On the Occasion of Laura Brown's 30th Birthday

Yesterday, Mackenzie picked up one of the small ancient red Keds on my sideboard. "Why is this here?"

"Your mother, your aunts, and your uncle each wore those shoes when their feet were that size."

"Why do you keep them here? They're old and they're dirty."

"They're not dirty. Just faded and worn out. I keep them there because they remind me of my children at a wonderful age."

"Did I wear these?"

"No, your mother wouldn't want you to wear old hand-me-down shoes. Plus, the soles are hardened and the canvas is rotted. They'd be uncomfortable, and they'd fall apart quickly."

"Maybe my daughter will wear them. You can give them to me in your will."


"I expect they'll get thrown away when I die. No one else places any value on them."


We started down the stairs. As I closed my front door, bronzed baby shoes resting on an unidentified mantle appeared immediately behind my retinas. I remembered being Mackenzie's age and asking, "Why are those shoes there?"

Someone - perhaps my mother - explained that those shoes were the first shoes that the child of the homeowners had worn, and that they were a "keepsake", whatever "keepsake" meant. I took it at that. The shoes were ordinary - not worth turning into a statue, I was certain. They looked like my younger sister Patti's shoes. Like the shoes every toddler wore. They were orthopedic-looking things, first crafted shortly after man began to walk upright. The pair on the mantle looked especially uncomfortable - being bronze. They were less-dark in the wider expanses; seams, grommets, and areas around laces were dark brown. They were ugly and mildly threatening - a punishment shoe awaiting a poorly-behaved boy like myself, perhaps?

Mackenzie moved down the treads in a zig-zaggy pattern. Watching from behind and above, I felt my face spilling into a mixing bowl of shattered smile: there is a lot that is cool about being a kid.


"You'll be dead when I have kids."


"Probably so. Or, I'll be around 80."


"About the same as dead."

Unlike some early geriatrics, I richly enjoy a well-reasoned position. "True dat, Doodler."

She opened the door and walked onto the broad sidewalk. Those old bronzed shoes . . ..


I can't place the time when I realized that those shoes were keepsakes because the parents somehow celebrated their child's first steps.


It dawned on me over time:

that the child had survived its first year, fit enough to walk;

that first steps are a new level of distancing from parents.


(This happened before I'd been introduced to metaphor.)


Soon enough, there would be a tricycle;

then, a bike;

then a car.


Shortly thereafter, only the bronzed shoes on the mantle would litter the parent-emotional curio cabinet.

Some parents mark the birth of their first child as the fulcrum of their own life experience. The shoes are not just to celebrate the child's growing, not merely reminders of a happy passage of time, not only very-personal tchotchkes. They mark the transition that changed the world.

When you first wore these shoes, Laura, they were the only kid's shoes in the house. I chose red Keds because red Keds are emblematic of childhood to me. I wished for you a childhood with quotidian emblems signifying safety and continuity, simplicity and modesty, utility and durability. I wished for you a happy succession of "Red Keds". Red Keds are an emblem of my wishes for your childhood.


Shortly after you were fitted for these shoes, Sarah joined us with colicky fanfare. By the time you were fitted for two-sizes-larger, Sarah slipped into this pair. At the changing area in the butler's pantry, I built a table with drawers beneath, with a three-inch slot between. "The Shoe Slot."

Shortly after Sarah took over these shoes, Grace dripdripdripped into our lives. In time you moved up three more sizes; Sarah moved up three sizes into your shoes; Grace put on this pair.

A brief grace period ensued.

About the time you wore your last pair of red Keds, Isaac rounded us into six. By this time, the shoe slot was filled with ten sizes of red Keds (and one pair of blue, to which you never really took).

Mackenzie opened the car door and let herself in. I joined her from the driver's side. We rode to Grace's.


The Girl is right: I'll be dead before her kid might don these ancient red Keds. But, I'm right, too: no one else places any value on them. This is the utility cycle for a pair of bronzed orthopedic kid's shoes, for a pair of red Keds, for some folk's fulcrums.

Love,



Older Holden

On the Occasion of Mackenzie's Eighth Birthday

Butter,

As Mackenzie and I made our way to school this morning, I reviewed the years from her birth until today. Eight years. A third of your life, an eighth of mine, all of Mackenzie’s. (In ten years, it’ll be half of yours, a quarter of mine, and still all of hers: symmetry!)

I searched my mind for other mothers of your situation.

As we came to the stop sign at Spring Grove and Brookside, I was filled with powerful admiration for you, Grace – for the character you have consistently demonstrated these past eight years. I think I let you know regularly that I’m proud of you, but this morning I felt a deeper happiness than mere parental pride. In a world that sometimes seems to be sliding into chaos – a world where individual selfishness undermines the structure of family – you have stayed the course.

You’ve dealt with poverty, judgmentalism, and exclusion. You’ve dealt with the routine challenges of caring for a young human critter. All along the way, you’ve managed to keep visible to the world that special essence that defines “Grace” – not becoming bitter, or withdrawn, or compromised by mainstream behaviors and groupthink.

It’s in the daily grind that you’ve made your bones. In the long hours, in the drives to and from, in the conflicts within the organization, in the shortcomings of the system. Day after day after day, you show up and strive for excellence. THIS IS WHAT MACKENZIE SEES! It’s the effort and the intent that matter most. Income, prestige, power, title, perks, and the like may or may not be by-products of one’s effort and intent. When Mackenzie says of you, “My Mommy is Customer Service Manager at the Edgefield Bi-Lo”, everything that follows “My Mommy is . . .” matters less than the effort and intent that is brought to bear on what follows. What you are is the life you live, and requires no additional commentary.

I know you can’t carry with you a front-and-center conscious awareness that what you do each moment is important to your child as modeling, but you can take a moment sometimes to accept it. When you are bone-tired, when you are frustrated or disgusted, when the wage doesn’t seem to match the work required, when others who give less get recognition or promotion . . . moments like these exist to remind us that this undertaking is not a sprint. This is especially important for a single mother of limited means.

You are the foundation of Mackenzie’s childhood. Sometimes the load is heavy. But, the grace and style with which you have laid this foundation is a perpetual source of pride and satisfaction for those who love you, and it is my wish that it be likewise for you. There are parents who aren’t constitutionally capable of doing what you do. For them, personal pursuits trump the persistent demands of engaged parenting. Sometimes these folks may seem to have more fun, to enjoy more freedom, to have “more” of what this world offers. I believe all of that is illusion, though. I believe that when they lie in bed, in touch with the realities of their life, they are either filled with regret and embarrassment, or they suffer a pathology of emotion that limits their ability to see another as being as important in the world as they are. It is love that heals the world, Grace, and the healing begins at home, in the relationship between child and parent.

Dad

Seasonal Autumn

The plurality of my days is lived in not-so-splendid isolation.

Language; numbers; baseball: one might think that fellow travelers would be so thick, I’d have to brush them away from my face.

Do you feel the emptiness as baseball’s division titles are clinched? It’s not the post-season that warms us and animates our being – it’s the humane rhythms of the six-plus months that precede. The playoffs arrive; the playoffs conclude; a winner is declared: the beloved elderly uncle finally expires – a cluster of loved ones nearby.

The thought creeps forward: “What am I gonna do until March?”

Rogers Hornsby spoke it true: “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

The very large window at my desk-side overlooks downtown Augusta, Georgia – through which I note daily a procession of passersby. The leaves will soon begin to yellow, then fall from the Chinese Elm whose branch wind-grazes my view of this world. The pane will grow cold to my touch; before Spring, I might see a snow flurry. Or two. A monthly monotony of secular and religious holidays will be noted, pedestrians of my spiritual calendar. Football-rabid southerners will approach me on the street, asking, “Where yuh been, bo-uh? Ah ain’t seen yoo since Labor Day. How ’bout them Dawgs?!?”

I have my language and my numbers, and I belong to a congregation of fellow spring-awaiters – appreciative of clarity, and of its fluid nature, and of the portal, baseball.

Younger Holden Had it Covered, Warmed by a Youthful Star

Why the twinkle?

*
Many years ago, I spent part of a sunny spring afternoon at this bridge with a charming young woman named Etoile. (Her Spanish-speaking mother called her "Estrella".)

