MOTHER NATURE

My mother would never do that. Sidney Poitier recounts"…when I was very small my mother threw me in the ocean and watched without moving as I struggled to survive." Fathers are often portrayed as doing this, but mothers? I never heard that. But what's interesting to me in this moment is that it is Sidney's father who mercifully fished him out, then, handed him back to his mother who threw him back in, again, and again, and again.
"Mother-nature" in Golden-Age American culture is far removed from Mother Nature. Fathers, in our patriarchal vision, are not portrayed with mercy, even though that was the foundation vision of the teacher of Nazareth. That's what is so startling to me in this account. The roles are presented backwards, right?
I don't have to make much effort to recall those risky moments when life was a choice between sink or swim. I think the first time was when I walked out of the house and far down the road to find a pay phone and invite a girl, a friend of my sister's, to a High School dance.
I had agonized for years before making this move. It had come to the point where it just had to be done or I'd never be able to go on living. Nothing rational was involved. Something inside me just pushed very hard and it was done.
Later, during my third rather unsuccessful year in college, I had a momentary vision of escaping from this ill chosen course of schooling by presenting myself to the Draft Board and letting fate take a hand in my future. More and more during the years that followed I'd fall back upon those irrational impulses that have decided my life. I'd come to think of the hand of Providence acting to guide me on a path towards my destiny, the hand of the Father. But now when I look at it I see it as Mother Nature taking hold and throwing me into the maelstrom so that I can learn how to swim. It's only later that the merciful hand of the father shows me how I am guided along the way.
It's Mother Nature that impels us to learn lessons from life. It is the Father's compassion that leads us to understand their significance. We gather meaning from the whisperings of wisdom.
This is how culture explains it to me. That's my picture, not society's. My mother would never have thought of that. Mother Nature would.

THE UNIVERSAL RESOURCE

Schedules have ruled my life ever since I was born. I don't think I was ready for this world since I came out ass backwards, kicking and screaming. But the rule of the day was that a rigorous routine formed a successful individual out of the chaos of an undisciplined infant. My mother worried about that schedule. It didn't seem quite right to her. It didn't fit in with her instincts. But, after all, what did she know?

I wasn't ready for school either. There I stood, next to the piano, the sun shining in through those high windows as my mother spoke to the teacher. Then she was gone.
Every day, good weather or bad, we walked back and forth to that school, pushing the carriage for my baby sister during the first year or so. It took almost a half-hour for the trip, one-way. Then came the waiting, waiting for the return. I don't remember anything from that waiting period.

Busy, busy, busy. That's what filled up the scheduled time. That's what I learned in school, how to pass time. In the beginning I discovered that I could ask to be excused to walk the hall for a trip to the bathroom. I used to imagine I was elsewhere during that trip. On an ocean liner, perhaps. But they caught on quickly and sent me home with a note asking if I had a medical problem. The schoolwork didn't keep me busy enough. I had to invent my own busyness.

It took time to grow up. I kept busy doing that. Preparing for the future was what filled my life. Isn't that what schooling was all about? That's when I discovered that I was going to live in a different world. We really didn't care about the past, I learned. The future was what life was all about. I remembered the "World of the Future", at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. But then came the war. I was busy keeping up with that and I forgot about the future. When the soldiers returned from the war, they brought back something new, the atomic bomb.

I had one. I sent in a box top and got a gold and silver ring. There was a finned projectile mounted on top. I'd go into the dark hall closet and remove the red cap that covered a small lens. When my eyes had adjusted to the dark I'd peer inside and see the wonderful shooting sparkles of atomic energy. Scientists called it a scintillometer. It was an icon of the future.
I got busy, becoming a scientist.

Somebody told my father that there was a famous physicist named Plank. That was encouraging. Popular Science was the only magazine my father read, and he had some old papers and books from his High School that I discovered in the attic. There was even a second-hand chemistry set I inherited from an older cousin. Science was in the air.

Since I was a winter child my schooling began in January. We had half-grades in those days. To modernize, they doubled up my schedule in fourth grade and I had to rush to catch up in fifth. I didn't know how to write in cursive so I had to fake it as I went along. I also got into a couple of fights. I wasn't ready. But sixth grade had Science, every day! I was ready for that, especially since it was taught by Mr.Wilson, our first male teacher, who also had been in the war as a navigator, and wore dress boots to class. Now I had no trouble keeping busy. My schedule was complete, and when the time came to put together a Career Book I knew just how I was going to occupy the next twenty years of my life.

A schedule had become my universal resource. Whenever there was a lull in the busyness the schedule would fill it in. Each phase of my life was regulated by a prefabricated template that kept me on track and covered up the anxieties that arose while I awaited the arrival of the next scheduled event. Whenever I was alone and unoccupied I passed the time with preparations for the future. I could organize, rearrange, clean, erase, rewrite whatever I had done, and rehearse the next step. Cooking, housework, shopping and child-care became my specialties as the schedules of others became integrated into my own. Any profound concerns were crowded into the background as I called more and more upon my universal resource to carry me through the day.

More so now than ever, the daily schedule enables me to face the business of life. It's all busyness now, here in the empty nest. It's all waiting, now, and wondering what the next stage will offer. The universal resource still works, but perhaps it is time to replace it with an invention of my own. That's the way into the future, isn't it?

SCALING THE TOWER

I never got into Montaigne. That was mostly due to ignorance, I'd say.
Somehow I came upon the chateau during my weekend travels outside the military depot in the Landes De Bussac of southwestern France. I did look up at the walls, and I've since seen photographs of the study inside the tower. It seems like I've been there, but I cannot say for sure that I have.
A few years later I met him. He was there in our class, a Survey of French Literature, after I returned to NYU to finish my Bachelor's degree. A real humanist; someone I could relate to. Reading portions of his essays struck a chord that made me resonate with experiences and a picture of the world I'd never seen elsewhere. Twenty-three, and I'd never heard this stuff before! I had a lot of catching up to do. I was rushing along and just skimmed the surface doing my assignments.
Convention required that as Graduate students we read the Essays in the original archaic language. That took quite a bit of effort. Then there were historical circumstances and technical considerations to be examined. Another distraction! Basic themes and attitudes were about all we could expect to master at this stage. And when it came to research and write a paper I chose to do something on his obscure friend, Pierre Charron. I'm still intending to read more of those essays, again. The Pleiade edition of Montaigne's Oeuvres Completes sits on the book shelf in our front parlor. Two copies, in fact! One, the perfect gift for the aspiring Professor Plank. I wonder if it was for Monsieur or Madame?
How is it that these glimpses can suffice to nourish a life? Surely, hidden within the tower there are treasures that would enrich each day of my life. If only the path through the gate were irresistibly inviting. If only the voice from within would call out: "Friend, enter." Impoverished, I stand outside the walls, hat in hand, waiting to be recognized. My ignorance remains. And yet, what he said to me, and what I saw there those many years ago, persist. There is just enough to pass on as wisdom along this unlikely chain of personalities evolving through the ages. So, yes, perhaps I never did get into that stronghold of thought. But somehow, some of that labor of love and understanding leaked outside to be absorbed by any passing and unsuspecting creature endowed with that sensitive apparatus we call the human spirit.
Perhaps I'll give it another try.

May Morning

Ferns and foamflowers unfolding.
A red squirrel races down the long stone wall,
leaping across the gaps from rock to rock.
Two deer spring up, startled,
run, then look back.
A green haze fills the woods as the late leaves emerge.
Morning walk to greet the sun.
My companion is absent.
Italy calls.