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.

New Year’s Baseball Glove

The best Christmas gift I received this year was the reaction on my son Sid's face when he opened the box containing a new baseball glove. It was a look of joy and appreciation. Not at getting a new possession. The glove meant more: it meant hope promise, joy and opportunity.

During Fall baseball this past October, Sid's glove disappeared in a case of mistaken identity. During batting practice, he glove went missing. What was left behind in the batting cage was a glove that looked a lot like his, slightly older and smaller, but at first glance and even at second glance, looked enough like Sid's to mistake the two gloves.

We are guessing that the glove left behind in its place was itself a borrowed or second hand glove because the name on it did not match or resemble the name or family name of anyone signed up for the league or clinics that autumn and the numbers I called from the phone book matching the name were not missing a glove nor had any children that age playing baseball.

Still, we both handled the grief over the loss quite well and Sid finished the season with my glove, a worn, slightly larger, Derek Jeter model, which worked quite well for him, even though he prefers second base to Jeter's short stop.

It was sad to lose the mitt regardless. Sid had taken a couple of summers to completely break it in and, as many of us will remember from our childhood, baseball gloves are the kinds of precious things we sleep with at night and that fuel our fields of dreams.

The lost glove sadness was overtaken as Sid continued on with a conviction like the Whos of Whoville after their Christmas presents had been taken. Each inning, he ran out to his position with dad's beat up but more-than-functional glove and played the game he loves the most. He was not going to let the loss of his possession ruin his chance at celebrating on the green grass and ag-lime base paths.

With the help of his aunt Jennifer and my good fortune at finding the last of last year's models at one of the sporting goods stores, which meant that it was about 40 percent of the price of this year's model, Sid has a new glove to break in. We started the process the day after Christmas, in this rare warm-aired and brown-grassed winter.

On the 26^th, we went over to the park near grandma and grandpa's house with two of Sid's cousins and his uncle Michael and played catch, hot box—and we played long enough to make it official.

We played long enough to stir our hot stove dreams of the coming season, which have been spliced with a smattering of newspaper pieces about players and for whom they will play in the upcoming season. And roused by activities like Sid's school History Day project that is largely about baseball's free agency and the biggest hero of that piece of history, the late St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curt_Flood)

Sid presenting 4th grade biography project to Biography Day guests.

Sid is learning that baseball isn't just about the game, which it is. It's only a game, but it is also about life; it is about the politics that we cannot avoid and it is one of our strongest parallels to American culture and history. It is an ongoing lesson about small-and large-scale justice, on and off the field. It is about how to care who wins and what we win—and what we lose; how to love those things in the right way, appreciating them when we have them and letting go when they are gone.

I think deep down, these must be lessons that we, as kids, yearn for and maybe are as much a reason we play so hard as for the fun of the game. Maybe that is why Sid has done three class projects on Jackie Robinson, one on the 1919 (Chicago White Sox) Black Sox scandal and now Curt Flood.

Not long ago, Sid took his Brooklyn Dodgers replica baseball hat to a chess tournament. We originally got it to go with a costume he had for his Biography Day presentation several years ago, playing Jackie Robinson, of course. During one of the rounds of chess play, it got lost.

He's not a little kid anymore, and it seems that losing the hat did not phase him as he continued to play. At the end of the chess tournament, we looked all over the tournament area for it, finally finding it at the officials' table in the gym. As he and I walked out, I noticed that he was a little weepy. He wasn't going to cry. He does not cry easily these days, but I had to ask him if something was wrong.

He said, “Well, the hat really means a lot to me.” At that moment, my idea of what the hat meant to him turned into a strong mental and emotional knowledge. I knew it was an important hat, even wearing it during Little League when he was younger instead of the team issued hats of the same color. One of his grandmothers remarked that baseball season how proud he was of it.

But what he carried home with him after the tournament, wore on the baseball field and for his history day project was more than just a floppy piece of sewn Dodger Blue cloth with a bill; it is a badge of so many things he and other young people need and want to learn about the joys and sorrows of our stories—of life. It tells us we have something to unwrap every day, things that will elate us and bring us tears.

Maybe that is the lesson for the coming year—a lesson from the last one. I am still learning, and maybe this coming year will be better, smarter and more joyful than the last. I hope it will be for you.

(Please leave comments at http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com)

Six-year-old Santa

Forty-two years ago this morning, I woke up to a Christmas tree that hovered over a pile of presents—and I knew from where the presents came.

That was the Christmas that I learned who Santa Claus was.

Christmas Eve, dad pulled me and my sister aside. I was six. He had something to tell us, in the darkness of the living room lit up my little more than Christmas tree lights and ambient rays from the kitchen.

Of course, there were no presents under the tree, yet. Of course, we were waiting with anxious excitement at what was going to happen that evening. Dad had something important to say. You can imagine that he knew the challenge of getting a six-year-old to pay attention when they are waiting for Santa.

He got down to my eye level. I think he placed his hands on my shoulders and gave the most earnest look, a look coming from an exceptionally earnest man.

