Fiction Spot: The Last Running Summer

THE LAST RUNNING SUMMER

Today, he has the memories of his childhood self running.  Running with his two legs.  Sometimes, he thinks those memories are dreams, fantasy images of a very young boy.  Sometimes the images are from the perspective of  himself running in his own body.  Sometimes he is the observer, dreams or memories of him running across the field with his cousins on those long, golden summer and autumn days.

He remembers the days that seemed to go on forever, the sun-scorched, coarse grass that was, in the later days of the season, slightly too long for the games of tag, touch football, kickball or whatever they chose on any given afternoon.  The days grew long, overlapping into dusk on that summer and fall stage of recollections.

The most vivid memories were of the games that played on even after the sun slipped below the horizon, lit by a lone utility light atop a pole not far from the house.  It was the kind of light they tell you about, warn you about in the middle of many country fields–the ones that they say not to walk to in an emergency because they look closer than they are–that one can parish  in the distant journey to that beacon whose welcome is illusion a siren especially in those snow-swept storms that used to visit the Midwest more than once each winter.

That summer and fall in 1965, Donny and his cousins benefited from the illusion that it was not time to come in for the supper the grownups ate while the playing kids’ plates cooled like the crispness of the first days of school that came after their fun.  Their parents let them play that summer–play past the small pangs of hunger forgotten amid the fun–or duty.  Past some bed times.  Past any concept of “future” that Donny’s four-year-old self could conjure.

They decided, between them, the grownups, that they would let the kids play–instruct the kids to play way beyond the regular boundaries of time, competition and exhaustion.  Some of the older kids knew.  The younger ones would know it time: know why, this summer, they were allowed to ignore the dinner bell, play past their hearts’ delight–play with respect for nothing except the rules of whatever game they were playing and a few bumps and bruises that often visit young bodies that run faster than the wind and the shouts of their names that sail the game into the next harbor of semi-organization.

And with respect for an attempt to let the little kids have as much fun as the bigger ones, especially Donny.
He remembers that summer, not knowing that his one shorter leg made him different.  The other kids saw him as  not much different than any other four-year-old who struggled to keep up with the faster, older kids, and not so different because everything about him was as normal as everything else the family and a few friends had always known about him.

The older cousins knew, partially from what their parents had shared with them, but more from overhearing hushed tones that the grownups felt forbidden to speak but felt the responsibility to share with each other: because that is the adults’ burden; or because they needed to talk through their fears; or because Donny’s problems were easier to talk about than their own problems, relationships, or shortcomings.  The older cousins, taking their first sip of grownup responsibility carried the burden of knowing why that summer, they played into the night, why they were told to play as long as Donny wanted to play, long beyond a four-year-old’s bed time.  As they grew older, they too carried memories of those days.

Donny remembers the illusion of running fast, an illusion created by the gentle prairie winds that blew across the golden fields and his still golden hair.  He was not fast. He was four.  He had one impossibly short leg.  He was the little cousin that the older kids made giggle and chased with no more speed than what would keep him in the game.

He did giggle–a lot.  He was happy.  It was the last summer when he had no inclination that there was anything wrong with his body and it was how the other kids saw him, just as kids see so many other truths with their naive intuition of integrity.

Soon, after the others were shuffled off to school, mostly out of sight and away from the taste of adult responsibility.  Almost like a poorly-kept secret, Donny would be shuffled off to what the doctors where sure was the right thing to do with The Impossibly Short Leg.  Sure that he would be better off without it.  Sure that the prosthesis which would be refitted many times over the course of his next decades, one that would fill his other pants leg the same as his longer leg, would be the best “cure” for Donny’s short leg and clubbed foot.

That fall, while his cousins and their friends played at recess, gym class, ran home from school, chased the girls, where chased by the boys who would otherwise imitate the football game they saw that weekend at the high school field or on television.  Meanwhile, the parents paced daily as if by doing so, they would come to some peace about the doctors’ decision or whether they explained what was about to happen to the little boy or their guilt over having caused Donny’s affliction or the curse that God had placed on their family: to have such an inflicted child.  Donny was having his shorter leg amputated, well above the knee.

Donny does not remember waking up from his surgery, nor the three others that were required before he could have a properly fitted prosthesis.  The encouragement given him by so many of the grownups didn’t register, subconsciously shutting down from the trauma, but giving the impression through his silence to the grownups that he was happy and taking this all in stride, taking care of grownup feelings.

He did not dwell on this change.  He avoided it as fiercely as he avoided the changes that came as his body introduced him to adolescence and avoided again when those changes brought on urges that he would not entertain because what girl wanted to be with a boy with only one leg?

When Donny was born, the nuns who served as the nurses in that Catholic hospital wondered to themselves and out loud, the same way as the disciples asked Christ of the lame man, was it the sins of his parents or the original sin of Donny that left him lame.  They, nor the doctors nor the parents waited for Christ to answer and, instead, wielded the tools God had left in their hands.

Jesus would have said, Donny’s condition is neither the result of his parents or his transgressions but exists in order that the glory and power of God can be demonstrated.  Or he would have said something like that, if our Bibles depict him honestly.  Then, he might have laid his hands on Donny, restoring the leg and showing his glory. Or maybe not.

The nuns, the doctors and the other well-meaning mortal sages were left with their own devices.  Whether they harbored notions that Donny’s parents’ sins brought them to this point, they made the best choice that their limited wisdom could see.  It was probably the right choice but could not have been as glorious as Jesus’.

The cousins would not see Donny again until Christmas at aunt Marilyn’s house–and this time, to them, Donny was “different.” This time, they felt sorry for him.  For the first time, they were fixed with the notion that there were things Donny could not do.  He was a new but familiar stranger and all of them were a little afraid.  The cousins did not know how to play with him.  They did not know how to talk with him.

The family’s  silence was matched by Donny’s who, that Christmas, spent most of his time in the big chair in the living room, next to the tree, mostly watching, with two shoes that hung identically beneath the cuffs of his brand new jeans.  Appearing unexceptional in his muted form, no one would ask of his condition, nor whose transgressions  were to blame, nor whose mortal glory might be stoked.

When There Is Crying in Baseball

There is a difference between crying over spilt milk and grief.  Or maybe not.  There are some things about which we should cry and others, not so much.

