Preoccupied as I was, if I
go into a deep trance I can almost remember that day in 1933. There I am doing
the backstroke in an embryonic sea when my umbilical life was shattered. It
took me years to stop crying. Or that could have been because my brother never
forgave me for ending his status as an only child.
Birthdays are a sort of
punctuation. Some are merely parenthetical to the chronicle. Others signify a
moment of pause while end of decade years deserve an exclamation point. A jab
of jubilation along with a sometimes agonizing reappraisal.
I have no memory of
celebrating my birthday as a kid. Maybe nobody showed up for my party. More
likely there was none. Times were tough. Cakes and candles were a luxury and my
mother was a no-nonsense person. If I wasn’t invited to friend’s parties it was
because singing Happy Birthday would have been embarrassing since I couldn’t
carry a tune. I was designated a Listener by the music teacher and consigned to
the last row at school where we were told to lip-sync the Star Spangled
Banner.
Claude Monet lived till
eighty-six; many seasons of hay stacks. He is experiencing a remarkably
extended after-life on museum walls and that lotus pond at Giverny as well as
images on coffee mugs, calendars and umbrellas. On the other hand when Vincent
Van Gogh was my age he’d been dead for forty-nine years.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
also died at my present age. The last book of his I read was Love in the Time of Cholera, not to be
confused with Trump in the time of Coronavirus. The two men stand in stark
contrast of how much and how little one can enhance the progress of
civilization in their allotted time.
However prodigious the body of work
contributed by great writers and artists that cannot be the measure of the
person or the rest of us wouldn’t get through heaven’s gate. It is something
other than the achieve of.
Too late for greatness. It’s
enough to be good. Noble even, at times. Caring. Open-hearted. What David Brooks
describes as a depth of character infused with gratitude. Anne Lamott calls
laughter a form of carbonated holiness. That’s my kind of worship….worthship of fellow human beings.
Age is, of course, the
supreme fiction. The calendar documents our years but our real age is in our
spirit, not our weary bones; how we enthuse, our juice, our appetite for
meeting each day. By this measure Peggy, nearing 99, is still in her youth and
has blessed me with some of that nectar.
As for a bucket list I
have none, except, for a pie in my face. And I’m not so sure about that unless
it be key lime. I suspect there may be a hole in my bucket. All my grand wishes
come down to one...dump Trump. I would hate to leave this realm on such a retrogressive
note. I prefer to keep the illusion that we are progressively moving toward a
larger pie, key lime or otherwise, with portions enough for all.
In addition,
as long as it doesn’t cost anything, I wish I could listen better to what
flowers have to say and for my bones to be more fluent in the language of music and my hands become instruments to strike the dark air for mellifluous sounds.
Well, obviously the psychic was wrong. And I'm so glad she was for many reasons one being your being here to write your blog and help get us through the Trump years. I hate to even type his name.
ReplyDeleteLove in the Time of Cholera was the last book by Marquez I read also. I was actually thinking of finding it on my shelf to read again. Another thing I we have in common is Eugene McCarthy, I was on his national staff. It was the first time I was politically active and the only time I was 21!
Too bad about McCarthy. He wrote poetry as I recall. Just not a good fit into our carnivorous political system. I do believe Hubert H would have gotten us out of Vietnam long before Nixon got around to it.
ReplyDeleteYes about McCarthy he did write poetry and he wasn't a good fit but I was sooo idealistic then I thought we might overcome. I also agree about hubert H.
ReplyDelete