Then, he told me: that Santa Claus was made up, a concept—that Santa was really him and mom, and grandma and grandpa. That is where the presents came from. I don't know that I said much. I guess that I nodded as he spoke, taking in the deep revelation.

He said that Christmas was something he and mom did, gave to us because of how much joy they received from seeing us open the presents each Christmas morning. He said that there was no way that he was going to let some strange man walk into the house at middle of the night, no matter what he has with him—that if an unknown man walked into his family's house, that man would have daddy to deal with.

I think I might have uttered something about how it made more sense then the fat red-suited guy story. I was relieved on several counts. First, the idea that we were visited in the middle of the night was a bit scary. Second, our chimney let to a fiery furnace, not a fireplace like all of the popular fairy tale depictions. Third, it meant that I didn't have to hold up my end of a farce.

I was also a bit proud. It was a sign that my parents had taken one of the first steps showing respect to me as a person who was growing into the real world. It was if he was saying, you are ready for this information. I was.

It was also important because it allowed him to reinforce the important story of Christmas, that what it is meant to be and is important to our family because it is the day on which we celebrate the birth and coming of Jesus, something that continually gets lost in what most of of spend our Christmas on.

There are as many ways in which parents I know do this, as many ways as there are parents. One friend said something to her 11-year-old son just this year, to which he responded that he had pretty much figured it out, and then with what I imagine was a sly and loving grin, that he didn't let on because he figured that he would get more presents if he played along. (I think this is one of the great pre-teen conspiracies.)

Another said that she never wanted to tell her kids, not because she wanted her kids so much to believe in Santa as she wanted them to believe in the possibilities and capacity of magic in the world.

Her statement made me think: is Santa an idea, belief or hope in magic? I don't know. I like to think that it is something other than a miracle like we speak of when we talk about Jesus. But the concept, at its origin if not in recent execution, comes out of the same kind of hope and love: one of giving and providing, like that of Jesus feeding the multitude with meager loaves and fishes.

There seem to be a couple of popular ways to view the feeding of the crowd that day. Some will say that Jesus made the food multiply with his superhuman touch, making much out of little with the wave of his hand. Others believe that the miracle was the phenomenon of the masses being moved to share, that Jesus compelled a kind of love not just from himself for the hungry but that he infused love in many to feed the many, share what they had and brought it to the gathering—hungry and those of means, together.

So, is the magic of Santa that there is a guy who rides in a sleigh around the world in one night leaving gifts for children, good ones (ones whose parents can afford and want them to have everything they ask for) and not as good ones (whose parents are not of such great means or who are just rotten beings and get coal in their stocking)? Or is the magic that the idea of Santa makes us want to give to our children and people we love?

What moves us? What do we believe? What is the meaning of Christmas? Do you celebrate Christmas? What is your favorite holiday, and why?

That Christmas 42 years ago was my favorite. That morning, my sister and I crept down the stairs with the same anticipation, excitement and wonder as we did before we knew the secret. Like all the years before, we slowly made our way down the stairs after asking mom and dad if it was okay for us to go look and instead of running back upstairs to our sleepy parents who had spent the night wrapping and assembling and yelling in their sleepy ears, “Mommy, daddy, come look at what Santa brought us,” we knew that they already knew and that we just needed to wait a little while so that they could find the camera before we tore through the wrapping paper.

We were big kids, on that day, and in years to come, we would have the fun of helping mom and dad make a Santa Claus Christmas for our younger siblings. We got to be Santa, just like mom and dad.

COMMENTS CAN BE LEFT AT http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/six-year-old-santa/

frozen in/out of love

Gray day

hiding behind the brown

of a winter

i never lived

i feel frozen ground

remember how

i took for granted green

soft, supple blades

recalling that i did not

take my shoes off

in the warmer day

sun-filled, asking me to

run my toes through its hair

like only a lover would allow

and to lay down with it

another invitation i let pass

and now its caress has

grown cold and hard

mocking me naked

its blanket of snow cast aside

so late in this season

with trees who

have not dropped their leaves

in a last gasp of vanity

tomorrow, in may's solar rays

another boy

will play, walk and love

run his toes through the grass

while mine hide safe

in steady shoes

that will not tell the secret colors

of spring's thaw

Sun Worship

Sitting at my computer, the sun's ray are creeping closer as it sweeps across the southern sky of our North American Winter. Soon, it will obscure the view on the screen. Too much light cast on light and it will wash out what I need to see, illuminate. I will be helpless. Why?

They tell us not to look directly at the sun. They tell us that if we gaze up at the eclipse, we will go blind. No one dare look upon it's royalty, it's deity without suffering the consequences of such blaspheme.

So, then, can we see anything? Or is it like two sources of light, two suns send us into a funky orbit, never quite knowing which way we will be tugged next? Is this why God only wants us to have the One?

But I don't have to worry about it, today. I am warm, with the sun piercing through the window that braces me from the cold of this high winter day. The day has been made mercifully short and will keep me from too many temptations to attempt too much knowledge that might toss me out of this Eden.

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.