Uh oh, p.6
Uh-Oh, page 6
The headline fit my existential state. Yes, I thought to myself, I’m not the only one. Not the only one who ever got a flash of the big picture. Not the only one who understands how utterly amazing it all is. There is lots of testimony in those books up there in the library. This is exactly what all those books are about.
Holding on to my sanity and the watermelon and the can of tuna fish with equal care, I stopped at the checkout counter and paid with a twenty-dollar bill. I noticed a handwritten note on the little cup where coins appear at the end of a transaction. The note said: “Please accept your change—take it with you.” Here was yet another unexpected message. Yes, I thought to myself, I accept my change—and the changes yet to come. And I will take my change with me, wherever I go.
Turning to leave, I was confronted with still another sign. The automatic doors were broken. The sign said: PLEASE NOTE—THE ONLY WAY OUT IS IN.
As always, it is how one perceives the door that determines the coming and going. There are two journeys one must make to have balance—OUT there and IN here. One depends upon the other. Every exit is an entrance. The door swings both ways. The only way out is always in. To move on in the world as it is, one must turn to resources within.
Well, now. In the long, long ago, such a life experience would be described as having a vision. A common event back then. Those old guys in the Bible would have no trouble with my telling them about this. And we accept such moments as happening to those old guys. Even as late as Proust, with his madeleine. But to me? Now? This is the twentieth century. We make fun of such moments—”What have you been smoking?”
I sense—I know—that these moments of deep connection with the way things are—these brief flashes of understanding—are not only contemporary, but common. It’s just hard to talk about them—like our night dreams and daydreams.
When asked in earnest, most people will tell a similar story. We have not changed that much in the last two thousand years. These private moments of knowing ultimately matter most. Wherever they happen, that place becomes holy ground.
I am not crazy. Or stoned. Or strange.
Tested with my own cynical skepticism and most rational mind, I know that experience one summer’s eve in a grocery store in Pocatello was a permanent landmark in my journey onward. A time when I stood at the summit of a pass in my own mountains and could see far behind me and far ahead. The world stood out before me and in me—infinite in every direction.
Don’t worry if this has happened to you. Worry if it doesn’t.
LAST FRIDAY MORNING I STARTED A FIRE IN MY wood stove using the comics section out of the Sunday newspaper. In the shower I drew all over myself with some Silly Soap left behind by my grandaughter. For breakfast, I ate a bowl of Cheerios topped with jelly beans. And drank a glass of Goofy Grape—a fizzy drink for kids. For background sound, on the stereo, a tape of one of Woody Allen’s comic monologues. A live performance, with a roomful of people yukking their heads off. Tossing my briefcase in the closet, I headed for the door without any baggage. Meant to walk to my office downtown. At a snail’s pace. As I went out the door, I noticed my granddaughter’s red-and-white beanie with a propeller on top. It didn’t fit, but it didn’t fall off, either. It looked like one of the coolest yarmulkes you’ve ever seen. I put it on my head to see if I could walk fast enough to make the propeller work. I could.
I’d had a bad week. A draining downward spiral of unfinished business matched by the rising smoke of grumpiness, which set off my uh-oh alarm. And after going to bed on Thursday night in a junkyard-dog state of mind, it seemed wise to make tomorrow a better day. Experience tells me that I can choose to do that. That I had better do it or I’ll be sorry.
Under these same conditions in times past I would take a day off—make up an excuse—but I can’t call in sick anymore. Because now I’m self-employed—I work for me, and I’d know I was lying. For the same reason, telling the boss to stuff it is masochistic. If my work is my life, then I can’t quit my job or fire me because wherever I go, there I am again—the employee who won’t ever go away.