Having baseball tickets stolen might seem like the loss of a material thing or the chance to hang out in the elite company of those spectating the gladiators.  It would be sacrilege to say that it is on par with being told that you cannot come into the church for worship.  But what unholy transgression was it?

My son Sid and I had planned a trip to see the Minnesota Twins play the Detroit Tigers. It was to be our first outing of the year to the home field. It was a trip to do what fathers do with their sons, some of my mother friends do with their children, a gift that some of these mothers and fathers are passing along to their sons and daughters and a place where so many stories of the love between them have been told, written and lived.

It also was a spot, in that gray-skied Saturday afternoon where many of our friends waited in seats adjacent to the ones we had for the game. They were there for the same loves that get entangled in watching and playing that game and for the love of our friend Mel, who knows all of those loves and people well.

But Sid and I did not make it to the game. In the moments before we boarded the train to the ball park, the tickets went missing.

I reached to my back pocket to feel the void where the envelope holding the tickets should have been. The pocket felt as empty as the gap left by a missing tooth and as crazy as a lost child: the lost slice of childhood that I planed to share with Sid that day.

At first, I told myself that I must have let them slip from my pocket. We ran from the train platform, tracing our steps back to the car, the Mexican fast food restaurant where we ate—a place much cheaper than the extra meal we might eat from the ball park concession stands. I looked hard, back and forth, in the car, on the ground, in the restaurant, in the eyes of passers by: something that would tell me it was okay, place them in my hand and make everything okay.

As I looked, though, the image of a man on the train platform kept appearing in my mind, a man who lingered too close as we swiped the pay strip on the fare box, the image of the man who, I am quite sure, lifted the tickets from my pocket moments before we would be on our way.

After those moments of the frantic, Sid and I got home and were quiet in the living room.  I tried my best to hide my sadness, but not so much as to fake something happy, fake a substitute that would not have even worked when he was younger. 

He did look sad on the sofa.  I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was pretty sad.  "And this one was for Mel's birthday, too--wasn't it?"  I told him yes, the man who took his not-quite-two-year-old self to the second baseball game he could even notice.  He cried a little.  I tried not to show much of my sadness, tears, frustration or anger; and how do you show grief over something like this?

We are sorry to have missed the chance to share baseball with each other, with you and everyone else who was there for the happiness of baseball.  While the money it cost us to participate in that day is significant in these days, but even at the greatest cost, it doesn't describe that what was missed was more than just a fun event, recreation or a chance to get out.  I don't know how many people will understand or how to describe the loss--even to a lot of people who know baseball. 

I think I can only have other people describe it.  They know, somehow, maybe from watching the two of us, seeing the game not through our eyes but through our sharing with each other and with anyone willing to get close enough.  Those who love us like seeing us together--seeing us in ways that are accentuated by baseball.

I am not sure which parts of what was defiled and violated are sacred.  I know that it is more than a violation of our personal space.  More than my friendships.  More than spoiling a game.  I just know that I feared such a catastrophe as much as I feared missing an important flight to an important event: like I had missed a relative's wedding. 

It is not a wedding.  It is just a game.  Just a birthday.  Just a day out.  Just another day filled with hazards.  But it is that day that remembers the first time I walked into the Bowie Bay Sox stadium with Sid in my arms, then settling in our seats, his eyes fixated on the animated diamond with more attentiveness and fascination that I thought was possible for a pre-toddler and my eyes welling with more tears than are allowed in baseball.  

I would not experience the kind of emotion I felt at the ball park until the first day we sat together, the two of us in church.  These are things that can define what fathers can do with their sons, friends with their friends, love with love and joy with joy.  (See “Crying at the Cathedrals.”)

For a moment, that is what was taken from us.  For a moment.  We will recapture it another day.

I Love You: That’s So Funny

Poop, butt and vomit jokes are one of the delights of early childhood. I don’t know how long it takes us to tire of the butt jokes. Maybe as long as it takes to accept those not-so-crude aspects of life: a common daily reality, not so odd, ironic or absurd. I am guessing that doctors Freud, Jung, Erickson and Spock have explanations, something that explains this transition from being comfortable eliminating our waste into our pants to finding the elements of that process the most hilarious idea we can conceive of on the planet.

I recall a day in grade school when every boy in the middle grades was fascinated with a turd soooo big and long it would not flush. Everyone elbowed their way to the door of the stall in the boys’ bathroom for a chance to see the spectacle as one of our teachers tried to encourage and then order all of us back to our classrooms. Urging us out of the bathroom did not, in the least, halt our exclamatory banter, filled with “Holy cows” and “Did you see that?” and eyes as big as the phenomenon we had, prior to that day, never seen.

In time, we tired, outgrew, or just forgot to laugh at unless adorned by some cleaver sophistication.

In a way, we never quite get comfortable with any of that, the body parts and the functions that go with them. There are still ways to make poop, butts and puke funny. It works in some movies for some people on some days: I guess it’s all in the timing—and maybe in not being the ones who have to clean it up: either the physical stuff or the pitiful emotional fallout that accompanies the physical mishap.

While still children, we graduate to the next order of strange and uncomfortable body parts and functions: it’s about sex. We are kids, with no or very warped contexts of this life reality and, thus, still naïve enough not to confuse this caricature of sex with love. We can conveniently not see that sex and love are things that could go together, even if we know too much about them than is healthy for a child.

Sex and love: they are funny.


Bobby and Suzie
Sittin’ in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G…

Or, “Bobby has a girlfriend! Bobby has a girlfriend!” More giggles. More embarrassment. As many denials of “Do not! DO NOT!

When do we grow out of his stage? Hopefully not too soon, because it really is something children have to grow into, spend time uncomfortable with and out of that discomfort, spend an appropriate amount of time growing, establishing their personal space, identity and sense of self the discomfort helps us grow into. The taunts work for comic relief: Little Bobby with “First comes love/then comes marriage/then comes Bobby with a baby carriage is supposed to be an uncomfortable absurdity.

Even as adults, though, we sometimes—and for some, every time– do not avoid being as unripe as Bobby. And maybe that is why it is hard to graduate out of that stage of bad humor that it follows us into the spaces and time of life when it can no longer be a silly absurdity: the places in which we live and have to care in those relationships, with those real people.