On my desk as I type this is a black-and-white photograph from that day. A ray of light features Etoile's broad beautiful smile; her lean shoulder mortises the first post of the bridge's wall. Is Earth's star the source of the light, or is this earthly sun doing the emitting? Her expression and her physical being make it clear: she's here only to illuminate and to warm; she has no more motive than the Sun.

Sure, we as a culture are mawkish when celebrating Americana such as a covered bridge. But, each of us has emotional highlights seared into our individual memories; and we do share some recollections and sensibilities in our collective consciousness.

A warm and breezy spring day; a perfect companion; two youthful futures unfolding; sheltered tenderly along the banks of a trilling Ohio stream.

Intellectual-Development Disincentives

Mackenzie, Brock, and I went to the main library.

Standing in line at the front desk, I said to her, "You can go look at books while I take care of this, Sweetie." She walked into the center of the building, with Brock tucked carefully into the crook of her right arm.

In front of me, a middle-aged black woman had finished her business and was pushing her wheeled walker toward the shelves of CDs. She, Mackenzie, Brock, and I were the only non-staff in the area. I moved forward, ready to address the librarian.

"You have to stay with that girl, sir", the officer manning the metal detector called to me from across the room. I turned toward him, wondering . . . whiskey-tango-foxtrot . . . his . . . problem . . . is. We come here several times a month; he's seen us and talked to us each time in a friendly fashion. "Children aren't allowed in the library without an adult", he added.

I was ready to follow the rules. "How old does she have to be to go by herself?"

"Children have to be accompanied by an adult in the library." His tone would've been appropriate for addressing a belligerent drunk at a tailgate party. I was relatively sober. And, library-quiet.

I suppressed saying, "My mother's not with me. Are you gonna throw me out?"

"How old does she have to be to go by herself?" My delivery was deliberate.

"She has to have an adult with her in the library."

I needed clarification. "How old does she have to be to go by herself?" This seemed like a good starting point.

"Eight."

See, that wasn't so hard, was it? I stage-whispered, "Mackenzie". When Me Are turned back to look at me, I index-finger-waved to her to return to the circulation desk.

I took a slowlongdeep breath, thinking, "Well . . . he's keeping little kids safe, I guess. And, Lord knows there're people who'll drop their kids here for free daycare, if they can get away with it."


Mackenzie, Brock, and I walked to the Children's Section. I grabbed a "Mad" from the magazine rack. She played a computer game, then looked for books to check out. After finishing "Mad" - an entertaining blast-from-my-own-Children's-Section-past - I swapped it for "Antiques", and returned to the chair Brock and I shared. He squirmed, eagerly awaiting his mother's return.

As I read about a cribbage board collector, I heard from above, "SIR, are you here with a child?" It was sub-Saharan Barney Fife again. I was no longer an obstreperous tippler; I was being profiled as a potential pedophile. In ten seconds, the bristles on the back of my neck returned to parade rest.

I looked up, said with matter-of-fact certainty, "Yes", then resumed my adventures with cribbage board man.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ pause ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"Where is she?" Resting my finger on the picture of a 19th-century bowling-pin-shaped board, I carpet-bombed his eyes with perturbation. And waited. ("Will he remember that fifteen minutes ago, he insisted that I stick with the kid with whom I came?")

Only officiousness was offered by the officer.

I jerk-tilted my head leftward, directing him to the short shelves where Mackenzie book-browsed. "Over there." Tightly-pursed lips end-punctuated my response.








He left. You see, Andy had his bullet, and Earnest T. Bass had just stumbled into the lobby.








~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Penny in a Furball

For reasons I don't fully understand, I am from time to time visited by a tidiness impulse. The impulse came calling this morning.

I awakened early - my mind not fully released from a vivid dream.

(We faced each other in her back yard. She was three feet from me.

Most of her weight passed through her right leg. Her head was cocked a bit leftward: a brunette-bangs-capped-right-angle-tilted stack of girlish cuteness.

A mouth no orthodontist had known issued an innocent come-hither smile - the warm-up act for the rolling terrain beneath the unbleached course-cotton string-tie-blouse headliner. A temblor emanated from my libido's tectonic plates; otherwise, all was still.

A mauve glow grew in the sky over her right shoulder. We were chatting idly. The glow became a darker dense purple as it assumed form. In two seconds, its asteroid state became apparent. In the third second, I saw craters on it, as it buzzed by Earth.

She didn't see, smell, or hear it.

Its cousins began to pepper the ground, some exploding into fire.

I snatched her six-year-old daughter from her side, and ran asthmatically toward her house, wheezing back to her, "Hurry!"





Inside, her architectural lamp caught fire. I stomped it out; the sole of my Earth Shoe was melted. I knew I'd walk with a limp.




Her husband returned from the hospital, having just finished his rounds. His tie was loose at his neck. "Open that bottle of Pinot Noir."

"Are we going the way of the dinosaurs?", I asked, as dawn arrived suddenly.

We were walking through Harrisburg. Augusta Chronicle publisher Billy Morris emerged from behind a freshly-painted outhouse, smiling warmly. "The Mayan Prophesy says today's the 'Ay-pock-you-lips', you know . . .."

At our left, a city-owned bulldozer plowed into a burning mill house. I looked to my right, where the places I'd been trying to sell were already on the ground. Relief washed over me.

"You wanna go to IHOP? I feel like pancakes with blueberry compote."

She was more womanly than last night. She moved her right hip against my left side, and put her arm at the small of my back. I fell into the pillow of her feminine protection, as I began to taste and smell fresh coffee.

"Today's my mother's birthday.")




The electric tea kettle "clicked" off while I read emails. I went to the kitchen and turned on the bean grinder. As the beans were being fragmented, I noticed a box-turtle-sized tuft that I'd created along the wall in front of my refrigerator a month-or-so ago:

• lint
• dust
• food scraps
• Mackenzie's colored circle labels
• colored paper clips
• dirt
  

"That's gotta go."

From the back of my pantry door, I retrieved my beautiful aluminum industrial dustpan and short-soft-polyester-bristled broom. The grinder halted as the floor stew fell into the trash can. I culled a penny from the fuzzy deposit, worry-stoned it between my thumb and index finger, and dropped it into my pocket.

("Why didn't I do that when I swept that shit into a pile?

"Your back.") I don't enjoy bending over much.

The fresh French Roast grist toppled into the French Press, chased by near-boiling water. Froth danced and atomized as I pulled my mug from the dishwasher. Down went the plunger. Out poured breakfast.

"As long as I'm at it . . .."

I cleaned the loft for six hours, enjoying Jeff Bridges in "The Amateurs" during passes through the living room. I "rewound" the Roku stream a dozen times, turning a 90-minute movie into a joyous day-long deferred gratification gala.

(Released in 2005, "The Amateurs" is a charming little movie, filled with big-talent actors playing unheroic roles. Bridges does the voice-over. He plays a guy who hasn't found his stride, who hits upon the idea that his little town should make a porno, casting only townspeople. The film has no sex and no nudity. I watched, realizing that the ensemble was having a great time inhabiting the lives of these townsfolk: it's community theatre done with capable love. The kid who played the Cameron Crowe character in "Almost Famous" has the role of video-store-monkey-become-chief-cinematographer.
The doofus from "Eddie and the Cruisers" (the estimable Joe Pantoliano) plays a doofus named "Some Idiot" by his friends: he's the chief screenwriter.)

When Mackadoodle arrived at 3:30, I'd even organized on the kitchen table stuff that I wanted to take to others:

• 16" pepper mill that I promised Sarah


• golf factoids saved from the calendar for Ross


• reading glasses I'd accidentally cadged from the Polka-Dot Pig


• shirt to go to the dry cleaners


• Season Four, Discs 3 and 4 of "The Wire" in a Netflix mailer


• three Tupperware containers - and a Student Info sheet from North Augusta Elementary for Mackenzie - to give to Grace


• laundered clothes Ike took off in-my-car-in-June-after-I-picked-him-up-after-he-quit-at-Five-Guys-Burgers-and-rushed-to-Atlanta-to-catch-his-flight-to-New-York, where he'd spend the summer


• letters to mail to my mother and to my nephew


• five Mackenzie public library books to be dropped


• Matisse-drawings book for Jim


• bottle of olive/canola oil for Laura


• engorged trash-can liner that included the sweepings agglomeration.
  
