about my one, huge problem with The Kite Runner. The consensus was that I was wrong. But, I still feel this: Hosseini goes too far in his despoilment of the boy Sohrab. Nothing good happens to this poor kid. Nothing neutral happens to him. Life is often cruel, okay, a valid theme. But the point had been made 50 pages or so before the cruelty stopped. And I don't mean just physical cruelty: the kid's parents are murdered, he's abandoned, he's molested, he gets his hopes up for a better life only to have them dashed by poor timing.... it just goes on. It becomes unbearable. The point was made, and in my opinion the book becomes just a little sadistic before it closes.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles:
From the perspective of 2008, there's an elephant between the pages of this book that may not have been so elephantine when it was written in the 50s. To wit: Gene, the narrator, and Phineas, his roommate are obviously deeply in love with each other. It was a big distraction for me: "Go on, guys, get on with it," I kept saying, expecting on every page that they'd be holding hands on the next page. Well, it didn't happen, wasn't even alluded to. Meanwhile, with the macrocosm of World War II influencing everything, there are misunderstandings and petty jealousies in the microcosm of the Devon school. It ends badly. Of the 3 books I'm doing here, I like this the best. Not crazy about it, though. And it beats out The Kite Runner only because of the prolonged cruelty mentioned above. All in all, The Kite Runner is a better book, but I liked A Separate Peace better. Savvy?
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Sprawling is what this is. Pat Conroy is an acclaimed novelist (Prince of Tides), so I was happy to find one of his books at the Goodwill. And now, horribly, horribly disappointed.
Prime example of reason 1: At one point one character says to his brother: "My wife, Jean, commutes to Charleston..." If he had just said "Jean" his brother wouldn't know who he meant? The book is very badly written. It's a very long book for a doofus to read, but Conroy must have thought his readers would be doofuses.
Characters keep passing through the Rome airport. Hey, the Rome airport, in the 8os? Wouldn't it be something if there were -- golly, what do you know: there is a terrorist attack!
More egregious (apart from the bad writing and the cliches) is the underlying theme of the book, that the most important moments in a little girl's life happened during her father's childhood. That's right -- the adults in her life (and dad in particular) are teaching her that her life will be worthwhile only if she lives in her father's childhood. Does that sum up us baby boomers, or what??? It strikes me as a kind of..mmm, not quite abuse, but surely neglect.
There we go. Long one today, eh?
sgi-usa.org
We'll see.
The price of gas today was $3.66 at the big Bucky's the bus goes by. That's down from yesterday -- down! Will our kids be riding horses and stage coaches? Are they still making buckboards? Because if they don't soon -- immediately - start being serious about alternate fuel, what choice will be left. (And by "alternate fuel" I don't mean "oil dug up in America instead of in Arabia".)
Let's look at, not children's books, but some books about children.
The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini:
This is a very popular book, very famous, much loved -- and, I guess, on the whole, it deserves all that. Anything that introduces Americans to day-to-day life in other cultures is great, and I suspect an awful lot of these incidents actually happened. It's also good to remind ourselves of the utter depravity we, as humans, are capable of. I remember that a few years ago someone was making a movie about Hitler as a youth, and there were objections because the movie intended to portray him as a frail human being, rather than as a monster. But that's exactly the point: criminals aren't born with guns in their hands, society doesn't send some children to school and other to Monster Camp. We, all of us, have the capabilities for both great good and great evil: it wasn't a Space Alien who conceived the Holocaust, but one of us, one of our own. Thus here we have Amir as a loving husband, a good friend, a traitor and a redeemer. We have Amir's father embracing life with an expansive spirit, and the Taliban squeezing life out the earth they tread on. There is Hassan's unbreakable compassion, Aseff's unbridled hatred. All human beings. Which one am I?
I got into a small discussion on a writer's board about my one, huge problem with The Kite Runner. The consensus was that I was wrong. But, I still feel this: Hosseini goes too far in his despoilment of the boy Sohrab. Nothing good happens to this poor kid. Nothing neutral happens to him. Life is often cruel, okay, a valid theme. But the point had been made 50 pages or so before the cruelty stopped. And I don't mean just physical cruelty: the kid's parents are murdered, he's abandoned, he's molested, he gets his hopes up for a better life only to have them dashed by poor timing.... it just goes on. It becomes unbearable. The point was made, and in my opinion the book becomes just a little sadistic before it closes.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles:
From the perspective of 2008, there's an elephant between the pages of this book that may not have been so elephantine when it was written in the 50s. To wit: Gene, the narrator, and Phineas, his roommate are obviously deeply in love with each other. It was a big distraction for me: "Go on, guys, get on with it," I kept saying, expecting on every page that they'd be holding hands on the next page. Well, it didn't happen, wasn't even alluded to. Meanwhile, with the macrocosm of World War II influencing everything, there are misunderstandings and petty jealousies in the microcosm of the Devon school. It ends badly. Of the 3 books I'm doing here, I like this the best. Not crazy about it, though. And it beats out The Kite Runner only because of the prolonged cruelty mentioned above. All in all, The Kite Runner is a better book, but I liked A Separate Peace better. Savvy?