Not being that undeveloped person is hard in our “Two and a Half Men” society. Once I got past being offended and realize it is just television, a comedy, it reminded me of some of the Greek classic comedies. So absurd. Silly. Such shallow attitudes on some things that are of ultimate importance: family, sex and love—or the absence of love. Absurd. Silly.

And maybe it would be funny, if only it lasted the two and a half hours it takes to present one of those Greek comedies. But it goes on and on, week after week, day after day, rerun after rerun. And then I realize that it is not just a fiction. It’s more real than we will admit, even though the implicit admission is as plain as the popularity of the show. It is hard to deny when the show’s star repeatedly shows the real consequences of what happens when the plot of the show comes to real life. It is hard to deny when the trail of ruin left by that star shows up large—and we still want to reward him with our attention, money and an even bigger stature than we provided him before.

It leaves us, still as adults, afraid to fall in love or to let anyone know, even the target of our affections. Will people laugh at us? Will our love laugh at us? Is love a joke with which those around us are still way too comfortable? Will our love be so uncomfortable with the love that the realm of the comic will be the comfortable refuge?

If I say, “I love you,” will you say, “Oh, that’s so funny,” and laugh?

And I can laugh, too, make us both comfortable and say, “Just kidding.” Freud, Jung, Erickson and Spock have theories on this, too.  I am not sure I want to know.  Instead, we can turn on the television and learn what love is about.

(Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/i-love-you-thats-so-funny/)

She Told Me, “I Can’t”

“I can’t do it,” she said. It was a statement that needed a bit of deciphering. I did not quite know what it meant; I did not know what made this 4^th grader believe that she could not—could not draw an oval. Who told her that she could not?

Cassie picked up her pencil, held it to the paper, like a knife to something she threatened to cut, then placed it down on her desk, and said, again, “I can’t.”

I was in Cassie’s class assisting with a jazz and visual arts residency. The 3^rd and 4^th graders worked with visual artist Teresa Cox to spend a few days becoming their own versions of Pablo Picasso and Romare Bearden. For some, the transformation was easy. For others, not so much.

“I know you can,” I said, hoping to get a sense of her frustration. What did her words mean? “I know you can. Getting yourself to school every day was a lot more work than anything you are going to do for this project, especially draw the oval. Tell me what you mean.”

“I just can’t,” she said. “It’s too much.”

Was she overwhelmed by the larger project of creating a collaged self portrait? Was she shy or unsatisfied with her artistic ability? Had she really been trained by her environment to believe that she was not capable? I told her that I knew that she was a sufficiently intelligent girl and that I was pretty sure that most of the stuff that any of us was going to ask of her in the classroom was something she was up to.

I did not say this as an encouragement, like some hero that was going to make her to believe in herself. She was wise, intelligent and hip enough so that the Marlo Thomas bit wasn’t going to work on her. Still, I was uncomfortable with the “I can’t” language and how infectious it could be to so many other things that she was going to have to do in that classroom; I was not willing for those things, much less the project she was working on, to get derailed with the most powerful words of defeat.

Would I have to interpret her “I can’t” in a way we sometimes we have to interpret “I’m bored” when kids utter the phrase? Sometimes, “I’m bored” can mean a kid wants you to find something for her to do, besides make her lunch. Sometimes it means, “I’m depressed.”

I know that our childhoods are not always happy, that they are not days to which a lot of us grown-ups want to return. Not salad days. During the past weeks spent in a half dozen classrooms, I saw more than one kid living through a day to which they do not want to return. Still, I know that they have and will return in spite of my wishes to the contrary, just as those days did in my youth. And these hard days usually do more than just feel bad: they make just about everything, including school, dysfunctional and not easy.

It was frustrating that some kids could not seem, at first (and second), to pull themselves together to complete their project with an ease that matched the task. What was more frustrating and what was the most difficult to watch was how familiar I was with what those kids experienced.

I saw my 4^th grade self, the 4^th grade self that, somehow, could not fit himself—force his way into the context of so many things, places, projects and knowledge that should have been simple and easy. Instead, the reality against which I fought, many of the kids I see fight, was one that portrayed the simplest tasks with unease, unsureness and few expectations.

What was Cassie really supposed to do? What was really expected of her? What had she learned about what people expected?

I am not sure what she had to fight through that afternoon, what so many other kids in the many classrooms in which I worked over the past few weeks had to fight through—whether it was something as simple as not knowing or being unfamiliar with the use of scissors and glue or if it was more of a emotional weight against which they had to fight to get themselves to school each morning.

But Cassie was not fighting anything like an ignorance of what an oval was or how to use a pencil to create one. I heard her say the dastardly magic words again: “I can’t do this.” But what followed gave me a hint to what she was fighting. “You don’t understand. I got a lot going on right now,” she said. Heavy words coming from a ten-year-old.

I did not know what I could say in the small, not private space and in the short period of time we had. The words I was able to find could not be guaranteed to be translated into something helpful for Cassie. I do not even know if there were enough words or enough common, familiar language to have anything I said make sense—be impactful in the small context in which we worked.

I looked around the room, at the kids and at myself—at what was familiar in their faces and the feelings that emitted from their fits of frustration. I said, “Yeah, I know. A lot of us have stuff going on. We have stuff that seems impossible, like nothing’s going to work. But not everything has to not work.”

I told her, urged her not to do what is so easy for us, to let that art project, that easy thing, get washed down the same drain of stuff “going on.”

I do not know the details of her life. It is not my place to ask and I did not get the time—and about those things “going on,” she was right: I did not know them. At least not as clearly as she needed someone to know, understand and listen.

What I do understand is that some days, it is too hard to leave the comfort and safety of home and face a boat load of Impossibles, to step out the door, to pick up a scissors or put pencil to paper. But we get up and leave, not so much out of bravery or resolve but because staying is not an option.

And for some, and maybe for Cassie, it was what was happening at home that was her Impossible, an impossible that was heavy enough create a “can’t” that creeps into too much of her days. I do not know.

