Last Night on ER

A felicidade é como a pluma.

Last Saturday night, for reasons I won’t enumerate simply because they’d be too powerfully and personally condemning, I went to bed a little drunk and terribly mad. When I woke up Sunday morning, I was no longer drunk.  It was early but the two older boys were heading off for camp in a couple hours and there were still a few items they needed to round out their supplies, so I took my anger and my youngest son, the infant, and we headed out to catch the early service at the First Church of Glorious Commerce, which opened its doors at 7 am.  

I wandered the aisles, pushing my cart, the baby seat perched atop it, the young one looking back at me while I looked ahead for insect repellant, travel sized toothpaste, a deck of cards and so forth.  On my way into the electronics section, I had to squeeze past this old gent who was engaged in friendly, one-sided conversation with the sales associate.  He had one of those little microphone kind of devices that he held up to his neck when he talked and it amplified his voice and gave it a kind of electronic twang.  

I just shook my head.  “Mortality,” I thought.

There’s something about picking out the spare batteries for the kids flashlights—I guess it’s just imagining a boy in a bunk in a cabin somewhere, reading a book under the blanket, or making his way to the outhouse with a friend, giggling nervously, when suddenly the battery goes dead—“Uh oh, your flashlight battery is dead,” the friend says sadly.  “It’s ok,” my son replies, “Because my father gave me an ample supply of extra batteries.” “Holy crap,” the friend says.  “He sprang for the 2X power.  He must really love you.”  “He does, very much,” my son says back.  “And please, don’t swear so.” Battery shopping puts me in a reflective, almost delusional mood, I guess is what I’m trying to say, so that when I heard a robotic voice behind me say, “Excuse me,” I jumped a bit and pressed closer to the display to let the man pass.

“No, no,” he said.  “I just wanted to tell you, what a beautiful baby.”

I turned to look.  He was right.  It was a beautiful baby.  Very, very beautiful with eyes of the clearest blue and a round face framing the most gentle and knowing smile, like he knew you were just a second or two away from getting the punchline and he didn’t mind, he’d wait for you.  This is my baby—well, I was part of the creative team that came up with it. Typical writer, I was all gung ho at the concepting phase. Then, the seed of the idea planted, I was happy to sit back, hit the bars, have a few drinks, while my partner did all the heavy lifting.  And now, post-launch, here was I, ready to take credit with the public at large. Life imitates work.

Turning my attention to this particular member of the public, this stranger who had approached us at the battery display, I saw a man who, somehow, immediately disarmed me.  I guess I’m like anybody else who is human in that sickness, disease, deformity, fraility, incapacity—it all basically scares the crap out of me and I would rather not face it.  I would rather turn away.  But here was a man who had been through untold trauma, a man sick enough that he needed to hold a flashlight to his throat in order to communicate and lonely enough that he roamed the electronics section of a large department store on Sunday morning talking to whomever he could find.  

And yet he seemed happy.  His gaze was direct and open, his mouth held in a relaxed smile ready to grin at the least provocation, his eyes nearly as blue as my baby’s albeit with a more watery sparkle to them.

“You know,” he said, with his particular metallic twang.  “He is just adorable.  May I?”

He held up an index finger.

“Of course,” I said.

He poked baby in the belly.  He tugged on baby’s big toe.  He tickled the soles of baby’s feet.  Baby responded with unfeigned delight.

“It’s the little feet that kill me,” he said.

“The what?  Oh yeah, the feet,” I said.  There was something about his voice that made you really pay attention—well, I say something like it’s a mystery.  It was the robotic drone of it and the fact that it came more from his fist than from his lips.

“If you need an extra grandfather,” he said, directly to baby.  “I’ll do it for free.”

Baby had no idea what to make of this offer.  He smiled and seemed to shake his head.

“I think we find them so inspiring because they haven’t learned yet to hate,” the man said to me.