  

Mackenzie and I talked and milled about for a bit.

"Wanna go see Sarah?"

"Oo, yeah."

"Help me load this stuff up."

(When she was younger, I'd ask Mackenzie, "Who's my girl?"; she'd answer, "Me are." I'd say, "We would say, 'I am'." After wrestling with the pronoun complexity for a few weeks, she approached me one afternoon at my desk: "From now on, you can be 'I Am', and I'll be 'Me Are'.") As we walked down the steps toward Broad Street, Me Are explained to me that the reason she brought the Nerf football-with-a-tail, the key rings, and the six books from her private collection was so that we could have a yard sale as we ran our errands.







When I called Sarah, she told me that she was on her way with Lauryn to the "Oysters on Telfair" art auction at Gertie Herbie. Sarah had a piece included in the auction - her first public display. I told her we'd leave the pepper mill on her front porch.







Errands dropped away, until we were left to return the glasses to Stoney at The Polka-Dot Pig.

I sat at the bar with Me Are. Shortly thereafter, she had harvested three dollars from Uncle Stoney for one of her books. Walt Abbott - guileless - came up to say "hi". It was touch-and-go as to whether he'd be heading home with a Nerf toy. Our host, Duane, approached. He sat with Mackenzie in a booth, playing rock/paper/scissors; I went to the patio to burn a Camel. Jefferson and his date sat at the high-top behind us; they made extensive acquaintance with The Girl, too, while I took seven minutes from the end of my life.

Bedtime was approaching. "Wanna go see if Laura's at work?"

"Oo, yeah."

We walked through Surrey Center, toward The Bistro. As we climbed the stairs at the center of the "L" that comprises the original shops, we heard a loud drunk. Loud. As we were mounting the stairs, I'd thought the loud voice was the front man for a band in The Vue, but he proved to be just a drunk sitting on the bench outside. "I'm tellin' yuh, it was the finest pussy I ever had." A sentence later, he noticed that I was the taller of the two in my walking party and fell silent. As we passed the pharmacy, he whispered, "I can't talk now . . ." I turned back and said, "Thanks, Man." He said to his mouthpiece, "Some guy's walkin' by with his daughter." (He may've been drunk, but he could still discern the virility of Mackenzie's escort. Props for that.)


I gave Mackenzie a coin at the second fountain. "Close your eyes, make a wish, then open your eyes and toss the penny between the feet of the little guy there." Her effort clanged off the right calf of the cast Italian lad.

"So, I won't get my wish?"

"Nope. And remember, even if you land the coin in the right place, your wish can't come true if you tell what you wished for."

"Holden! I know that. I know what I always wish for, and I know it won't be able to come true if I tell anyone about it."

We walked in front of Talbot's, where a fiberglass facsimile of a prosperous middle-aged female temptingly modeled some PERfect denim jeans. "I wish I could tell someone, though . . .."

Real sadness for me. I think I know the wish. It won't come true - no matter how many times her coin lands in the wish-fulfillment honey pot.

Laura was at work. I watched her do her job: boy, is she good at it. They weren't too busy, so she had time to say to Mackenzie, "Do you wanna wait in the bar until I can talk to you?"

"We'll do that."

Laddie Williams was at the potables station. Karin Gillespie sat on a sofa with two friends. We greeted one another formally.

Mackenzie and I sat at the bar. We talked with Laddie about music, and about our mutual friend, Teresa - who we agreed has found meaning and tranquility in marriage in Wyoming.

I heard Laura's voice behind me. She was to talking with the young woman who sat with Karin. ("CAR-in".) I heard them speak of "Diana" and "Mary Bryan". The woman turned in my direction: she was definitely Diana's sister!

"Diana" was a beautiful childhood friend of my neighbor, Mary Bryan Haltermann. I spoke to the woman about the Snapdragon video that had been shot in Bryan's back yard so many years ago. I told her that after watching it, I'd said to nine-year old Diana, "You can't understand or appreciate this now, but the camera loves you."

Elizabeth (for that is her name) said, "Yeah, tell me about it! When we take a family Christmas picture, or something like that, I'll make sure my hair is just right . . ., fix my make-up . . ., wear something flattering . . ., look into the camera, smile warmly . . .. Diana can crawl outta bed, throw on a burlap bag, stumble into the frame, and look like a movie star. I've kinda got a complex about it."

"Well, I saw Diana a year or so ago, and I can tell you this: if the two of you were standing side-by-side, and I was asked which woman I thought was more beautiful, 65 times out of a hundred, I'd say you."

I asked if I could join her mother (Sandra), Karin, and her. "Sure." Her chair and two opposing sofas bespoked a coffee table covered with wine glasses, a french fry platter, and three bread pudding dishes. I sat to her right.

"It's like with Julia Roberts. Apparently, you can sit and talk with her, and she looks like any other woman. But, when the camera rolls, she turns into Julia Roberts. Diana's got the same thing."





"Why is that?"

"Geometry, I think."






Sandra looked at me like I'd answered, "Alchemy."

Laura returned to the dining room. Mackenzie sat facing me on my left leg, and snuggled against my chest. I was warmed; I moved my leg outward. I reached my arm under hers, and put my palm on her belly. My face rested atop her head; she smelled sooooo Mackadoodly. Involuntarily, my arm contracted in a tender-firm hug.

Elizabeth leaned toward us. "Are you Holden?"

"I can be." My answer probably sounded coy; I was taken aback. ("What's happening here? She can't know that I'm Holden, right?")

"Why do you ask?"

Elizabeth told me a longer story about being best friends with Cazenove Haltermann when they were in grade school, and how their relationship had grown strained for reasons she's never understood. "So, I'm lying in bed one night last week. I'm 28, I've got two kids, I'm reasonably content, and I'm lying in bed, Googling friends from my childhood who didn't particularly like me. This is what my life's become!" She was amused in the way a content person can be amused.

"I Googled Cazenove, and this blog comes up, talking about Miranda's baptism. I read it, and wondered 'Who is this guy?' I re-read it, then read some more entries. It was tough to understand, but I liked it.

"When I saw that Laura was mentioned a lot, and then when Laura spoke to Mackenzie just now, I figured you must be the guy who wrote it."

She looked at me in a way I've never been looked at. I felt a feeling I've never felt.

"You know Holden Caulfield?"

"Sure."

"Well, he didn't do too well for a while when he was in his teens, right?"

"Mm-hm."

"So, what became of Holden? Did he end up as a vice president of an insurance company, wearing gray flannel suits and drinking margaritas on the terrace at the country club?"

She looked at me.

"No, he didn't. He drinks the occasional margarita on the country club terrace, but he's still Holden - just a hell of a lot older. Life hasn't knocked all the corners off him; he still longs to be the catcher in the rye - still wants to be there to keep his younger sis and her friends safe.

"Yeah, I'm Holden."

'Tis the Season . . .

Mackenzie and I went shopping today.

She spent Monday night with her father. This morning, they had some Christmas pictures taken. When they had finished, Eric dropped her at my house.

I had not seen her since Thursday! She smiled warmly when my big old balloon melon coconut head floated into her vision. And she cooed.

We picked up my laptop, which had been de-virused. We bought a wheel at the junk yard for Boo's Jeep's spare tire.

We went to Sam's and ordered tires. Before she went back to Grace, we stopped at and captured some values. (Half-price lettuce, Vidalia onion, and Lay's chips, 3 pounds of Granny Smiths for 1.29, two pounds of HUGE prawns for 18.99 - a treat for Ross, a head of cauliflower for .99.)


As we waited to check out, two aisles over there was a catterwauling child, obscured by a shelf. I listened for 3 minutes or so, then went to look around the shelf. A 15-month old was sitting in the buggy while a female who might be taken to be filling the role of parent ignored him. I looked at him until she looked at me. She did nothing. Anger arose in me. I wanted to act. There were fifty people in the front of the store, and most were disgusted, but we let this be-atch get away with this benign bad behavior. The kid reminded me of Kitty Genovese . . .. The blood is on all of us.