What do I know? That this opportunity to create was not a “can’t” and did not have to be another failure in days of difficulty. What I did know is that Cassie’s mood and attitude not only risked not getting her project done, but had bigger ramifications, not just for the day, not just for the school year. I thought of my own experience. I wanted to tell her in the most urgent voice something from my own experience: that she needed to do something about it or they would put her in the “dumb kid” class, which is where I found myself in too much of my school career. You might think that they don’t have dumb kid classes anymore. I am not so sure that we do not live in a social climate where we are not just segregating kids into the dumb kid classes: we are making whole schools, full of uncreative can’ts: this kid can’t… our systems just can’t… we just can’t pay for…

I did not have the magic words, and thought maybe her teacher, Ms. Dixon did. Maybe. I am not sure which conversations helped. I told Ms. Dixon what was going on. I know she knew Cassie much better than I. Cassie was a day behind on her project, but she, like many other kids who were having a difficult time, pushed through and created something wonderful.

Today, there are many wonderful works hanging I the halls of the three schools. Scores of works from as many kids. It seems like a major achievement, and given the work that Teresa Cox, teachers and students did, it is a major achievement. I am not sure how to measure this achievement against the the greater complexities of “stuff going on.” I am just glad that Cassie did not let this achievement slip away. I am glad that my worries of “I can’t” could be held off long enough for the wills that made a success.

Home, Part 3

This is the last of a three part series.  See “Home, Part 1” and “Home, Part 2” in the previous two posts.  Wishing all of of you, whether I know you or not, a nice home weekend.

*******

What does it mean when our lover puts a toothbrush in the bathroom for us? What does it mean when we give them a key, and how is that key different from the key we leave with our neighbor for safe keeping? I remember a friend’s exclamation when her boyfriend gave her a drawer for her clothes at his house. Welcome. Trust. Love. Knowing we belong.

What happens when seeing that toothbrush in the morning is no longer a welcome site, or anything else that goes with that love, spouse? Years ago, a friend said, “I just need to get alone.” At first, we thought she was telling she needed a loan. “No,” she said, “I need to be alone.” She needed to move out of the apartment she shared (secretly without her parents knowing) with her boyfriend. 

What happens when we lose his or her trust or lose that trust in them? What happens when we fall out of love?

Maybe nothing. How many toothbrushes are sitting in the house, memories too precious to throw away and not willing to institute the insult of using them to scrub nooks and crannies? A found key: I know whose P.O. box it belongs to. No use giving it back; of no use in any way. A key. A toothbrush. A found sock.

A stack of strawberry soda that my grandmother used to keep in a room just off her kitchen. 

It was a mountain that never seemed to dwindle. The endless supply was meant not so much to lure her grandchildren as it was a message to her daughter that those grandchildren should spend more time with their grandmother. Even though we spent three weeks most summers of our childhood in New Orleans, grandma wanted mother to send us for longer, extended stays, long enough to make a dent in her proud pile of red “cold drink.” It was more than a hint. It was “proof,” of course, that we, her grandchildren BELONGED there, with her, the right of her grandmotherhood. 

That visit would never happen. Grandchildren grew into young adult grandchildren and then into adults. They became too busy to take a near month-long chunk out of their summer and then too old to really care about red cold drink. I don’t know if she, little by little, gave the soda away to the neighbor children, if they were slowly pilfered by the one son she had who never really got his life together or if a large pile of soda was her only company when she was stricken by the stroke that would, in little time take her life. 

In the quarter century since her passing, I have wondered who else would sit all day on the front stoop waiting for me come arrive in a place that was especially for me. I wonder for whom I will sit on that stoop. Is the extra toothbrush in the linen closet just another pile of strawberry soda sitting in the back room?

Like grandma, we sit and imagine the object of our love. We wait with toothbrush, special tea, special cereal, whatever white or colorful noise helps them sleep. We want to create a space that will prompt someone to ask as that love ventures without knocking to cross our threshold, “Do you live here?” We look to have such a place of our own; we long to find other places were those we love make us belong.

On that late spring afternoon, I walked into Mary’s house, as I had so many other days, like I lived there. On that or any other day, another friend might have walked through the unlocked door and waited for Mary, sitting on the day bed on which that they would not have guessed—or bothered to think that she and I had made love. 

Others would walk into the kitchen and wait for her and wait for one of the many important discussions we had there that could change the world, if only it would listen. That John walked in with me and that a dozen others would soon follow, I confined the two of us to the living room, bathroom and kitchen. We waited. Other days, I waited: waited on that day bed; waited in the kitchen; waited with open cupboards as the contents of those cupboards waited for me; waited in the quiet white walls and no noise in the bed of the farthest back bedroom, free, welcome and wanted. I was free to fall asleep, lie awake, make myself at home.

(Leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/home-part-3/)

Home, Part 2

When we were kids, our grandma and grandpa had a television in every room (except the bathroom). They never moved from the side-by-side, shotgun duplex, the last of the properties of several they had owned and grandpa had tended over the years. The background squawk of the TVs was as constant as the simmering pots on the stove.
I don't know what grandma's favorite show was or even if she paid attention. White noise. Colorful noise, maybe blunted by the power and color of her personality. It mostly played in the kitchen, toward the back of the house, much of which had been built by grandpa. At one point in the house's history, the kitchen was the back of the house. Mom told tales of trips to the outhouse, even as inner City of New Orleans dwellers.

Whatever grandma's favorite show was, grandma knew that all of the people in them had indoor bathrooms, just like her, and likely had more than one color TV—maybe in every room, just like her. Toward the front of the house, the televisions rarely played. Instead, the sound of a bar across the street often filled the air. An ironic coexistence, given that grandpa was a Baptist preacher and did not set foot in the establishment. It was an ironic coexistence with his step son who lived in a tiny living space upstairs with its own entrance who regularly stepped into that establishment.

Ironic? Uneasy? Maybe neither. All these things belonged. Was it a sense of humor or a load of tolerance—or maybe an exercise of non-judgmental Christian love—a test of the church's Great Commission playing itself out, a world across the street that begged the preacher man to save then; and a man who was more willing to open that door than his wife was eager to accept.

Or a test provided by grandpa's eldest granddaughter who, on a Sunday morning, dressed finely for the good church people to see, one of four shiny, cared for grandchildren of whom he was much too proud, would peer into that magic TV box at American Bandstand, full of gyrating young people running afoul of the expectations of that sacred day and afoul of young Christian lady conduct in general.

But she loved to dance. She loved dance, a student of people moving to music, to the beat and of their hearts' desires, still too early in life to have an understanding of what all those desires were, but knowing of them—enough of them to watch, not getting to close and knowing that she could watch because she was her grandfather's granddaughter.

