Crocus

The Perils of Eden

It could be that things were not really better in the days of my childhood.  Memory is selective, and I think of summertime games of kick-the-can as the sunshine dimmed into twilight and the evening star hung over Frawley’s Mountain, which is a hill of sand left by a melting glacier in a past even more remote than the one of which I write. 

Frawley’s was a place of pasture and woods adjacent to trout pools and not far from Poor House Pond.  It was an area where we children played endless games of “guns,” named for the cap pistols or simple bent sticks with which we were armed.  We died agonizing deaths and then jumped up to fight again. 

Now the paths upon which we ran have grown up to saplings, and the saplings have become trees.  You no longer hear the voices of children in the woods.  Poor House Pond has become Jenny Pond and is surrounded by a park where children come supervised by adults.  The picturesque Victorian almshouse is gone, and the old trees that were cut down by the landscaper have been replaced by planted trees that are slowly gaining dignity of their own. 

No one thought we kids were in peril as we roamed those almost primeval woods, but perhaps we were.  It’s easy to think that predators are a modern plague, but I was once at a dinner party where eight out of ten diners related that they had either been abused as children or had escaped attempts at abuse.  I was one of the remaining two and blushed to admit I must have been an ugly duckling whom even perverts scorned. 

Possibly there is simply more news of such attacks, and parents are more careful now.  Perhaps it was never safe to be hiding behind bushes in the warm darkness or ranging woodland paths far from any house.  Being one of the exceptions protected by a guardian angel or luck or lack of sex appeal, I look back nostalgically to a time when the whole town seemed an extension of my back yard and I was free to roam and explore.  Maybe my freedom was only the naivety of my watchers, but it was delicious nonetheless. 

On the other hand I’m not letting my grandchildren out of my sight.  

Fragile Season

A warm day in New England spring

is like an abusive spouse in a good mood. 

You venture into the sunshine

with a weather eye open.

Samantha picked a crocus,

clutching it as two-year-olds do,

stem limp, petals askew,

a treasure forgotten from a year ago.

The next day copious flakes of snow

crowded the violent air as though

the vernal goddess, herself,  had been

roughly handled.

Adaptive Delusions

In the Matrix movies there was a pill they gave so you could see through the delusion of the artificial reality in which we live.  They didn’t give it to fogies; their minds couldn’t handle it. 

These days, people are talking about adaptive delusions -- those unrealistic beliefs that help us get through life.  “The sun’ll come out tomorrow,” sang Little Orphan Annie.  The soldier fights on aided by his good luck charm.  Dumbo can fly so long as he holds the magic feather.

I’ve always thought of myself as a hard-minded seeker of reality.  This, itself, may have been an adaptive delusion, protecting the little fantasies that got me through the day.  Having achieved fogiedom, I now suspect reality is overrated.  Phooey on Socrates; the examined life is not worth living. 

Take religion.  I quote Martin Luther, who said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”  I used to be a great believer in reason and logic.  Now I say, if you can do no other and must worship the goddess Chandi with her eighteen arms, I’m not about to argue. 

The other day I visited my granddaughter Katie’s pre-k school, where the pupils did a dance.  The girl next to her was really into it, swinging her arms, tossing her head so her hair flew, and grinning with pleasure.  Katie’s mouth was a straight line, and her movements were controlled.  I knew why.  She was determined to get it right. 

In twenty years the other girl will be out boogying on a Saturday night, while Katie is home working on next year’s budget.  She comes by it honestly.  Annette and I are like that, and so are Katie’s mother and father.  Four years old, and we’ve ruined her! 

The idea that you can make a household budget for the coming year is as delusional as not having a care in the world.  We should pick our delusions carefully in the hope they’ll be adaptive.  But there I go trying to be rational again.  Most of our delusions are picked for us.      

I give up. Alas, I too must strive to get everything right. Despite my admiration for that dancing child, feeling the music and moving with abandon; despite my yearning for the bliss of the unexamined life, I can’t get there. I don’t know where I went wrong.  I suspect it may have been Unitarian Sunday School at the First Parish.  I confess I have severe doubts about Chandi’s eighteen arms – I’ll consider six at the absolute most.  Reason and logic may not lead me to Truth, but I can do no other. They’re all I’ve got. 

Journalism

Annette, the brains of the family, was scanning her Phi Beta Kappa newsletter and suggested I might enjoy a blog by William Zinsser on the American Scholar website. Take a look for yourself if you like.

In one of his posts, Zinsser writes about his days at the Herald Tribune, and the “vast and grimy city room” where giants of post World War II journalism came daily to work.  It made me think of my arrival at the Old Colony Memorial.  The newsroom was roomy, if not vast. It was at least disheveled, if not actually grimy; and if the people there weren’t giants, they definitely impressed me. 