Well, that’s the kind of inspirational stuff that I don’t necessarily believe—couldn’t you just as well say that it’s because they haven’t learned to talk?  In my experience there are all sorts of things baby hates—bedtime chief among them—and he expresses his dislikes with great clarity.  It’s his unique diction that keeps him from becoming a real drag.

But rather than take up this issue with my new friend, I chose the much easier option of filling my eyes with tears and blinking at him wordlessly.  

“Youth,” he said, looking from me to the kid and back again.  “It’s pure hope.  Look at him—more beautiful than a sunrise.”

Ok, easy there, Mr. Hallmark.  You’re killing me.

This man’s easy, upright bearing and the way he was turned out on this Sunday morning, neat as a pin, in blue slacks and a blue work shirt, one button undone to show a white undershirt beneath, that and the way he approached me, forthright, unafraid and unthreatening, all open horizons— the whole package, suggested retired military.  Navy, I imagined.

We stood there a moment, side by side, looking at the baby, and he said again, “If you need an extra grandfather, I’ll do it for free.”  I laughed like I was hearing it for the first time—a patently phony laugh in that respect, but so much of what we do is formal speech, call and response, the grunts and squawks of the herd, without which we would never understand each other.  The thing required a laugh and, because I liked this man and wanted him to know I liked him, I laughed.  Simple.

Then he turned to me, clapped his hand on my shoulder and fixed me in the eye.  And then he spoke to me, but this time without raising the little gizmo to his throat.  His voice was all air, faint but clear: “Good work.  Keep it up.”  He gave my shoulder a thump and was on his way.

It wasn’t hard to imagine him, on some dark day in the distant past, piloting his landing craft onto a hostile beach.  As boat lurches into the surf, he turns to the young soldier at his side and, seeing the fear and tears in this boy’s eyes, gives him much the same treatment.  “Good work.  Keep it up.”  

“But I haven’t actually done anything yet,” the soldier cries.

“No,” he replies.  “But you will.  You will.”

Then he lowers the ramp and all hell breaks loose.

Truth be told, my man wasn’t likely old enough to have served in an LST nor is there any real proof that he was a Navy man at all.  He could be a retired insurance rep for all I know.  A rodeo clown.  A bank president.  Who knows what the truth is?  

And you know what?  Who cares?  We pilot our brains around from place to place, all this data pouring in, through our eyes and ears mostly, and then we try to make sense of it.  That’s all it is—storytelling all day long, to our favorite, most attentive audience.  A coworker smiles or doesn’t smile, or leaves us off an important e-mail, and we interpret that as we will.  The bank teller is angry—one person understands that she’s had a bad day, lost her boyfriend, drank too much last night, whatever.  Me, I’d tend to take it personally.  I’d assume the teller hated me for some reason and then I’d spend some time thinking about what that reason might be and imagining how I might improve myself. Or else plotting to kill the teller.

I guess the point is that in my world this was not just a lonely old man.  This was a lonely old man and a sea captain who had stepped in at the right moment and, taking me by the shoulder, steered me off in a different direction.  When life is rushing in through the eyes and ears, like water through the portholes, it’s amazing how a touch can shove you out of the trough, get you back on a weather helm and suddenly you can see and hear again.

That metaphor is a little strained but you see what I’m saying.  I’m sitting there, looking at batteries, listening to this guy, trying not to stare at his throat, wondering about the baby, blinking through the tears, mad about something, getting short on time, laughing, smiling, nodding, shifting back and forth, basically all a-jangle.  Then the guy reaches out and touches me and it’s like the noise just stops.

The rest of my shopping went off without a hitch only now, as I moved though the store, I was overflowing with good feeling toward my fellow man in general and gratitude toward this one in particular.  He was old, he was mute, he spoke through a machine in his fist and he wandered the Insterstate Fred Meyer  looking for people to talk to—but he was happy.  If he could do it, could I try.

And as for the anger I’d been feeling and the fight that had caused it?  Well, when it comes to these inevitable marital kerfuffles, I’ve got a secret advantage.  I’m married to a woman who is basically never wrong.  Oh, about factual things—the capital of Zaire, the molecular weight of Hydrogen—sure.  But in affairs of the heart, pretty much never.  I’m grateful for this because it simplifies my life.  In the event of disagreement all I need to do is find the time to cool down and the nerve to apologize.