No radical moves make sense—just some course adjustments are required. Beginning with breakfast and going to work. Anything I can do to lighten up. The winning move was the walk in the hat. It’s very hard to stay depressed when you are walking along wearing a too-small beanie with a propeller on top. Not a lot of people have seen a middle-aged man dressed in suit and tie, wearing a beanie like mine. People in cars honked, waved, shouted, “Go gettum, Grandpa.” And once, at a stop sign, four teenagers sang a full chorus of the Mickey Mouse Song to me and roared off laughing.
I figure the loss of my dignity, which was good for me, was balanced by the gain in amusement I gave other people. They got to work in a good humor. They had something to talk about over coffee. I came to think of my wearing the hat and walking to work as a public service.
As for my breakfast, I turn to Cheerios for the lightness of heart the name implies. As long as I can remember, I have eaten Cheerios, and my kids have eaten Cheerios. And now my grandchildren eat Cheerios. Even if Cheerios were bad for me, I would probably keep eating the cereal just for the name, but when a leading consumers’ organization recently affirmed it as being nutritionally sound, I felt both uplifted and wise in my choice of breakfast cereals.
There is a phrase in my mind that I think I found on a Cheerios box many years ago when I spent more time reading cereal boxes than I do now. The phrase: “The minimum daily adult requirement.” The makers of Cheerios were referring to the stuff in the cereal—protein, vitamins, and minerals.
But the phrase hit me one morning as having larger implications.
What is “the minimum daily adult requirement”?
What do I really have to have, day by day, to get by?
Pretty basic stuff comes up when you try to answer that.
I always think about that phrase when I’m putting my gear together for a long backpacking trip. If I’m going to carry everything I need on my back for a couple of weeks in the mountains, then great care must be taken in choosing what is essential and what is not. About fifty pounds of provisions and gear are all I can comfortably carry. The packing itself becomes focused on economy, efficiency, and well-being. I think in elemental terms. Water. Fire. Shelter. Food. Protection from wind, rain, heat, cold. First aid. Knife. And tools to find my way—compass and map. The quality of the trip depends a great deal upon what I can live without. Mr. Thoreau would agree.
That old question off the cereal box came up again this morning.
When I looked at the list of all the things I had to do today, I realized that few of them fell into the minimum daily adult requirement category. I was lost in the underbrush of busyness again. So I called in well. Parked my briefcase full of paperwork on the sidelines of my life, and walked to work unburdened, in no hurry, singing. Wearing my hat.
Nothing miraculous occurred—no epiphanies, no great encounters, and no visions. Just sidewalks and trees and scruffy grass and people and cloudy sky and hazy sun and dogs and smells of coffee brewing and autos exhausting. A few dandelions in cracks in the sidewalk. Nothing special.
About the jelly beans. On the Cheerios. I know this is probably not recommended by nutritionists. But I had never tried it before. And you never know. Somebody has to do the field-testing. The jelly beans were better than raisins, actually. If you want to check it out, I suggest the Jelly Belly brand, which comes in forty official flavors. My choice was a combination of apricot, banana, watermelon, and root beer. If you want a little zing in the mix, throw in a few jalapeño-flavored ones. A little Wow! in the Cheerios. A little whoopee in the minimum daily requirement.
As long as we’re on the subject of jelly beans. About a week later, my three-year-old grandchild and I were sorting a pound of mixed-flavors jelly beans on the kitchen table while listening to country-western music. It’s an imprinting and bonding ritual. Long after this, I hope when she eats jelly beans and listens to country-western music, she will think fondly of her grandfather and happy times. But I don’t know what she thinks at the moment. Except that she does not like jalapeño-flavored Jelly Bellys, which I do, and does like the toasted-marshmallow-flavored ones, which I do not. So we sort and trade. We have carefully tested all forty flavors of Jelly Bellys and discussed the merits of each. Likewise, we have listened to a lot of country-western music. So far, her notion of good country-western music is “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” sung by Captain Kangaroo. My work is cut out for me. It may be a long time before she identifies with Hank Williams and “Your Cheating Heart.” That takes time. And experience.