Note to parents: give your kid the expectation that you will care about how he feels. Respect him that way. Give him a bit of time when he needs it, and make clear to him that his responsibility includes to not "cry wolf". That way, when you are in the grocery store: you are not a rude jerk, regarded as incompetent as a parent by all in your immediate area; your kid is better behaved and will receive better treatment in the world; and your grandkids will be raised by a parent who knows what-the-heck to do. If your parents did not teach you how to do the job, and if you have no instinct for it, try what I am suggesting. Your bold action will make the world so much better. Your child will be a better person, your grandchildren will have a better shot, and you will experience personal growth.

Tonight is the 40th anniversary of the evening when my father lay down in the Hillside Hotel in Madison, Indiana, after a productive day of work for the Davison Chemical Company.

He was 38 years old.

When the kitchen beneath Room 205 caught fire in the night, the old former sanitarium overlooking the Ohio River was a virtual tinderbox. Of the 33 guests that evening, all managed to escape the conflagration, save for the gentleman in 205.

He did not live to see his grandchildren or his first great-grandkid, but he did instill in his progeny an understanding of how their kids should not act in a grocery store, and how - by his example - to instruct with love their own as-yet-unborn little ones.

His own 12-year-old son awakened the morning of the 15th fatherless in this world, but not in eternity. And many years later, the guest's great-granddaughter helped her grandfather buy tires for her aunt's car, and groceries for her mother, aunts, uncle, and grandfather, without disrupting unnecessarily the peaceful goings-about of those in her midst.

I suspect, though, that her grandfather may have some weird nagging unease that he was "crying wolf" in the metaphoric grocery store 40 years ago, and that he continues to disrupt the peaceful goings-about of the busy pre-Christmas shoppers, eager to get home to meals with loved ones.

7734

Pondering the concept of Hell is amusing to me.

For some folks, there is a certainty about its nature and the requirements for entry. It is the wages of sin. For some others, it moves around, based on what will allow their behavior in the moment without a perpetually-punitive consequence. Others imagine the concept as irredeemably linked with the concept of "Heaven" itself - that all is fallacy, and that the object is to escape this karmic cycle and to enter Nirvana.

What the hell, let's draw a little image of Hell today, shall we?

In this life, each of us is imbued with - by forces largely out of our control - a sense of right and wrong.

This sense of right and wrong is always played out in this world.

My bias in my playing out of this sense in this world is built upon Christian doctrine. I was reared by Christian children of Christian children of Christian children - going back to at least the Protestant Reformation, so far as I know. My upbringing occurred in the middle of the 20th century until the present. I have lived my entire life in the United States of America. My culture is a Christian culture; my culture is the materially-dominant culture of mankind in this era. I am a Christian-influenced Buddhist. I am reconciled to repeating this heaven-hell fallacy while this "Holden form" houses my spirit.

My sense of right and wrong is not so ambiguous as is the sense of some, and not so cut-and-dried as is the sense of others. My former father-in-law, I believe, has a more-certain understanding of these matters; I know of several folks who are advanced academics who seem to lack any semblance of certainty. The teachings of Jesus instruct that the one who appears to be utterly "wrong" may be the one to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It seems certain, though, that Jesus's Commandments are going to be part and parcel of any legitimate claim to moral decency in this life: Thou shalt have no other God before Me; love thy neighbor as thyself. Why the hell would anyone want to argue that?

OK. So, there're two guidepoints. (And, yes, we can move into some number totaling about ten as we develop our worldly rules to assure an afterlife which may or may not exist.)

So, let's look at a practical case. Let's use Old Holden as an example. Hell if I care.

I would like to have my spirit exist in eternity in a state of love, in a state of calm, in a state of acceptance with eternity.

I do not imagine my existence in that state to transpire absent other spirits. As I view eternity today, it includes Mackenzie, my children, my parents and grandparents, and about 40 other people who have loved me so selflessly that I have grown spiritually as a result of the contact - God's sublime offering to my earthly state. This is Heaven. There is a peace that passeth understanding in this state. None shall be excluded, but my worldly desire is that there are some whose spirits are certainly there with mine.

Further, I imagine a state in which all spirits' best aspects are there with my best aspects, in that blessed state.

The place where this concept goes to hell in a handcart is with the negative aspects of my spirit, and the interface of my best aspects with the negative aspects of other spirits.

Let us imagine that I have a fundamental conflict with another person. Allow further that the other person is unable to acknowledge incongruence in his actions, as they relate to the person's stated beliefs about right and wrong. (I am speaking of Ten Commandment-type matters, such as lying, stealing, cheating, and inability to accept responsibility for behaviors such as fundamental disloyalty.)

My Christian training instructs me that it is my moral responsibility to love this person, and that there is spiritual growth available to the person who loves an "enemy" that is not available when one loves a person who has not trespassed one. I can do that . . ..

But does Heaven have to include my continuing to love this wretch for eternity? Why can't I have surcease as an eternal reward for my earthly efforts? In this life, that is what I covet. I long for the absence of attack in the presence of my spirit.

I have been both a good boy and a bad boy in my life. My very best is pretty good; my worst is unprintably awful. There are likely no levels of hell adequate to punish for eternity my misdeeds. Your Falwells, your Hitlers, your Stalins, your Idi Amins, your Regis Philbins. All are deserving of a hell of a lot less torment than is the worst of my spirit.

But, as a Christian-influenced soul, I wish for an eternity of peace and calm for my spirit. I wish for this state while I exist in this hellish life.

In Heaven, I will live in the state of calm and peace. That state will include a sharing with splendid souls. Each of those souls, in addition to mine, will have had some of their aspects included in worldly behaviors which would condemn them to an eternal septic tank swim, accompanied by a never-ending loop of the voice of some Jerry Lewis character from the 50s. (Obviously, the French will have a different sense of Hell.) Even though these spirits were attached to a form that was not perfect, somehow the perfect parts of these spirits will abide forever with the perfect parts of mine. Ahhhhhhhh . . ..

The perfect parts of other spirits which had the hellish contact with the unsavory aspects of the spirits mingling with mine through eternity might look at our Heaven as a certain Hell, right? Hell, yes.

OK.

My Christian training has further instructed me that it is not for me to know, predict, even opine about the eventual eternal outcome for any spirit. If I have been horribly wronged in this world by a person, if the wrongs seem to me to be clearly Ten-Commandment-type failings, it is not for me to know the outcome. My faith is to include trust that God knows what must be, and it is my role to stay the hell out of Her way.

OK, I can do that . . ..

How about the simple ego part of things? How does this package called Holden keep itself from flying off in all directions like some fissioned entity?

I do not mind the concept of an eternal swim in fecal-coated Jerry Lewis soundtracks, or other seemingly unpleasant experiences of the world.

When the best parts of my spirit are communing forever with the parts of the spirit with which I had those fundamental conflicts, I . . . will be in Hell.

What the hell: as we mature, we often mellow in our attitudes. Maybe God will lead me to a better understanding of my role in coping with abusive treatment in this world. Nonetheless, today it is my belief that Hell will freeze over before I will see this differently in this life.

Little Indicators

I recall an anecdote about an American frontier explorer - I think it was Daniel Boone - who was asked by someone, "Mr. Boone, you ever been lost?"

Boone is reported to have cocked his head, stroked his chin between his index finger and thumb, pursed his lips, and slowly replied, "Ah cain't rottly say Ah hev . . .. Bin motty turned-'round for weeks-a-time, though."

The same might be said of any life invested in catching innocents as they approach the precipice.

As these entries amass, unexpected topics and attitudes - as if from forces unknown - make their way into your monitor.

I "own" these topics and attitudes, even the ones that surprise me. Even the ones that concern you. Even the ones which offend.

Recently, I provided http://www.olderholden.blogspot.com to a woman I have known since 1972. Our relationship has always been a highly-charged thing. The charge has vacillated between "ground" and "hot" - sometimes without much indication that the cables were being switched. We have blown up a few batteries in our day, and I guess each of us has had exploded acid burn us to some degree.

In earlier times, when we were in conflict, timid soul I would choose one of two courses of response. I would assume that I was the source of conflict, and that being such was due to my inadequacy; or, I would disagree with a critical action, and seek to explain/justify/rationalize my side. Neither response was satisfactory in the whole.