Apparently, you can find both at Fred Meyer.

And look, I’ve gone on and on about my morning shopping so that I’ve left aside the very thing I mean to talk to you about, namely our old friend John Carter.  The news there is not good, but neither is it urgent.  It will keep because, to paraphrase the old song, sadness never ends but this blog entry must.

Do you smell burning clove?

Of all the renewable resources in this world, none is more limitless than sadness in all its many forms.  At least, that’s how it seemed to me this morning as I stood on my porch listening to the neighbors arguing in front of their house.

I’d been taking advantage of the quiet early hours of the Sabbath to do some chores which, while simple, were absorbing, so by the time I realized what I was hearing from down the block, the fight was in full swing, at or even a little past its peak.  Fights have many trajectories, depending a lot on the style of the combatants, and, though I am expert in this subject, it would just take too long to go over it all.  (If you, too, are versed in these things, then you know I am not bullshitting here.  Otherwise, please, just trust me on this.) 

At any rate, despite the many ways fights can begin and end, there comes a point in pretty much every fight when rational argument has been abandoned and what is going on instead is a kind of frantic call and response of distilled, extra-logical assertion in which the participants basically take turns saying, “I’m right, you’re wrong,” but with diction and pitch designed to cause the most possible pain and suffering to the other participant.

This is where my neighbors had arrived.  Here is some of their dialog, reproduced as faithfully as I can, except for ninety percent of the obscenity and with the caveat that “he said” or “she replied” should really read, “he shouted” and “she screamed back at him.”  That said, here goes:

“How can you disrespect me like this?” the woman says.

“How can I disrespect you?” the man replies as if this question were barely comprehensible, as if she’d spoken to him in Italian despite the fact that he is French.

“How can you disrespect me like this?” the woman asks again.

“How can you disrespect me?” the man counters with some evident indignation and a barely-concealed need to know.

“Disrespect you?” the woman asks with a laugh.  “Can’t disrespect someone who doesn’t respect themselves.”

“Don’t respect myself?” he says, becoming, if possible, less credulous than before.

“That’s right,” the woman says.  “You heard me.  You’re not deaf.”

“Don’t tell me what I am,” the man responded.

Sensing that this avenue was dry, he quickly embarked on a new line of questioning.

“How can you say I didn’t ask you permission when you saw her there and you knew where I was going and you didn’t say [anything]?”

The woman didn’t seem to follow this any better than I did and for a moment she was nonplussed.  The man pressed his advantage.

“You saw her there.  You saw her there.  You saw her.  You saw her.”

The repetition, which looks a little crazy on the page, was just a technique to keep the woman from talking.  It’s a stalling tactic at best and after a bit the momentum shifted back to her side and she railed on him a while and then she lost steam and he took up the torch and they went back and forth like this for bit with remarkable energy and dedication.

Just yesterday these neighbors had hosted a gala birthday party complete with streamers and balloons and squirt gun fights and capped off with a big inflatable bouncy house that they’d rented and put up in the side yard.  There was music playing and evidence of much cake being eaten and the whole fandango stretched through the afternoon and into the evening.  It seemed, from a distance, like an unmitigated success and I had imagined that the child at the center of it must feel on top of the world.

Now, like a supernova collapsing on itself, the glow from that event had been replaced by this void.  It was impossible to know what they were fighting about—that is to say, the facts of the matter—anyway it wasn’t about facts anymore, except maybe that some event had tipped the scales.  This was about frustration and anger and resentment built up on both sides over time.  This was about history, not about right and wrong, and the events of the day before, which has seemed so joyful to me, were only raised as weapons.

“You act like this,” the woman said.  “After everything I did for you yesterday.”

“You didn’t do it for me,” the man spat back instantly.  “You did it for my daughter.”

I expected this to lead to another round of heavy sparring but instead there was quiet.  Point scored, but to what end.