I love this child. Red-haired and patient and gentle like her mother; fey and funny like her father. When she giggles, I hear him when he and I were young. I am part of this child. It may be only because we share genes and that we therefore smell familiar to each other—as simple as that: only pheromones—that we are tied together. It also may be that a part of me lives in her in some important way and someday, someday—well, anything’s possible. But for now it’s jelly beans and “Old MacDonald” that unite us.
There are little clues that my life is entering a new stage. My children are beginning to look middle-aged, and they pat me in a patronizing way for no apparent reason. I don’t want to ask why they are patting me—I’ll take all the affection I can get from them in any form they want to dish it up. But I’m not used to being patted yet.
The other clue of change is a sudden desire to take small children on excursions.
Enter the previously mentioned Sarah and an adventure that sounds like the title of a B-grade children’s storybook. Grandfather and grandchild go to the zoo. First time. And we saw the lions and tigers and elephants and kangaroos and bears and gorillas and all the rest—every last living creature the zoo had to offer plus a few possibly dead ones.
She rode in the stroller and I pushed. The next time we do this, I’m going to ride and she’s going to push.
For all of my “Oh, Sarah, look at the whatevers,” Sarah was most impressed with the pigeons that hung around the food stand. What she liked about pigeons was that she could almost touch them but not quite. No matter how carefully, cautiously, quietly, she approached, the pigeons always managed to move just one small step further out of reach. The space between her and the pigeons moved in concert with her. She could come so near and yet never completely close the distance. She spent most of the time at the zoo trying to bridge this moving space between her and the pigeons. All the rest of the animals were over there in another world—behind bars or moats or glass—not unlike the pictures in a book. But the pigeons were over here in her world, and would be made even more real if she could just get her hands on one.
“What would you do with one if you caught it, Sarah?”
She didn’t know. Possessing was not in the plan, actually. Reaching for the pigeons was all that was important to her. Not catching, but pursuing, mattered.
Riding home in a thunderstorm, Sarah fell asleep in her car seat beside me. In her parents’ driveway, I sat in the car and looked for a long time at her face. Who is this child? I wondered. I want to know her. Now that I am older and wiser and have the time and patience I did not have as a father, I will approach her as she approaches the pigeons—carefully, cautiously, quietly, with perseverance. And wonder, as she does, how one can be so close and so forever far at the same time. She is not “mine” and never will be. Two people think of her as “their” daughter. At least four other people think of her as “their” granddaughter. But Sarah only belongs to herself. There will always be a moving space between us—an untraversable distance to be treated with respect. Sarah doesn’t know what she would do if she actually caught a pigeon. And I don’t know what I’d do if I ever caught Sarah. To love something and to possess it are not the same thing.
Talking to her father the next day, I inquired of Sarah’s report on our excursion.
“She’s been talking a lot about pigeons, jelly beans, Old MacDonald, and cheating hearts. Are you sure you guys went to the zoo?”
“Yes. And that’s nothing. Wait till we come back from the aquarium. I bet there are some really amazing pigeons there.”
ACOUPLE OF MORNINGS AGO, THE LADY WHO lives in the houseboat across the way from me was really getting down with Aretha Franklin as the stereo pounded out “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” While washing dishes, the lady was singing along and doing a few good dance moves around her kitchen as Aretha shouted out her gospel-style rock and roll. The lady does not know I was watching her. Nor does she know I have often watched her as she bops around her kitchen singing and dancing. Though I’d like to tell her how much I appreciate her spirit-lifting performance, I’m afraid if I say anything, it will make her too self-conscious and I will have spoiled a good time for both of us.
Besides, she can’t really sing. That’s what she says. When we were organizing a neighborhood Christmas choir a couple of years ago, I invited her to join us, and she said she had a terrible voice and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. “I can’t sing—never could.” How can this be? I have watched and heard her sing. I know better. In fact, most people I know claim they can’t sing. Why is this? What’s going on here?