The TV would be turned off not from disapproval, even as my mother and I lived moments of uneasiness, appropriately worried about hurting grandpa's sensitivities, feelings or the equilibrium of moral order. The TV was turned off because it was time to go to a church service at which grandpa would preach, that would last hours and would be capped off with a score of fawning middle-aged women who had to meet grandma and grandpa's beautiful grandchildren.
Those three-week summer visits were punctuated on the front end by grandma's vigilant wait on the front stoop for a weary carload of Minnesota kids to show up at the house on Roman Street. We would arrive as new-again strangers who would ease into the growing familiarity that, at some point, devolved into mostly-hollow threats from grandma saying that if we did not behave, we'd get a whipping so bad we would not be able to sit down for a week.
 
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Next week, the final installment (I think) of “Home.” Be sure to check out the first installment at: http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/home-part-1/. In the mean time, tell the rest of us what home means to you.

Home, Part 1

This is the first installment of a three-part series.  It began as an assignment given to me and my colleagues as Givens Foundation Emerging Writer Fellows.  There are many facets to this theme, and I will get the chance to explore them with my fellow writers as we workshop each others’ works, but I hope that some of you will leave thoughts, now or at the end of the series. 
Thanks for reading and thanks for passing this on to friends.

Clarence

**********

John and I made our way up the walkway to Mary’s house. It was a sunny, spring afternoon. We had just come from our local political convention: 1994, a year in which we failed, again, to win the Governor’s election, a year in which I would be on one of many versions of the staff that could not get our guy into the mansion on Summit Avenue. That day, Mary had invited several people over. I don’t know who we endorsed that day, for what offices or what issues we decided. I’ve been to more than my share—and a good share of other people’s conventions—a constant blur and while I can remember the details in the moment—but don’t ask me today about any moment of years of beautiful spring days spent inside school auditoriums when more sane people would be outside playing in the newly arrived Minnesota warmth.

I don’t remember, either, what John and I spoke of on the car ride to Mary’s. I don’t remember who drove, although I think it was me. 

John was a not-yet-old but past grownup California blond who was way too serious to waste his toe-headed noggin on surfers’ waves. My much younger nappy head was willing to listen and the two of us spent the trek from convention to Mary’s in tandem—until we stepped onto Mary’s walkway. 

I walked a step ahead of John. We came to the front door and I reached up to open it and began walking in. John was a bit startled and shot me a what-the-hell-are-you-doing glare and said, “Do you live here?” 

I did not live there. Not really. But John did not know the substance of my over-familiarity. He did not know that over-familiarity was more than a function of how many times I had been there. He did not see the implied welcome invitation of the woman who rarely locked the door to her house. He mostly did not see my relationship with Mary, one that was more than familiar, but one that made it a place to lay my weary head as much as my dusty satchel. 

Months before, Mary’s dog Beau’s made his first visit to my house. We walked in the door and Beau shot in and made his way down the hallway. We did not notice at first, but a minute after we arrived our noses told us that he had left something in the hallway. 

We both laughed. “It means that he knows this is a place where I belong,” she said. He had done the same thing when he walked into her house for the first time. A pet-savvy friend told her that pets will do this: leave droppings in places that they know are the places of their people. I don’t know how Beau knew this. He saw no tooth brush in the bathroom. He saw no clothes in the closet or a favorite mug in the cupboards. Maybe there is a smell. Maybe it was the way that she walked to the door, a step ahead, that told him that this was a place she belonged. At that point, I was not sure if Beau belonged. We laughed some more. I let Mary, her body still heaving with laughter, pick up the mess while I opened a window. 

Dogs are like people. Or maybe people are like dogs. Or maybe this is just a false, crude and convenient anthropomorphism. There is something about the places where we will leave our mark and our precious possessions; drop our weapons, our hair and other things that we hold tightly inside when we are somewhere we belong or somewhere that is our own. There are places where, when we show up at the door, they have to let us in, places where we get to decide who comes in and places where we get to poop—just once—and the other creatures living there will still want us. 

These are places where we will tolerate our mess for a period of time and the messes of someone else for a much shorter period of time. They are places where, even in that mess, we are content to fall asleep in the middle of it, whether that mess is one of physical things from our closets, kitchens, toy bins for kids or toy bins for adults; or the emotional messes even if they stir our dreams and make sleep restless. 

And sometimes those messes are so bad, they can’t be ignored, even when the eyes in our head and the mind’s eye are closed and we try to settle a heart that won’t be quieted.

I listen to the dreams of friends and, just as often, the nightmares that have left them restless. I listen because the friends will tell me, want to tell me, seek out my ear. I listen because it is much easier than sitting on my own couch and having mine analyzed with a scrutiny that makes them hard to put to bed. And just as often as I hear the dreams that led my friends, way too young and anxious to fly out of their parents’ nests, I hear the nightmares that chase them away with a ferocity that makes me cover my ears, not wanting to believe that their child-selves had to sleepwalk through such caustic purgatories. 

A friend talks about the “distant murmur and hum of traffic” that perforated the darkness in which she slept as a child. First in a two-story blue house set on a busy, small town highway in southeastern Wisconsin. Later, after her parents split up, it was the front bedroom of her father’s place during the weekend visits. Today, she still needs the white-noise drone for slumber, a necessary accessory in that place where she lays her head. It is the lullaby that lets her body and psyche know she has arrived at the place she is supposed to be. 

Where we are supposed to be changes, nests change and so do the people who occupy them. But these are places with familiar sounds, familiar smells, familiar walls, familiar faces and familiar pillows. It is said that the smells are the most powerful, wresting memories from our subconscious. Still, I think the faces are most important—or more so what is behind those faces. 

My parents lived in the house, in which my siblings and I did most of our growing up, well into my 40s. They were there long enough for it to be grandma and grandpa’s place. Long enough to be the oldest people on the block. But it was always the place where I could lay my head, my satchel and almost every version of my stuff, my material possessions—even the messes that were created by my string-saver mentality. 

There are places where, when I show up, they have to let me in. There is a place where I can sit without worrying if it is my chair. I can go to the refrigerator and take what I want—or maybe ask, not if I can have what I want but, rather, if anyone else had plans for it already. Someone will either offer to do my laundry or ask if I can help with the laundry that is there. I will be fed or expect to feed someone including myself. All of this is a step of intimacy beyond that which makes us merely welcome.