In the past week, my long-standing acquaintance emailed to tell me that she had been begun to hurriedly review the blog. (Another more-pressing activity was intruding.) What stopped the reading was some of the content she observed in "Of Things Fresh and Stale".

My acquaintance wrote: "Unfortunately, in scanning down to see how long it was, I came across your assault on women OUR age. And even though I have heard you say those words out loud, seeing them in print was shocking and sad. I do hope that you find some peace some day, and are able to take full accountability for your situation without constantly blaming and denigrating women."

I wrote back: "I call 'bullshit'. Look around. Even women acknowledge it. I suspect that this is God's way to 'make it up' to men for making young women so irresistibly hot. That does not mean I dislike women my age. I like crocodiles. too." (The source of her concern about my relationship with women was a conversation that Older Holden and Ed Rice were having on O.H.'s back porch after they had come back from eating barbeque. O.H. was telling Ed that he had given up dating until he turned 60, because women "our age" are either "shot-out looking, or mean. Or, the daily double - both.")

My email response concluded, "The blog is about idealism and innocence, anyway."

Shortly afterwards, I heard back, "OLD FOOL."

Having my initial observation at least partly confirmed by this remark, I allowed myself to enjoy my new-found identity as a person-not-an-extension-of-the-other. Still holding the same affection for my friend as I always have, and no longer needing to defend what to me is an accurate portrayal of my experiences, I knew at my core that some gentle touch was called for. I responded:

"TWO-HEADED CROCODILE.









(Not really . . .)"




I respectfully request that a reader remember that Alf V. TerZane is not Older Holden.


Like Ol' Mittah Boone, Ah bin motty turned-'round for weeks-a-time, but Ah ain't bin lost.

Warm Baths of the Non-Water Kind

I had forgotten how easy it is to care for an infant. (Non-colic edition, of course.) They eat; they poop. They cry a bit; they sleep. And when they are awake or asleep, they feel so wonderful in your arms. Grace told me this morning that Mackenzie had slept through the night.

She is such a pleasant child. Truly pleasant. I loved my kids actively and was always pleased to be in their company - except when Boo had colic, and one day I got straight on that. But, Mackenzie is so serene, and so inquisitive, too.

This morning as I held her close to me, she smiled. I "saw" her one month ago. The changes . . .. We were sitting in my rocking desk-chair, having a bite to eat. She was wearing the outfit I call her "prison break model". A description of the long-sleeved, bootied, alternating three-quarter-inch tangerine- and peach- striped snapping sack could never convey how snuggly and perfectly cute is this child, this morning.

I let it wash over me, letting my head fall back and my eyes close. These changes . . ..

Holding the perfect infant girl, I thought of the departed "perfect woman". In her adult life, the latter brought to me the same fresh changes on a routine basis. Her adult-model size notwithstanding, she, too, was snuggly and perfectly cute. I suppose that the one I experience when I regard what appears to be the perfect woman is the perfect female infant from which she has sprung.

Mackenzie has begun to extend her pointy pretty tongue to its greatest possible length. In and out, her expression indicating that she is concentrating on the sensations of these motions. She smiles regularly, and is hearing her own voice with some curiosity and delight. She stretches and twists, and turns herself over once in a while. Last night, I dreamed she walked. I was so happy for her. The joy was not one of "parental pride", as I likely would have experienced in a similar dream about my own infant child. My dreammood was more one of confidence. I felt that Mackenzie was that much closer to be ready to go out in the world. But, yeah, also: I was pretty happy to know a kid who could walk at eight weeks of age.

I recall my complete absorption with Laura when she was this age. Bryan called it my "first-baby high". And that high still persisted when Boo came bawling into our world. We had this Mackenzie-esque critter delighting us day and night; and our newest member could not stop crying. Sometime just before Christmas, Janis Adams came and watched the girls one afternoon. Janice and I went to have a bite to eat, and some private time. We left with Sarah crying in Janis's arms. ("Janis", the verb; "Janice" the noun.) I remember closing the front door, and feeling relief that I would not hear the sounds for a bit. I looked forward to coming home in a couple of hours to a sleeping brood.

After a nice meal and sweet talk, we returned to find . . . Sarah crying. The stress on Janis's face - conveying helplessness, not frustration or anger - triggered in me an understanding of what Janice and I were undergoing. I took Boo, feeling not just helplessness, but also frustration and anger. I was feeling, "Why are you crying like this? Laura doesn't cry like this!" This was practically "not-fun", and everything to date had been perfect fun.

I walked off with Boo in my arms, and tapped into my more-patient and tender side. (A side which some allege exists only in my imagination.) I sat in the living room and tried to comfort her. She cried. She whimpered. She screamed as if she were being tortured. A sunbeam flowed through the window and warmed my face and the top of Boo's head. She sucked in air, to restore her fuel for more noise. (You have heard a crying child suck wind, collecting himself, after expending so much to communicate through his wails?) As the sun's warmth cozied my body and soul, I felt something within me. I felt pain. I felt untreatable . . . pain. I looked down at this beautiful little girl, straining to breathe, and I said out loud, "The reason you are crying is because you hurt so much." My warm tear anointed my copper-topped daughter.

After that, the sounds of Sarah's crying were heard with the same ears as those that heard "Daaa" from Laura, or perhaps a simple clearing of her throat by Janice. And one day, the crying stopped. What remained was the one I came to call "Boo", in response to her serene manner.

I have moments now of thankfulness that Mackenzie is not feeling this sort of pain. I smile close-lipped at her when this washes over me, appreciating that there is the absence of that hurt in her life.

She is staying awake for longer stretches now, looking around with eyes that focus better. She has the Boo-like expression of withholding judgment - obviously gathering information to be processed and commented upon at a later and appropriate time.

It is clear that this serenity is a form of prescience. It is clear that this child lacks the fearfulness that one observes in the eyes of some infants. She seems to have been born with a temperament of calm. Her upbringing to date has been loving and responsible - without being smothering, spoiling, coddling, enabling. I am one of a group of stewards of this fresh spirit. I am one who must be vigilant in my efforts to remain mindful that Mackenzie's early prescience is a call to me and the others. The call urges us to allow her to wash over us, to allow her to unfold in love before us, to show her the world while assuring her that there exists a simple and small life, to which she can return at all times.

Gazing Across a Generation

Fall mornings in Augusta can be heavenly. This morning was a special gift to its denizens.

I took a new white shirt from the package and ironed it as my bath water was running. I pressed the flap of my charcoal suit's pocket, to remove the crease that had been formed by it being tucked into the pocket since last fall. I polished my wing tips. After a nice bath, I dressed, choosing the subtle blue-and-black checked tie. (When I am dressed like this, I always think of the Kevin Costner character in "The Big Chill" - I think his name was Alex.) As I backed out of the drive, I felt at once presentable and riddled with trepidation.

When I entered the churchyard, flanked by ancient grave markers of Episcopalians long-departed, the choir was moving from the parish hall toward the narthex. I traded my closed-lipped smiles and nods for the open expressions of welcome from members who have known me for several years, as I slipped into the sanctuary at the eastward doors.

As I made my way down the side, Starkey Flythe greeted me. "Hello, young man. Nice to see you." We talked briefly, then he shook my hand and turned toward the church's front to find a seat. As I prepared to take my seat, Mary-Kathleen came up behind me and churchshouted "Holden! It's wonderful to see you!" We shared a loving hug, then talked for several minutes, before she left to assume her deaconing duties.

I slid into the pew near the back, adjacent to where the Starkmeister and I had chatted. As I pulled out the prayer cushion, footfall caused me to look to my right. It was Starkolopolis. He mentioned something about not wanting to have to sit with a parishioner, pulled out a cushion, and knelt to pray. The two of us were there alone with a good view of things, and no one too nearby. As the processional began, I turned to my left to greet the banners, cross, and choir. There came a familiar pat on my right shoulder. "Hello, old friend." Ed Rice! He had been invited to Miranda Boulous's christening. This was going to be more pleasant with my dear friend accidentally at my side.

All of my bambini sat near the front with their mother, their step siblings, their Aunt Carolyn, and Kristin Pratt. Grace held Mackenzie. Eric joined them. I enjoyed watching them from where I was, regarding them as people in church - as any other person might.