My publisher was the late Phyllis Hughes, and my editor was Nan Anastasia who I still count as a friend.  They delighted in excellence, and I tried to give it to them.  In return they taught me, corrected me, and, best of all, allowed me the freedom to work in my own way.  

Nan hired me as I was walking down Main Street in Plymouth about two weeks after I sold my insurance agency. I’d been writing a food column for years, but now I felt like part of the staff.  I even got to exercise my other craft, which was photography.  I had real assignments and came back with usable copy. I learned that people generally love to be interviewed.  How often does a person really listen to you and write down what you have to say? 

Writing gave me an excuse to make an appointment with a business owner and be shown around. I spent a day with a lobsterman, and rode in a flat-bottomed boat upon the icy waters of a scallop farm in Fairhaven. I was usually welcomed, although I couldn’t wangle a tour of the Grandmother’s Mincemeat factory in Natick, and the owner of a shop on the Plymouth waterfront was so averse to being written about I suspected his tee shirt emporium might be some sort of front. 

All in all, I had so much fun, I wondered if I shouldn’t have started in some vast and grimy city room directly upon my graduation from college.  I harbored ill thoughts about the head of the Bates College English Department, who felt I had no aptitude for the subject and suggested I major in something else.  If it hadn’t been for him, I might have ended up like Zinsser and have a blog of my own. 

Wait a minute…

March 12, 2011

Grumping at bumps

And fussing at mess,

I take my lumps

In gracelessness.

To fight my ills I’m gearing up

Grim-faced and sober-sided. 

I really should be cheering up

With all my ills abided.

Bouncing along upon life’s rubble

Wailing with woe and moaning, “Ah me!”

I ought to look at others' trouble

Thankful I’m facing no tsunami. 

What’s Going on Here?

Five trillion synapses

Suffer a power outage.

The neurons fail.

The computer has no hard drive.

Data is irretrievable.

There was no backup.

But wait.

How did electricity

Appreciate the fragrance of a rose?

How did negative reinforcement

Become suffering?

Whatever made kindness

Better than brutality? 

Maybe we’re more

Than ordered circuitry.

It doesn’t seem likely,

But it’s also improbable

That the sunrise

Should look the way it does.

The Snow is Melting

Peter Gomes

After the Plymouth Fourth of July celebrations of my teenage years, one traveled to Duxbury where the fireworks were part of Duxbury Days. They were the culmination of a carnival and were held at midnight to keep the throngs riding the Tilt-a-Whirl and buying cotton candy for as long as possible before they headed for home. 

On one particular Fourth, there was Peter Gomes standing near the entrance meeting people.  He was only a kid, younger than I, and I was a callow youth, but he seemed to know almost everybody.  He called them by name and asked about their relatives and seemed delighted to see them.  As far as I know, he never ate a candy apple or a serving of fried dough. He just stood there saying hello.  

Years later I thought of this when Peter had given his annual sermon at the Church of the Pilgrimage where he packed the pews.  As the throng departed he greeted each person, asking how their summer had been, mentioning Long Pond, Duxbury, boating, or residence at a beach.  He inquired about children, parents, cousins, ancestors, and aunts. 

I marveled at the feat, and so did his mother, the pert and saintly Orissa Gomes.  “It’s my job,” Peter told her, but it was more than that. It seemed as though he was born with a genuine interest in the people around him. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, considered him their friend.

But his talent extended beyond a remarkable memory; he was a man who could entertain. He had an innate sense of humor, a deft turn of phrase, and a way with an anecdote that was all his own. Whether as a preacher of sermons, an after-dinner speaker, or a guest at table, Peter J. Gomes was never in his life a bore.    

There are not many great public speakers in the world, and with his passing their number was reduced by one.  He was extremely knowledgeable about the Bible, whose cadences he made his own.  He could digress from a theme without getting sidetracked, and return to the topic in a way his listeners didn’t anticipate. 

And he could do it off the cuff.  I once sat at a head table next to Peter, who was to be the evening’s speaker. As the dessert was being served, he produced paper and his fountain pen and made a few sketchy notes.  He was selecting his topic, giving a little thought to structure, and possibly choosing an opening line.  He was introduced, he stood, and never glancing at the paper again, he delivered a talk of wit, complexity, clarity, and perfect length.

Peter had his opinions about the interpretation of the Bible, the way to run an institution, and the worthiness of lobster to be considered a delicacy, but he was at bottom a very private person.  After the coats were on and people departed for their cars, there was a Peter that few of us knew. 

Perhaps that is why so many were eagerly awaiting his memoirs.  He hinted that they would be more comfortably written when he was able to hole up in the privacy of his seaside home.   Alas, like the symphonies of Mozart’s maturity, the memoirs of Peter Gomes are among the masterpieces never given to the world.  But our loss is much more than his speaking or his writing; it is of the man, himself.  He was a person we smiled to see coming down the street and hated to see leave, and now he is gone for good.