Finally the woman spoke.

“I don’t understand,” she said “how a son could treat his mother this way.  You’re a major fucking disappointment.”

“Well you’re no fucking prize as a mother,” he said.  “You can believe that.”

To my clinical eye, the fight had presented as a spat between husband and wife—the kind of thing where there was so much energy pushing these people apart you had to assume there was also some strong, invisible bond holding them together or else they wouldn’t bother.  I’d assumed the bond was matrimony.  Turns out it was birth.

And now he is saying, “That’s it, I’m outta here, I’m gonna take my shit and go,” and she’s saying, “You go, just leave, take your shit and leave.”  Seems like all his shit must’ve already been in the yard because there is a brief, almost humorous, discussion about some particular piece of shit—“That’s not yours.” “It isn’t?” “I don’t think so.” “Didn’t I get it that time at the coast?” “Huh, your memory never was any good.”—and then they’re at it again, hammer and tongs.

Where is the daughter during all this?  Inside pretending to sleep?  Is she alone? Or did a friend stay over, as a concession to a kid who wants to hold on a little longer to the birthday feeling, which is just the feeling of being special in the world.  Here today, gone tomorrow.

I remember one night when I was a boy—ten? twelve? fourteen?—waking up in the middle of the night to find my mother on the floor of my room, sobbing.  She was half-sitting, half-lying, with her back to me, looking at the bedroom door which was ajar, and a shaft of light came in and fell across her so that she was all darkness and this one stripe of light.  Outside my door there was a short hallway and then two steps up to the landing by the front door.  My father stood at the top of those steps—I couldn’t see him but I could tell he was there from the sound of his voice as he spoke to her, sometimes pleading to her to come to bed, sometimes rising to argument, sometimes descending into frustrated disgust.

My mother—I don’t remember a thing she said, only that her voice was choked with sadness and bitterness and inconsolation.  And in the pauses when no one was speaking, when they each must have been wondering how it came to this, in those moments the silence was frightening, crystalline and complete. 

My childhood was wonderful.  Me and my dog wandering through the fields and woods of this small town, sailing boats to sandy islands, getting into small scrapes and working out of them.  It was like a dream.

In the course of that long dream, I’m sure I must’ve had my share of birthday parties.  But I don’t remember a single one of them as well as I remember that night, with my mom huddled by my bed and my dad at the stop of the stairs asking her to come back but somehow unable or unwilling to come down there and get her.

You see, sadness sticks better than happiness.  It is easier to make, there are more types of it, it lasts longer and, if you ever think you’re about to run out, just hold on a sec and someone will set you up.

Now, an optimist would stop me right there and point out that one could make the very same claims for joy and happiness and love.  And as soon as I meet an optimist, I will put him on the job.

And no sooner have I said this, than here comes an optimist, where I least expected it, bubbling up inside of me.  What’s wrong with a little sadness, this optimist says.  Isn’t sadness in all its many forms like the shades and hues that, when we have reached the summit and turn to look out, fill the valley with such incredible splendor that we sigh and smile to ourselves and count that mountain well climbed?  You know, I’m not sure I’m entirely down with telling your mother she’s “no fucking prize” but there is something to be said for the seasoning that some darker thought can bring to life’s pie.

In fact, that something has been said, pretty much beautifully and perfectly, by our friend in literature, Mr. Robert Frost, in a poem I’ll share with you here, despite the breech of copyright law this represents. 

But first I have to remind you of the story of the Yankee farmer who was approached in his field by a surveyor from the city who wanted to know if he could help find a particular boundary marker.  The farmer cut a diving rod from a willow branch and in short order found the stone marker under a bush by a stream. 

The grateful surveyor said, “Send me the bill.” 

The farmer said, “That’ll be two hundred and fifty dollars.” 

“Why so much?” the surveyor asked.

“Fifty dollars for finding it,” the farmer said.  “Two hundred dollars for knowing where it was.”

Now, here’s your poem:

To Earthward

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of—was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

—Robert Frost