Imagine how it would seem if our educational system evaluated students around sixth grade and if you did not have clear potential for playing tennis at a Wimbledon championship level, the school and the parents would say you are not now and never will be a tennis player, and that would be the end of tennis for you. No way! We think of sports as a lifetime activity essential to good health. We think that it’s important that people play tennis or golf or basketball or hockey or at least run or walk at whatever level they can—for their own good—as long as they can. We don’t eliminate organized sports around sixth grade for all except those who seem to have talent and great potential for excelling to the point where they can make a professional career of the activity. That would really be absurd.
Yet when it comes to singing, that’s exactly what we do. From sixth grade through high school, and the rest of your life, if you haven’t been labeled as having “talent” or a “good voice” or if you aren’t stubborn about it, you will not sing in the choir. And you will grow up at best being a secret singer, as embarrassed to be caught doing it in public as picking your nose.
If you want to clear a roomful of guests at a party, simply announce that “we are all going to gather around the piano and sing songs.” Good night. People will make self-deprecating statements about their vocal inadequacies and head for the kitchen, bathroom, or just go on home.
Same is true on a camping trip. “Let’s all sit around the campfire and sing” sends most people into their tents in a hurry. Unless they are old people. Who were around before radio or TV or stereos. And don’t know any better. But there are fewer of them every day.
As a high school teacher, I was struck not only by how few students thought of themselves as capable of singing, but how popular lip-synching to recorded music was. If there was any so-called singing at a talent show, it was most likely this silent semi-ventriloquism. Accompanied by air-guitar. Mimic music. Not the real thing. On hiking trips with adolescents, campfire singing consisted of parodied bits and pieces of songs from the radio and MTV. Without the record, the music died. They didn’t even know any hymns from church. They didn’t go to church.
Lest this seem like a things-ain’t-what-they-used-to-be diatribe from someone with old-geezer tendencies, I insist that singing is as basic to being human as walking upright on two legs. And that if the professionals have taken it away for themselves, then it’s time the amateurs took it back.
We don’t even sing the national anthem anymore. That’s left to some soloist out of the world of professional singers to do for us. It’s a performance. One we do not join because we ain’t got what it takes to sing.
As a nation, we can sing “Happy Birthday,” “Jingle Bells,” “America the Beautiful,” “Three Blind Mice,” and a few other nursery rhymes, and once a year stumble through something we can’t even spell, much less sing well—”Old Hang Sign” is what it sounds like. And that’s about it. Except for one other song, which may just be our real national anthem. Before I tell you its name, let me tell you how it came to be. Better yet, I’ll tell you how to get to the very place where it was composed.
Fly to St. Joseph, Missouri. Rent a car. Head due west on Highway 36 for about two hundred miles across Kansas until you reach the little town of Athol in the Solomon River Valley. Ask directions to the farm of Pete and Ellen Rust. It’s one mile further west, eight miles north and three fourths of a mile west again. The West Beaver Creek runs through the Rusts’ farm, and near the headwaters of the creek, hidden in a grove of trees, is a rough log cabin. The Rusts are real nice people and will be glad to show you the cabin. In return, you should contribute to the fund to maintain and restore it. Because this is sacred ground—the headwaters of American song and the American psyche—what once was known as the western frontier.
I recommend that you sit alone on the grass in front of the cabin for a while. As did the man who built it 128 years ago. His journey was not unlike the one you’ve just made across the Great Plains of Kansas. He came here from Indiana in 1871, by foot and horseback, to this place just twenty miles from the geographic center of the United States. And he came alone. To get away and start over. Somewhere out West.
His first wife had died of plague, his second from complications after childbirth, and his third wife from injuries suffered in an accident. His fourth marriage, made in haste to give his children a mother, was a bitter disaster. In his misery, he turned to alcohol, which seriously affected his capacity to carry out his life and work. In desperation, he sent his children to live with relatives in Illinois, and left his wife for a destination unknown.