Leaving Kevin

Ten minutes into sandbox play, I wanted to go home. I sat across from Keven Ward. Kevin was in 5th grade. I was in 6th. Kevin, a toe-headed, skinny lad, avidly plowed with his Tonka Toy bulldozer. I was less enthusiastic.

I felt odd, because for the previous ten years, just about everything I got my hands on became a car or truck--or bulldozer--or some vehicle I pretend to drive.

Suddenly, watching Kevin move sandy earth and listening to truck sounds coming from his mouth as we sat in front of the ranch office his parents owned, I was aware of how uninspired I was to do the same.

Instead of feeling the fun, I felt guilty. Guilty for leaving Kevin. I was still there in the sandbox, but emotionally, I had left the play space in which he was earnestly engaged.

Kevin was nice enough to invite me to play. He was cool enough--not that cool meant much to me at that point in my life. His family had a ranch. They had a college bookstore, both of which held enough adventure for two grade-school kids, and enough trouble to tactfully avoid. They had a camper, a Winnebago in which they took me on two camping trips. They were all nice to me. 

And maybe that is why that leaving felt like such a betrayal.

But I had already left that childhood space before I got there.  It was the first time I had any concept of my own personal maturation--real change that was, for some reason, more powerful than graduating to footless pajamas, being able to bike across town on my own, or even later, getting behind the wheel of the huge family station wagon.

I had an awareness that, at that moment, different from any other moment during the time I had known Kevin, I was older than him. Somehow, we had lost, without either of us noticing, a big chunk of peer space, the space where we could both be excited by toy cars and making truck noises and having that be enough to keep us entertained and connected with each other.

The next year, I would be in junior high and Kevin would still be at our grade school. I am not sure how many little boy things I had shed by the time I reached junior high, and how many I carried with me. A pile of toy cars that I left in the toy bins of our basement were not missed, but even today, the loss of a baseball glove is devastating. (I am still mourning the loss of a baseball glove I acquired in college.)

But losing friends from childhood is inevitable. The guilt of not knowing how to bring Kevin, occupied with the amusement of the toy bulldozer, into my emerging adolescence has belatedly transformed into a mild grief. Today, I am none-the-wiser, except to understand that I have grown out of friends and they have grown out of me, and it is a blameless loss. And it is a constant renewal with joy, pain and pangs of longing for past simplicities and futures not yet achieved.

I think of this today as I think of an old photograph of the old gang, Kevin included. We are posing with our baseball gloves on the vacant lot behind a house of another friend. We all seem happy with the sun beaming down on us, glad there are just enough to field a two teams for pick-up sand lot. I am wearing a glove that I still have today, one I pull out when an emergency game of catch breaks out and a kid needs a glove to participate.

I still have the memories of that lot, the place, the faces and the fun we had. A couple of these kids are still friends. But more is different than the same, as it should be.

And I look at my son and the relationships he has, how they have transformed and what it will mean in the future, what they have meant in the past, the joys, the heartaches and the wondering: what will happen in later days—or even with the passing of the next summer. I look at some of his friends and see Kevin in them—and sometimes in him. I see Kevin in myself.

In the mean time, it is a luxurious discovery to find that adult fun is really kid fun. It is a luxury because what I see as recreation is really the life work of the young while for us grown people, it is just play. It is adult because I am old enough to see that those things are so good for our mind and body. Our creative imaginations. An academic test of how we interact with others and care for their fun and well-being. Only games.

And most of the time, the grief that comes from winning or losing—either the game or the friend, is more a lesson than permanent injury, and we pick up with life and the kids who happen to be on hand for the next game, lesson and adventure.

And in the mean time, it is fun because it is fun. And now, more so than before, it is fun because I can see it in the faces and bodies of the children in addition to feeling it myself. And in the mean time, I can tell myself that I have at least grown a little.

A Child’s Thanksgiving Leftovers

My friend Judith said today that she wondered what other people's attitude was about Thanksgiving leftovers. I know what my father thinks.

Other than the red beans and rice that were a staple of his childhood and that my mother still cooks for him and her children and a grandson who has the greatest affinity for them, the one thing that dad could eat every day is leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

There was a time when I was not sure if this affinity was one of convenience, necessity or of a favorite taste on the pallet and stomach. My mother assures me that it is a favorite. My introduction to this affinity made it not so clear.

A day or two after the Thanksgiving when I was four and my sister was three, we found ourselves, for several days, in a one-parent house. Mom was in the hospital. Dad was left alone to take care of us. Lucky for him, he had what was left of a 24-pound turkey and other fixings that were never going to be consumed by two people and two little kids.

So, the first day, we had Thanksgiving leftovers. Easy enough. They second day? We had Thanksgiving leftovers. The third day, dad served Thanksgiving leftovers. It was either on that day or the next that my father's two lovely children sat at the dinner table, not moving a muscle, not lifting a fork and not budging an inch in spite of dad's urging us to eat.

Dad was not a clean-the-plate kind of person, but it was important that his kids get nourishment, and excuse from the table was did not come unless enough of the right nutrients made their way into our bodies, enough protein, enough green, yellow or orange vegetable and enough to make his kids healthy. So, it must have been some kind of pity, mercy or grace with which he viewed his children's sad faces, tired of turkey, tired of missing mom, and too tired to know we were hungry.

I suppose dad was tired, too. He did a good job in mom's absence. We were well cared for and generally were in good spirits in spite of knowing mom was not there. We did miss her. I can only imagine his sadness, as he relented and packed us up to go to McDonald's. Sadness for his kids, who endured without mom, without something new to eat. Sadness that his lovely bride was in the hospital. Sad from fatigue.

It was many years before we know why mom went to the hospital. That holiday weekend, she almost lost the pregnancy that would in months become my brother Michael. I am still amazed at how my parents handled this episode. I remember being woken up early in the morning. Mom stood in the kitchen. I don't remember much except that they told us that mommy had to go to the hospital—right now. I remember mom holding herself up by the kitchen counter on one side and dad's strong arms on her other.

I remember that during one of the most frightening events a couple can go through, my parents said that everything was going to be alright, that mommy was going to be fine, but they also instilled in their children, with some kind of calm spirit, that everything was going to be alright. We were not afraid. Even for the trip to the hospital, we were well cared for.

