THE THREAD | Returning to the land of childhood
Friends,
The pandemic and our collective responses to it over the past year can obviously tell us a lot about who we are, what we value, and who we consider to be expendable. There is so much we could unpack just in those three phrases: Who are we? What do we value? Who among us, when push comes to shove, will we discount, disregard, discard? Maybe it's worth taking time with each of these in the coming season.
It's easy to get lost trying to answer these questions in the global, macro sense. It's easy to wander off into abstractions, proclaim opinions in broad strokes, and find new blame for the troubles in the world. But none of us actually live on a plane free of particulars. If you do, send me a postcard.
One thing I've slowly learned about myself over the years is that when I get lost in my thoughts or begin pontificating (this happens often), it's a signal to me that I've wandered off from the anchoring to my particular daily life. The things that help me get grounded often involve eye contact, holding hands, laughter, dancing.
And children. Not only my own, but also other people's children. When I return to the land of childhood I am reminded how simple love can be. I am reminded that the broad-stroke question Who are we? in some sense must be answered slowly, one quirky individual at a time. I am reminded that so much can be said with a smile, and so much can be misunderstood by a scowl. I am reminded to pay attention to the incredibly specific and odd things about the three children in my house, not only to learn about who they are, but also to remember who I am in relation to them.
An essay I wrote two years ago was just published this month in the Cimarron Review. When I found out it was getting published, I went back and re-read it, and the timing couldn't have been better. This year has pushed me to my limits when it comes to the three children in my house. I mean, they've just been here . . . all of the time! But re-reading this helped me get grounded once again in the particulars of the three kids that will just be here . . . all of the time . . . and then eventually not be here all of the time.
I hope you enjoy it. It's called "Study the Specimens."
* * *
You study the specimens arranged neatly in front of you: one, two, three. You did not mean to study them. You did not mean to suddenly fall silent and grow distant into the detached mode of observation that is the realm of hard science rather than fatherhood. But there they are, your three children, lined up in a row, perched on stools at the coffee shop on a Sunday morning, each one lost in a language that is each their own.
Your oldest son wears the fedora he found in the basement of your parents’ house. He is lost. He does this several times a day, goes missing. He is lost again, completely beyond this realm and tumbling his way through the language of a book. Perhaps it is only you who thinks that he gets lost. Perhaps he has actually found himself more at home there, discovering with his two eyes these words arranged in a way that opens up new worlds to him, worlds where dragons swoop with no warning, worlds where an uttered phrase and the flick of a wand in your hand can bring about a transformative change in your life or someone else’s, for better or worse, worlds where the thin lines between the mundane and the magical completely dissolve and all that remains is the magic. You sometimes start to worry about his disappearance into this world. But then you choose not to worry.
Your middle child fidgets on his stool, this boy who in his six short years has been dancing his way through most days, who slips and slides across the floor, who falls often and gets back up with a bounce, who fell so hard when he was a toddler that for a moment he did not get back up and the lasting damage of the fall was the complete loss of sight in his right eye. This boy you wept over, worried over, wondered over how he would recover from losing half his field of vision. Here he is, jumping off his stool, using his right hand to prop himself up while his other hand flails wildly with this, the particular language of his body: the sign language he learned three months ago from his Kindergarten teacher, the alphabet held in his hand, the words he shares freely with the world, as if he can’t help his hand from signing. Sometimes even as he drifts off to sleep, his hand keeps fluttering with words. He leaps from the stool, stands before you, and asks you to say a word for him to spell. Then another. Then another. His hand, his fingers, they flash in recognizable symbols, and this strange specimen you’ve watched for years struggle to be heard and understood, here he is with a new language, and it is you who struggles to hear and understand. The boy grins.
Your toddling daughter sits in the small birdcage of space beneath the seat of the stool, singing softly to herself. Hers is the language of voice and song. This is only a small piece of language, or the beginning of language, or language at its most distilled, or all that matters of language, depending on whom you ask. You watch her. You listen to how gracefully she paddles the boat of her voice along the babbling, converging rivers of the comprehensible and the incomprehensible, the rippling waters of meaning and mystery. Does she mean what she says? Does she say what she means? She is evoking the question right there on the floor of the coffee shop with her sweet singing: Does meaning even matter much in the presence of raw joy?
You study. You observe these three specimens, their languages, their obsessions and their tendencies. You jot down some notes along the margins of your mind and file them for later. But you are no scientist, no cold lab technician, no lukewarm participant-observer. You are a father. And in the presence of these three creatures you can do no less than pause, reckon the gift of this, and somehow—who knows how?—contain them within your love. You do not need to understand their every action and utterance. You do not even need to have your love returned by them, which comes as a surprise, and a relief. You only need to contain them within the expanding boundaries of your love, this kingdom love creates, and enjoy their many immersions into the mysteries of utterance. And you enjoy them with laughter, and you enjoy them with gratitude for the given, and you enjoy them with these small utterances of your own.
* * *
What I've been reading: Paul Beatty's The Sellout, Brandi Carlile's Broken Horses, Julio Cortazar's Literature Class, Pat O'Connor's Justice on Fire, Paul Brannigan's This is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl
What I've been listening to: Cloud Cult's "You're the Only Thing in Your Way," Billy Bragg & Wilco's Mermaid Avenue Vol. I and II, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, Patty Griffin's Silver Bell, and Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous" on repeat
* * *
Peace and grace,
Andrew