The service moved along crisply. Old and New Testament readings were delivered with aplomb. The retired bishop of the Gulf Coast diocese delivered a folksy homily, emphasizing that we give love as love and as wealth. (Former Rector Donald Fishburn used to say "time, talent, treasures".)

Those to be baptized, their parents, and godparents were called to the altar rail. Grace, Eric, Mackenzie, and Kristin joined the group. So did Laura, Sarah, and Isaac. (Janice, Carolyn and the Whiting kids walked up, but were shooshed away by the mother-hen mother, Gracious.) The rite was begun. After the pledges of support, "With God's help, we will" from the congregation, the seven young people were carried to the rear of the sanctuary, where the baptismal font had been placed.

"Would you like to join me?" I asked Ed, as I made my way from the pew.

"Yes, if you want me to."

"It's important, Ed. And I very much would like you there with me."

We made our way toward the assembling mass. I would guess there were sixty people surrounding the font. Laura and Sarah called out, "Dad! Over here!" Ed and I navigated through the crowd, and stood behind those two and Isaac. Janice, Carolyn, and Grace were ahead of us, with Mackenzie and Eric. I put my left hand on the small of Laura's back, and my right in the same place on Sarah's. Ike stood directly in front of me, his backside in solid contact with my front. I felt fulfilled. Our family was there, and we were strong.

I looked over the heads of Grace and those around her, over the font, and directly across the circle. Occupying a position in the circle, 180 degrees from mine, stood my neighbor of 21 years, Bryan Haltermann. Here, on the same morning, in the same church, two friends, partners, and neighbors were joined at a baptismal font by our first grandchildren.

We are both Yankees, who married fair-skinned, creative Augusta girls. We are both divorced for reasons that are not dissimilar. We both have three daughters. (Isaac is the only boy besides Bryan and me in the equation.) Our children have all had to adjust to a life in two households, and the negative impacts on all are apparent. (Bryan divorced first. I remember saying to him one day, after Harriet was gone, and as Janice was beginning her departure, "We'll raise these kucking fids by ourselves." Bryan has approached parenting and marriage in a more-traditional and conventional fashion than have I. He looked at me wryly. I hope, though, that he understood that I meant what I said.)

Bryan has had to adjust to his daughter's Cazenove's adult life. I've had to adjust to my daughter Grace entering adult life while still a child. (It was Cazenove that I mentioned in "You Can't Tell the Players Without a Scorecard", when I went to visit her husband Paul at his Oriental rug business.) Eric was in the circle, too. I had met him earlier in the week. It is always an adjustment to go from not knowing a person to knowing him.

The first time I did anything with Bryan was in the late Fall of 1983. Cazenove was about 2, Mary Bryan was a newborn. Laura was waiting to hatch in the coming June. There had been a cold snap, and some supply pipes had burst in a cottage Bryan had renovated up on Milledge. We worked at the repair and talked a bit. There seemed to be no pressure to get to know one another. Just two guys replacing a couple of siding boards, talking. My strongest recollection of that day was Bryan's response to my query, "Where'd you go to school." He was working on the siding, and didn't turn to answer.

"Yale." Such a short answer! I heard in his tone a tint that approached apology. To say that his reply was unassuming would be to overstate. My response to his reply was chatty. I said something like, "Wow! Great school." But his tone made the topic a closed one.

He and I built a studio for Nancy Mills.

Then we renovated two buildings downtown - at Fifth and Walker, and on Greene next to the "Ghetto Gurley's" grocery store.

It was to the porch at that Greene Street house that Harriet came to interrupt my work as I replaced a couple of sills. "You'd better go to the hospital; Janice is about to have that baby."

Through the years, Bryan has been the visionary and practical leader of the rebirth of downtown Augusta. He took a year to attend Columbia, completing a Masters in Real Estate Development, with an emphasis on just what he has done. He has served or is serving on virtual every non-profit board of any organization in any way associated with downtown. He has photographed and written an architectural field guide of Augusta. I think that it would be appropriate to some day rename Broad Street between Seventh and 13th "Haltermann Way". It was the Haltermann way that has made it happen, and it is the Haltermann way to further growth and development. When you drive downtown, and you note the alternate names for the numbered streets, you will find that 11th Street is "Cumming". Henry Cumming was the first mayor of Augusta. Henry is Bryan's 6-great grandfather. It would be so fitting to have an intersection of Cumming and Haltermann Way for Miranda Boulous to appreciate as her young life unfolds.

If our lives are enriched in relation to our coming in contact with remarkable folks, a significant aspect of my enrichment has been knowing Bryan well. There he was, and there I was, two fossils cast nearby one another in an emotional and ritualistic tableau, with our jointly cherished companion Ed serving as our second.

Afterward, in the churchyard, the congregation sipped lemonade and fussed over the new Christians spread thereabouts. A nice man with a beautiful open smile walked up to us as Mackenzie and I posed for photographs for Kristin's mother. "Are you the proud grandfather?"

"I'm Holden."

Summary of the World

(Source Unknown)

If we could shrink the Earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:

There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere, including North and South America, and eight from Africa.

Fifty-one would be female, and 49 would be male.

Sixty-six would be non-Christian and 33 would be Christian.

Eighty would live in substandard housing.

Seventy would be unable to read.

Half would suffer from malnutrition.

Only one would have a college education.

Half of the entire village's wealth would be in the hands of only six people, and all six would be citizens of the United States.

Another Mealtime Metaphor

(Authorship uncertain.)




Ten people go out for dinner. The bill comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four (the poorest) would pay nothing. Boopkus.

The fifth would pay $1. A buck.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7. (So far, 11/100 of the bill has been paid by 7/10 of the dinner party.)

The eighth would pay $12.

The nine would pay $18.

The tenth (the richest) would pay $59.


They settled the bill this way and went home.


The dinner club liked the arrangement, and they continued to meet every day for a meal. The restaurant owner announced, "Y'all such good custamahs, I gonna gibb yoo twenny dolluhs off yoe bill." (In our little story, this would be a "20% tax cut".)

The dinner club wanted to use the same formula as they had for their $100 meal - which now cost $80.

The first four? Zero.

The remaining six had to decide how to divvy up the $20 savings in a fair way.

$20 divided by 6 = $3.33.

That would mean the fifth and sixth would get paid to eat. (Five paid a dollar, six $3, in the earlier arrangement.)

"Ah tell yuh wha' Ah'll doo", the restauranteur said. "Ah'll knock off abou' thuh same puh-sennage from each puhsun's bill as befoe."

Fifth? Paid zero.

Sixth? $2 instead of $3. (33% savings.)

Seventh? $5, instead of $7. (28% savings.)

Eighth? $9, instead of $12. (25% savings.)

Ninth? $14, instead of $18. (22% savings.)

Tenth? $49, instead of $59. (16% savings.)

Everyone ate for less.


After the meal, in the parking lot, the dinner club began to compare their savings.

"I only got a buck!" said the sixth. "And you", pointing to the tenth, "you, got ten!"

"Yeah" added the fifth. "I only got a buck's savings, too. He got ten times as much as I did!"

The seventh said, "I only got two dollars back! The rich get all the breaks!"

The first four looked at one another, and had the simultaneous thought, "HEY! We didn't get anything. This system exploits the poor!"


So, the other nine beat up the tenth there in the parking lot.


The next night, after the tenth person didn't show up, the other nine ate their normal meal.

When the bill came, they didn't have enough to pay even half of it.



Note from Alf: What will become of the dinner club?

I Get the Afternoon Off

Not surprisingly, he began by calling me "sir". ARRGGGHHH!

He had a little chin hair, and a good short haircut. His hair color reminds me of my own at his age.

His eyes are well-set in his skull - he looks intelligent and alert. His body language is athletic, responsible, and sensitive.

He was wearing two tee shirt-y things, and a front-zippered hoody with some kind of message on the front. I suppose the silver herring-bone necklace is age-approppriate. It's better than an "Italian lucky tooth", I suppose.

He has good teeth.

"First off, call me 'Holden'. I can't deal with 'mister' or 'sir'."

He is a pleasant person.

We discussed some rules of interaction, centering around communication and respect, openness and honesty, and courage. I learned a bit about his sibs and parents, and his just-deceased grandmother.