Mom and dad did this with such skill, care and love. Kind of like today's President, there was no drama—at least not for us kids.

Months later, mom and dad felt confident enough to talk to us about having a baby brother or sister. We still wondered where this baby was going to come from, where would we get it. I think at one point, I asked if we went to a baby store to pick it out. And that May, we had a baby brother. We were kids. And four days of Thanksgiving leftovers was a small price for my sister and I to pay for him. It was a great reward for what my mother endured and the character, faith and enough judgment to know when to let the kids have McDonald's that pulled us through.

I do remember sitting speechless at the dinner table that November. But I can only imagine what was going through dad's head and what was in his heart that evening as we opened the wrapped hamburgers and placed the french fries in the messy pools of ketchup three- and four-year-olds make. I have sat at McDonald's, being a dad in speechless moments, hoping the hamburgers and play room would sufficiently mask hints of sadness on the face of my son's dad. I wonder if I have been so good at freeing my son of such burdens of the grown-up.

This year, I still have some leftovers from Thanksgiving in my ice box. I will have to finish them soon, frozen or not. They are quite good. Not just turkey. New Orleans gumbo. Mom makes it every holiday season. But I still know when it's time to eat out. At least I think I do.

If you have any leftovers stories, I'd be glad to hear them. Share them here, if you like. Or any holiday story. Especially the Thanksgiving ones. Good or bad. Funny or not. I don't want to forget.

We Whisper for Love

“I wonder what your parents said when they whispered,” I told her. They were in love. In a way like few other parents I knew. They were good parents, like mine. 

Growing up, I did not know our moms and dads were so rare. I did not know that the sharp words that make children hide in the corners where, in some houses, common and made the children hide their emotions and made them hide their family from the rest of the world.

Julie and I are twins of different parents, separated before conception, born at the same time into John Kennedy's America. We grew up not knowing that other parents did not bother to whisper, that in other homes, the dialogue in our parents' hush was the every-day, out loud currency that curled children's ears, pounded them until they thought it was normal and they became numb to the pang. Numb, they carried that numbness into the conversations of their adult relationships—with a slew of predictable results.

What did they say when they whispered? The things, good and bad, that kids should not hear. Things those kids will only know when they old enough to unravel the code inside of their own relationships. And out of convenience, forget that it was a truth harbored by their parents—secrets so pleasant and so unpleasant.

Things too complicated to explain, to understand, even for the grownups.

It is too complicated to understand that mom and dad are so mad at each other that they wished they did not love each other so much so that they could let out the rage whose origin they can't really understand because it is not the love. The rage is a stranger on the other side, wanting to jump in and play and make life look like mom and dad did not love each other so much.

Things too complicated to understand. Things like being in love. Like what mom and dad share that kids don't get to see—at least not on purpose and not deeper than an unconscious touch, stolen glance or tiny kiss. As kids, we are lucky to hear our parents say, “I love you,” to the other, and show it. We are lucky to not know the details of what comes after or what came before that compels them to say and show who they are to each other. We are free of that burden. Not our responsibility—even as we take on that responsibility in our own lives.

They also whispered the numbers in the checkbook ledger and the worry and the caution. At the same time, they show us a frugality that attempts to spare their children from that worry in adulthood.

They whisper the intimate illnesses of neighbors, relatives or their own, but still show us how to care for and be kind to their suffering. And to be especially nice to their kids, because they were hurting, too.

They whisper the fights of neighbors or relative—fights made of the rage that did jump to the other side—the other side of the bedroom door that is mommy and daddy space. They whisper for moms and dads whose hurt is so much that they no longer love each other and the rage escapes. And somehow, we know that we should feel for the children, even if we are afraid to absorb those scary emotions.

When they can, they whisper their own fights. The quiet tension confuses.

Julie and I could not imagine living on that other side, the side of life where no one bothers to keep parent stuff behind the bedroom doors. Or sometimes it is just so much that it cannot be contained in that small intimate space. She and I grew up in houses where we would have never thought that we would ever find ourselves saying out loud to a parent—or at least to ourselves—“How can you share that with your daughter/son?” It is not a child's burden, even an adult child.

Julie wonders about the winter of losing her father. She wonders. We wonder. Losing him, did she also lose the love he shared with her mother? What questions where left unasked?  What did he leave? He left her with with more than his memory of his childhood Cubs and the baseball glove that reminded her of why baseball is important, important even to one of the girls of John Kennedy's America, even in her great longing.

But what is the secret to that love? What is that answer? We still search for that, not knowing what questions we would or should have asked to know better. Or, in my case, what questions I am still not brave enough to ask to learn the lessons that hid behind the door. What is worse is that we sometimes forget the lessons we have already been shown, strong and good and that made our homes.

There is more to know. How to we find out? The reality of her father's passing: I know Julie's mother wished she could whisper that, but the news was so loud. Did Julie's ears curl? I still have the chance to ask, knowing I have some of the answers, knowing I am afraid of other truths. My mother, my father: they are waiting, waiting to lean over and whisper the answers in my ear. But not all of them. Because there are some things kids just should not know.

Baseball Short: How Do You Remember Tee-Ball?

Yesterday, my son Sid and I had two outings playing catch.  The first time he was waiting for his guitar lesson.  The second was at our favorite park, Aldine Park.

Today, his throws, at his stage of development, are starting to pop in my glove like the big kids.  As we threw, some smaller kids where getting what might be their first instruction in tee-ball.  Looking at them, he asked me if it brought back fond memories.  I told him no.  My fondest memories, these days, are of the most recent throws and catches he makes. 

I was not sure if he was talking about his tee-ball days.  I think he was talking about mine.  It was more than 40 years ago.  I remember a few vivid images.  Nostalgia.  True fun.

I remember hitting a lot of triples--never daring to make the turn to home plate for a home run, even though it was unlikely that our opponents would make the throw and catch and tag to get me out.  Heads-up baserunning is a good skill, totally lost on tee-ball.

I remember the day dad took off from work to come see me play. 

I was eager to show him what I could do.  I remember the disappointments that came with each at bat.  A double each time.  I was trying so hard.  Too hard. 

I was competing against myself.  The concept of competitiveness was as lost as the skill of mindful base running--somewhere in the hapless play of primary schoolers.  That day, I know I could and had done better.  And dad did not see.  But he knew.