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Sprawling is what this is. Pat Conroy is an acclaimed novelist (Prince of Tides), so I was happy to find one of his books at the Goodwill. And now, horribly, horribly disappointed.
Prime example of reason 1: At one point one character says to his brother: "My wife, Jean, commutes to Charleston..." If he had just said "Jean" his brother wouldn't know who he meant? The book is very badly written. It's a very long book for a doofus to read, but Conroy must have thought his readers would be doofuses.
Characters keep passing through the Rome airport. Hey, the Rome airport, in the 8os? Wouldn't it be something if there were -- golly, what do you know: there is a terrorist attack!
More egregious (apart from the bad writing and the cliches) is the underlying theme of the book, that the most important moments in a little girl's life happened during her father's childhood. That's right -- the adults in her life (and dad in particular) are teaching her that her life will be worthwhile only if she lives in her father's childhood. Does that sum up us baby boomers, or what??? It strikes me as a kind of..mmm, not quite abuse, but surely neglect.
There we go. Long one today, eh?
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Neverwhere
I didn't realize it's been so long since I last posted. I could pretend I've been busy, but actually my laziness is a direct effect of being not busy. The more I do, the more industrious I feel, the more I want to do. In truth, in late April I finished a short story, and while I was writing it I was blogging, reading, working out, planning, playing the guitar. When the story got finished I breathed a big sigh of relief and just relaxed -- relaxed every muscle, not just the ones working on the story.
There's today's insight into human frailty.
There are new bus drivers, both going to work and coming home. The morning guy is great. He announces loudly "Fifteen, downtown!" to every passenger as we get on, even to those of us who get on every day. One morning last week I didn't go in until noon, and the next day he told me he had looked for me -- meaning, I suppose, he slowed down to see if I might be approaching the bus stop. Not every driver would do that (some blow by when you are at the corner).
The evening guy is good, too. He doesn't say anything, but he drives like a maniac and we make great time. Plus, he's consistently on time to pick me up.
Speaking of public transportation: Neverworld (by Neil Gaiman) is about a secret, almost gossamer society that exists in the London subway system. It's a very violent, very cruel but very ritualized civilization. There's a lot of magic and mysticism going on there, and the hero who gets sucked into it actually thrives in the other world-- against his will and inclinations.
Gaiman includes an interview with himself, which prejudiced me against his book right away. Self indulgent, full of himself, I assumed. You know - when McCartney left the Beatles and issued his first solo album, he interviewed himself for the occasion. So maybe I associate "interviews self" with "The Beatles have broken up". Be that as it may: Gaiman may indeed be self indulgent and full of himself, but Neverwold is a fun, well written book loaded with interesting characters.
Gaiman, it turns out, also wrote Stardust, which was made into one of my favorite movies of the last 3 years or so (the Post Lord Of The Rings era of the cinema).
There's today's insight into human frailty.
There are new bus drivers, both going to work and coming home. The morning guy is great. He announces loudly "Fifteen, downtown!" to every passenger as we get on, even to those of us who get on every day. One morning last week I didn't go in until noon, and the next day he told me he had looked for me -- meaning, I suppose, he slowed down to see if I might be approaching the bus stop. Not every driver would do that (some blow by when you are at the corner).
The evening guy is good, too. He doesn't say anything, but he drives like a maniac and we make great time. Plus, he's consistently on time to pick me up.
Speaking of public transportation: Neverworld (by Neil Gaiman) is about a secret, almost gossamer society that exists in the London subway system. It's a very violent, very cruel but very ritualized civilization. There's a lot of magic and mysticism going on there, and the hero who gets sucked into it actually thrives in the other world-- against his will and inclinations.
Gaiman includes an interview with himself, which prejudiced me against his book right away. Self indulgent, full of himself, I assumed. You know - when McCartney left the Beatles and issued his first solo album, he interviewed himself for the occasion. So maybe I associate "interviews self" with "The Beatles have broken up". Be that as it may: Gaiman may indeed be self indulgent and full of himself, but Neverwold is a fun, well written book loaded with interesting characters.
Gaiman, it turns out, also wrote Stardust, which was made into one of my favorite movies of the last 3 years or so (the Post Lord Of The Rings era of the cinema).
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