"Grace said you'd be here at 10:30; you got here at 11:15. Call when you know you're behind schedule. My time's flexible, but I have to use all my time each day to make enough money, tend to Mackenzie, maintain my life."

He had a Biology test, and it took longer to complete than he thought. Also, it may be that Grace had misunderstood when he expected to arrive.

"This is too weird a situation for me to know what to do or say. But, what I know about you - which is all second- and third-hand - I like. You've conducted yourself courageously. I'm proud of you. I don't know what to expect in the future, but you're off to a perfect start.

"Also, I'm not one of those parents who thinks his kid can do no wrong. If you'll be straight up with me, if Grace mistreats you, I'll be on her like white on rice. If I think you're doing her wrong, or if you're not being a positive influence in Mackenzie's life, I'll tell you in a direct way. You may think I'm an asshole, but you'll know for sure just what sort of asshole I am."

We were standing at the end of the driveway, and Mackenzie was nodding in the car seat in the front of his truck.

His name is Eric Ainsworth. More about him later.

BORE-ring!

Woo, Bo, Pook, Mackenzie, and I were in the kitchen this afternoon.

Woo-dee killed the last of the pasta salad - leaving one marinated tortellino! Grace scarfed an ear of just-steamed sweet corn. The girls inhaled the pricey olive spread I laid out. (Only I ate any of the Raspberry Chipotle Spread. It is not inedible.) Ike was a tortilla chips-and-Dr. Pepper guy - at least until I started peeling the steamed shrimp. Mackenzie voiced no preference, so Butter Bean fed her formula.

"I read the whole blog today", Grace offered. I asked her what she thought, but before she answered, Dr. Woo piped up with some reference to one of the pieces, and said she laughed when "you told the friendly stranger that you were 'Holden' " - not choosing to be identified as father or grandfather of the historic baby. Both girls said they like "Historic Children".

Woo and Gracelli each said they could not read all the way through "Oh . . ., So You Think You're Perfect?".

"Boring."

"Waaaaaaaayyyyyy too long."

"Who cares about Jimmy Carter?"

Gracious asked, "Is the woman you gave a bath Janis Adams?" (In "Two-and-a-Half Baths".) Janis is a family friend who babysat the girls. She had a cerebral hemorrhage about fifteen years ago.

"Sarah read it and thought the woman was Helinka", I said.

"That's what I thought", Woo chimed. "But I couldn't figure out how she was stuck in traffic."

I clarified. "She's none of them. She's a composite and a fabrication. She might be stuck in traffic, or terminally ill, or rich and miserable. The point is . . . that the woman lacks the . . . capacity - or opportunity, or ability - to find in the innocence of a child all that's necessary to make . . . sense of life.

"What I'd like to understand is 'do you think that there's an . . . erotic component to the bath? Or is Older Holden . . . innocent? Maybe he's being intentionally ambiguous about his interaction with this . . . friend of his?' I want to know how you 'hear' O.H.'s voice.

"Also, we have to consider if Alf V. TerZane is playing games with us, keeping secret the behaviors and intentions of Older Holden. Alf may be trying to 'reel us in', like so many fiction-reading fishes."

Laura returned us to the boring entry, asking, "Why'd yuh go off on a tangent about Jimmy Carter?"

("Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You're black.")

Pook Doggie Dogg asked, "What's a tangent?"

I got a pad and pen, brought it to the kitchen table, drew a circle in the center of the paper, and then a line that touched the circle's side barely.

I pointed into the circle with the pen, and swirled around within the boundary. "Everything in there is the core of the story.

"There's one point on the side of the circle where the line touches it. That's the tangent." I held the pen at the point, then moved it down the line to its end.

"This part of the story's related to the main story in the circle by just that one point."

"Good explanation of 'tangent', . . . Holden", Doctor said.

When Older Holden was a young prep school student, he hated English teachers who didn't "allow" digression. Now, Older Holden has kucking fids who are nippin' at his 'nads because he digresses.

When Mackenzie is 14, or 17, or 20 - as are her uncle, mother, and aunt today, it is my hope that she will be able to read the intent of a piece like "Oh . . ., So You Think You're Perfect?". Should this piece make its way into "The Unauthorized Biography of Mackenzie Lakyn (Harmony) Ainsworth", by Alf V. TerZane, and should she not be able to read the intent, here is a crib note:

The protagonist (Older Holden) has reached an age where he can regard a failed - but potentially wonderful - relationship as a very good thing, but one which had issues associated with the timing or the comparative evolutions of its participants. O.H. regards the failed - but potentially wonderful - presidency of Jimmy Carter as a model for his learning to cope with the loss of "the perfect woman".

Mackenzie will have responsibilities when she is encountered as the perfect woman. She will also be responsible for bringing her expectations of "the perfect man" into line with reality. (I am projecting heterosexuality upon the child as a statistical likelihood. Same-gender relationships are not excluded by the model, nor is lifelong celibacy.)

Alf V. TerZane is working out a small problem: there are several sorts of prospective readers of "Older Holden". One is an infant who will likely not see the work until she is in her teens. Others include Mackenzie's familial and social relatives - whose interests in literature (and even reading!) vary widely. Alf his ownself has a circle of acquaintance that is accustomed to his writing style(s) and sensibilities - "mature" stuff, stylistically and thematically.

Sometimes pieces are long because they must be. To those who find them boring, apologies. To those who find some merit in them, a pledge to work to write more concisely, clearly, directly.

But, as I review the first ten pieces, what I notice is not the length. (This is, however, certainly one of those times when size does matter.) As my Terre Haute roommate Goldberg always said, "Man, can you write ducking fialogue!" Check it out: the less conversation, the less readable. Without dialogue, these pieces read like essays. Most people want to receive an accredited grade or a paycheck for reading essays . . ..

"Pause"

I was a stay-at-home Dad from the time Grace was born until Janice and I divorced. I think it mattered; I believe it was the best choice to make.

The phone rang one afternoon in 1991. It was Eve Richardson. Eve had been reading The New Yorker, and had found a poem compelling. "I was reading it, and enjoying it, and relating to the writer, when it occurred to me, 'this is Older Holden!' I'm mailing it to you now." Eve was right.

I pasted the poem (which she had cut from the magazine) on an index card, and kept it at my desk. I read it to Benny Andrews when he came to visit. I have mailed it to closest friends through the years. Many are surprised that I am not the author.

As you read it, I hope that you will work to get the phrasing. The guy has a moment of zen consciousness as he goes about his routine. I recite it aloud, alone in my house, from time-to-time, then go to my front door and experience all my Lauralove anew, amid the echoes of the live voice of her filling every crack.

The poem was written by Eamon Grennan, who teaches at Radcliffe. I've had a nice correspondence with him. His daughter's name is Keira.


Pause


The weird containing stillness of the neighborhood
just before the school bus brings the neighborhood kids
home in the middle of the cold afternoon: a moment of pure
waiting, anticipation, before the outbreak of anything,
when everything seems just, seems justified, hanging
in the wings, about to happen, and in your mind you see
the flashing lights flare amber to scarlet, and your daughter
in her blue jacket and white-fringed sapphire hat
stepping gingerly down and out into our world again, to hurry
through silence and snow-grass, as the door sighs shut
and her own front door flies open, and she finds you
behind it, father-in-waiting, the stillness in bits
and the common world restored as you bend to touch her,
to take her hat and coat up from the floor
where she's dropped them, hear the live voice of her filling
every crack. In the pause before all this happens, you know
something about the life you've chosen to live
between the silence of almost infinite possibility and that
explosion of things as they are - those vast unanswerable
intrusions of love and disaster, or just the casual scatter
of your child's winter clothes on the hall floor.

Oh . . ., So You Think You're Perfect?

Election day, 2004.

Grace called this morning a few minutes before I was to pick Ike and her up, to take them to school. Mackenzie had slept fitfully, and had thrown up. Grace wanted to rest a bit. It was agreed that I would get Pook at the appointed time, then take Grace down later.

I went to their mother's house, intending to read the paper out front, while I awaited Ike's arrival. After a couple of minutes, Grace came out with the baby. I held her; she looked fine. I suppose it was only a tender stomach that caused her to blow chow.