I do not think anyone kept score.  We all won, running on and off the field in our 7-Up shirts, the back of which I had inked with my last name, just like some of the professional players.  Likely, I had a Twins hat slightly askew on my head and the black glove given to me by my Uncle Alvin--the same glove that my son and I, along with some friends and family, took with us to a park near grandma and grandpa's to play catch and hot box. 

The year after tee-ball, I would take the same glove to little league where I would play first base most of the time.  I was assigned first base because I was one of the few kids who could catch with confidence--my own confidence and that of the coach and team mates.

Maybe I am a little nostalgic.  Or maybe that's just baseball. 

I think of those summer days.  I think of my son, who has a different relationship with baseball that is marked by things like the day, as an eight-year-old, when a pop up dropped intentionally, so it seemed, untouched in the infield. He turned to the "umpire" asking, with dismay, "What about the infield fly rule?"  Of course I hoped he would catch the ball.  Instead, I had a very good laugh--a laugh that reverberates when I see Major Leaguers who forget the concept. 

I am waiting for Sid to give me the complete definition of a balk, and a lot of other things that have to do with baseball and things that have to do with life, love and the pieces of each of those that are truly important. 

How good of a learner am I?

How much do I long for the tee-ball days?  Maybe you should ask me the next time Sid's Second baseman's arm zings a shot into my waiting glove. 

Maybe Sid is nostalgic, the summer before he leaves grade school to jump fully into the ranks of the junior highers with whom he is already taking math class.  He and I know that being a kid is hard.  Some days, nostagia makes us forget.  Or we can escape the memories or the present day, lost inside a game of catch.

Holiday Lessons from a Tape Recorder

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I could give you a lot of reasons why, and maybe I can't share all of them here, but one of the major reasons is that it is not Christmas.

For most adults, the winter holiday season is one of stress, obligation and financial compromise. We think it's simple for kids, but it can be even more complicated, as I honestly recall some of my childhood experiences. I also see holidays becoming more difficult in the lives of a lot of kids, given what they are going through today. What lesson should we learn from all of this? There are plenty, but we have not been such great students of life on this matter.

I learned one lesson the Christmas when I was 11. For some reason, I earnestly wanted a tape recorder. I am not sure why. There is not a whole lot one can do with a tape recorder, but record sound, and I am still not ingenious enough to understand the art of (or reason for) identifying and capturing sounds. It is enough to say that the technology was not as common-place as it is today, though not terribly inaccessible.

That Christmas, I got the tape recorder. I found it under the tree, unwrapped it with appropriate haste and recklessness, and marveled for a moment, or two—or maybe three. What followed in the next several hours were a series of lessons unfolded that, to this day, mark my understanding of the Christmas holiday, myself, and how I prefer to celebrate—or not.

The first lesson I learned was one that I should have taken to in all the previous years of Christmases: that the shine and allure of just about any gift will lose its luster soon after opening—if not after a few days of play. After a few times of playing my voice back, I realized that even that odd phenomenon was not as exciting and compelling as the thrill of finding and opening gifts under the tree—which my other siblings were still doing.

You have to remember that back then, tape recorders were expensive. While my parents would indulge in the thrill of seeing their kids open gifts they wanted with glee on Christmas morning, they also were frugal enough to not overindulge their children, nor spend so much more on one child to the point that it would be financially compromising or even disadvantageous to grant so many wishes. I don't think we even need to mention the tendency to develop undesirable orientations toward materialistic priorities or the displacement of the most important focus of the holiday.

Tape recorders cost a lot back then. Besides the pajamas, socks and mittens, the tape recorder was all I received for Christmas. My eye darted from gift to gift under the tree until I realized that all of the presents had someone else's name on them. Was there nothing more?

I began to feel sorry from myself. I think I sat for a while, on one of the living room chairs, quiet with my long fingers lightly pressing the buttons of the tape recorder. Then, a moment of self-consciousness overcame me, and my pity turned to a shade of shame.

Somehow, my 11-year-old self came to realize in that instant the shallowness and selfishness of my attitude. I realized the total inappropriateness of my disposition and misplaced value on the season.

I realized that I had even misplaced the value of the fact that our family was there, at home, all together, warm with a fire in the fireplace, on a very cold mid-western December morning. I don't think I could articulated it so well then. I just knew there was something wrong, something about which I could feel some shame, something wrong with feeling that I was getting less when, by any decent set of values, I should have been counting my blessings.

I do not know what I asked for the next year. I do not think I looked at the JCPenny and Sears catalogs with as much the same allure. I was different for the experience.

I was different in other ways. I was in junior high, on the verge of my first real crush, living with uncertain footing, no longer being among the Big Men on Campus of the 6^th grade. I gave up trick-or-treating. I was trying to convince the basketball coach that it was okay for me to play hockey as well—and miss basketball games in order to go to hockey practice.

Still, I have to say, the lesson took. I approach Christmas morning with the anticipation of seeing loved ones and sharing a wonderful dinner later in the day (and maybe a football game playing on the television in the background), much like Thanksgiving. I cannot say, even though I have not a lot of material wealth, I have been cured of materialistic tendencies. But I really do not care what is under the tree nearly as much as I care about who is gathered around it.

It was a lesson much harder learned but equally valuable as when my father told me the truth about Santa Claus. (More on that later, too.) When I finally convinced my mom that we should stop exchanging material presents (a rule that she likes to break), Christmas became a much more enjoyable holiday. (We still make sure kids get presents. Not sure what the impact of that is on them—a distraction from the Christ story, from the importance of family, the joy of having at least one day off—if not two weeks at the end of the year: A day or two week to not leave the house and admire those pajamas that grandma sent!)

So I am anticipating the days of Christmas. For only the second time in almost five decades, we will be missing one person around the tree from our six-member immediate family, which is quite a record. (Aunt/Sister Jennifer will be with in-laws.) We have been spared many of the realities of life beyond geography, in-laws and the burdens of each that make it difficult if not impossible for a lot of families to spend holidays together.

I will watch my child play with his cousins. I will see the contentment of my parents at having their grandchildren happy in their home. I will have a great meal (if my stomach decides to start cooperating by then). I will be around people I love. And maybe I will get a present: I think it will be socks. Thanks, mom and dad.