• "Toss Her Cookies"
• "Barf"
• "Call New York"
• "Drive the Porcelain Bus"
• "Hurl"
• Experience reverse peristalsis
• Get "sick to her stomach" ("Sick on her stomach" in Janice's vernacular.)
• "Spew the Technicolor Rainbow" ( - although in Mackenzie's case, the vomit was formula-only, and hence not multi-colored.) "Albino Rainbo"?
• "Upchuck"
• "Call O'Rourke"
• "Spit Up" - (so delicate!)
• Vomit
• "Puke"

My polling station - housed in a Sunday School classroom building at a Methodist church - is virtually across the street from Janice's house. I noted that the parking lot was full at 7:30.

I got to thinking about Jimmy Carter . . ., and a woman I adore.

Carter came out of nowhere to win the 1976 election. He didn't even call himself James! And that drawl! Plus, he was from the deepest of the Deep South. An American president from the Deep South? Lyndon Johnson of Texas had ascended to - and held - the office, but Texas - as most Texans will eagerly tell you - is a nation unto itself. "Don't mess with Texas!" Johnson's election came less than a year after the assassination of President Kennedy, and the country was still circling the wagons.

I remember hitchhiking to Terre Haute - where I was attending graduate school - from Columbus, in the Fall of '76. I was 24, and I intended to vote in the upcoming election. My leaning was to vote for the incumbent, Gerald Ford. I had - like many others - seen through Richard Nixon from the start. I felt that the United States had sent an appropriate message to the sorts of leaders that his ilk embodied. For me, it was not a "Republican-Democrat" issue, but a matter of civility - of basic decency. The party of business sometimes gets aligned with control-freaks who threaten the bedrock of the American political system. This does not disavow the importance of business, nor the legitimacy of the Republican Party. It only is to remind that sometimes we have to repudiate evil when it rises to the highest levels of power. Be sure to vote tomorrow.

I thought of Mr. Ford as a very decent fellow - caught up in an inflationary spiral, and lots of bad press associated with the remnants of the Nixon Era. It seemed to me that continuity was important. And Jimmy Carter went by "Jimmy", had that accent, and was from the Deep South!

Some super-bright theology student - I do not remember his name - picked me up between Dayton and the Indiana line. When I got out of his car in western Indiana three hours later, I was a convert. Even today, I am at a loss to explain how a cynical young man changed so quickly, but it happened. Further, my vote in November still feels like the most-informed one I have cast in a national election.

Carter's presidency was damned by many of the same forces that were bedeviling Ford's. Plus, it seems to me that his team was composed of so many outsiders that the Inside-the-Beltway crowd made them political sausage. Inflation was rampant, and at the end of his term, the Iran hostage crisis seemed to highlight his inefficacy as leader of the Free World.

Why did I think of him this morning?

Even though some now paint him as a naive meddler in world affairs - a Baptist Sunday School teacher, way over his head with some truly dishonest people - most all Americans with an opinion acknowledge that Jimmy Carter is our best ex-president in memory. He has continued to be active in worthy pursuits into his 80s. He has not gone the route of men who left office, who afterwards sat on boards of corporations. (A worthwhile thing to do, but seemingly not a significant undertaking for a person who once had the biggest job on the planet.) I admire Jimmy Carter. I admire TR, Lincoln, and Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Madison, and Monroe. I like Ike. I "dis-admire" Reagan, Nixon, Harding. Former-president Clinton vexes, because his political acumen and vision are largely offset by his inabilities in the personal truth-telling department. He's like Nixon, but weak instead of dark.

Sitting in Sarah's idling Jeep across the street from the polling station, seeming to hold the paper I intended to read, I found in one hand the presence of Jimmy Carter, and in the other feelings for a woman who I adore.

At night, and at dawn, I often lie awake, reviewing my day, or charting my upcoming morning. Failures I might not repeat, and small improvements that might be grown; nuts-and-bolts of real estate transactions, and maintenance requirements of daily life; omnipresent impulses associated with the rearing of the new offspring. Included in this routine is the recollection of a magnificent woman.

When a person comes into one's life who causes romantic stirrings, when those stirrings prove to be mutual, when those mutual stirrings lead to joint exploration of the prospects which those stirrings awakened, when those explorations lead to the shared conclusion that the stirrings alone - while undeniably mutual - do not merit any further exploration, there is left a hole in one's spirit. I experience this hole as a good thing - a sort of merit badge for having interacted wholly-as-possible with another. When I was younger, the hole caused me to pine. The hole caused an ache for the person with whom I thought I had been interacting. I longed for her to assume her rightful position at the core of my spirit. As an older man - with children the age I was when I began to experience this pining - I look to understand the meanings in what transpired within the exploration.

One observation consistently proves to be the single-most obvious explanation of the meanings. The observation is that the person who expressed to me the stirrings that I elicited in her was not actually the person to whom I expressed the stirrings that she caused in me. My expectations about the person were hopeful and best-intentioned (see: "loving"), but were not accurate enough to sustain the exploration indefinitely. Her experience of the exploration was likely not dissimilar.

There on Troupe Street, in front of Janice's, before Grace and Mackenzie came to say "hey", and instead of reading the newspaper, I put the car in park, leaned back into the seat, closed my eyes and communed with the spirit of James Earl Carter . . ..

You are a bright young man. You grow up in an agricultural community - a gifted child in a loving family. You progress through the public educational system, and matriculate at the United States Naval Academy. You train to work in "nucular" (sic, Carter) submarines. You return afterward to work the family agricultural business. You enter politics. You succeed. You rise to governor of your state. You make a run for your party's nomination for president. You gain it. You win the national election. You are President of the United States of America. You are the Commander-in-Chief of the most-powerful army ever assembled. Pretty heady stuff, even for a bright boy - no matter where he was born, or what his Deddy did.

But, your term as president is a rocky one. Ignominy of ignominies: after you are trounced in your bid for re-election, the leader of a dangerous government (formerly propped up by your predecessors) releases the American hostages his government had held for over a year. You are mocked for your toothy smile, for your be-sweatered willingness to heat the White House to 58 degrees during the energy crisis, for your naive interaction with the Washington power elite, for 22-percent interest rates. Your life sucks, dude.

You retire and rebuild the life of character that had defined you before the "presidential experience". Over time, friend and foe alike acknowledge your efforts and your decency. You even publish a book of your poems. Life is pretty darned good 25 years later.

And yet . . ..

You lie abed some nights and dawns, reviewing your day, and charting your upcoming morning. There - among the thoughts of Habitat for Humanity, the Carter Library, election overseeing, your Sunday School class, your grandkids, your kids, your wife, and the minutiae of your daily life - is Your Presidency. You allow yourself an "If only . . .".

You have played it over in your mind for 28 years. You have dissected individual decisions, rearranged timing of events, and rued happenstance.

In time, you have come to regard those four years of quite long ago as a period when you did your best, accomplished some good, and departed having kept to the core of your belief structure. You know that you served a noble cause with integrity, energy, and your best effort. You were the most-powerful man in the world for four years, and now you are busy with other things. You believe that your successor did the best that he could. You are troubled by the spiritual vacuity of some of his present-day supporters, but accept it as the whim of history, a wisp in the breeze of time. Your theological and family training cause within you feelings of sadness for him. You allow as how your model - which does not account for reincarnation, with its accompanying infinite chances to evolve spiritually within the world - may not be adequate for the eternal and restful repose of his soul. You pray in "quiet waiting" to your God that He allow you to turn these matters to Him, that you stay out of His way, that you continue in the service to His will that is your moral and ethical responsibility. You love your country as always.

I regard the time of my exploration of those stirrings as my failed presidency. I was voted out of office, and I regard my defeat as the legitimate will of the electorate. In the grander scheme of things, the ego-driven needs of any person will be met or denied - to varying degrees - by forces over which he has varying degrees of control. It was not "my time". The momentum of the culture ran over me, but the road kill I have become is an important part of the natural order of things. (Or could it be that my karma was "totaled" when it collided with the culture's dogma?) In my reveries before sleep tonight, and tomorrow morning before my rising, I will find unlimited Sunday School classes awaiting, perfumed by the acceptance of a failed - yet noble - presidency.

"See that relationship over there? My friend and I built that. It's my best work, to-date. For one term, I was the most-powerful man in the world."