When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Attributed to Mark Twain
We’re all probably familiar with Mark Twain’s observation that the older he got the smarter his father became.
Ironically, no evidence exists that Twain actually authored the words credited to him far and wide, over and over.
Doubtful authorship, however, does not diminish the truth: we grow wiser with age. In our twenties, we see our parents differently than we did in our teens. Life experiences and hindsight heighten our perspectives.
Looking back on my teens, I never considered either my father or my mother to be ignorant.
But in my mid-twenties, as a graduate student, I had an epiphany not too unlike Twain’s.
Mine, however, was not about my father. It was about my mother. Let me share what I learned.
As a Pilgrim Holiness minister, my mother was well versed in the Bible, forwards and backwards. She loved discussing the Bible and the nuances of Scripture with anyone and everyone.
Sometimes, as a child, I was a silent listener as she talked with members of her own congregation, but sometimes with people from other denominations and faiths. Either way, everyone went their separate ways with a clear and deeper understanding through my mother’s insights.
Sometimes the Scriptural explorations would intensify, and the circle of friends would expect my mother to provide an interpretation of Scripture, right then and there on the spot. She was, after all, the minister.
But my mother would not be beguiled into answering what she did not know.
Her response in such situations lingers still, as I hear her saying in her characteristic, soft-spoken voice, “Let me go home and run reference.”
“Let me go home and run reference.”
And that’s exactly what she did, though, at the time–as a youngster–I had no idea what she was doing, exactly.
I never saw her do it. I suppose she did it privately in the few quiet moments that she would have claimed as her own throughout the day and night as a minister, wife, and mother of six.
After running reference, she always continued the Scriptural inquiry with her parishioners and neighbors the next day, and, sometimes, for days thereafter. That which had been confusing became coherent and intelligible.
What she had been doing became abundantly clear to me when I started graduate school.
My mother had been doing scholarly research. When she ran reference, she was consulting multiple Biblical commentaries, especially her treasured Matthew Henry Commentary onthe Whole Bible, originally written in 1706. Her research brought informed clarity to her interpretations.
When she ran reference, she was–in her unpretentious way–conducting Biblical research right there in our Southern West Virginia coal camp. It was every bit as sophisticated as the doctoral research in American Literature that I would later chase up and down and all around the ivory halls of academe, at a major four-year university.
When I had that epiphany in my twenties, I can’t begin to tell you how proud I was of my mother for the scholarship that she had been doing all down through the years. I am grateful that I told her so.
I chalk up my love of research to my mother’s influence. Whenever I’m working on my own scholarly projects, I am always mindful of my mother.
And, to this day, I can still hear my mother saying, “I have to go home now and run reference.”
“As I get older and older and older, my determination is getting stronger and stronger and stronger, especially when it comes to using things up.”
I am a Baby Boomer with an incredibly strong work ethic and a fierce willingness to roll up my sleeves and get the job done. But like the Silent Generation before me, I am frugal. Whatever I have, I’m going to use it, and I’m going to use it up.
As I get older and older and older, my determination is getting stronger and stronger and stronger, especially when it comes to using things up. Like certain toiletry items. My toothpaste. My hairspray. My shaving lather.
I can’t see inside my toothpaste tube. But what I have found is this: just when I think there’s nothing left inside, I can always get more. All that I have to do is press from the bottom up. Sometimes it’s enough to last another week. That’s amazing, especially since I was ready to toss the tube aside as empty and of no more worth. Here’s what’s even more amazing. After that week is up, if I start rolling the tube from the bottom up—rolling really tightly—I’ll get enough toothpaste for a few more days. The manufacturer would be surprised.
The trick? Keep pressing. Keep rolling. Always with full belief and full determination.
The same thing happens with my aerosol hair spray and my aerosol shaving lather.
I can’t see inside those cans, either.
They, too, seem to be empty long before they are. If I set them on the shelf and wait a little longer, perhaps an entire day, and then shake a little harder, out comes enough lather to give me a clean shave and out comes enough spray to hold my silver strands in place. This might go on for days before they are really used up. Manufacturer surprise, again.
The trick? Keep shaking. Always with full belief and full determination.
It takes patience. It takes work. Actually, it takes quite a bit of both. Needless to say, the toothpaste doesn’t squirt forth with full gusto, falling off the brush as it sometimes did when the tube was full. And needless to say, the shaving lather never goes flying off the palm of my hand as it sometimes did when the can was full. And the hairspray doesn’t rearrange my strands into an upswing as it sometimes did when the can was first sprayed. Simply put, the outcomes are by no means as spectacular as they were before the tubes and cans were nearly used up.
Even so, I always celebrate the fact that I found enough remaining inside to get the job done just as well as when the tubes were fully plump and the cans were fully pressurized.
That’s how I want my own life to be. When I’m feeling empty—when it seems that I have little left, perhaps nothing—I hope that my Maker surprises me with enough resolve to keep working my hands, my heart, my mind, and my soul—fiercely determined to keep on keeping on until every bit of me is used up.
My belief in angels goes all the way back to my childhood in the coal fields of Southern West Virginia.
I’m not too surprised. My mother was a Pilgrim Holiness minister, and she had read both the Old Testament and the New Testament more than thirty times. She was well versed in the text and the context surrounding the 273 references to angels in the King James Bible.
She anchored me squarely and securely to my belief in angels, and it has lingered with me and has fascinated me throughout my life.
Angels are acknowledged, of course, in many of the world’s major religions, aside from Christianity. They figure prominently in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, as well as in belief systems such as New Age Spirituality.
And I am not alone in my belief. Some polls show that nearly 80% of Americans believe that angels are real, year-round, ethereal beings. Among Americans who attend weekly religious services, the belief jumps to 94%, and among Evangelical Christians, it edges up to 95%.
Angels are messengers who comfort, protect, provide unconditional love, and serve others. Some are earth angels. Sensitive souls, lending the helping hand even before the cry for help can be heard. Seeing the good in those who might not see it in themselves. Feeling pain when others hurt. Possessing an aura that makes others confide and trust. Encouraging the discouraged. Turning to nature for quiet, for renewal.
My belief in angels is strengthened by personal experience. My life was blessed by an earth angel for twenty years, all the way up until his death a year ago today.
I knew that Allen was an angel from the moment that he won my heart, from the moment that I won his. We knew that we had each met our soulmate, that we had each found our way home.
I told him so on the spot, right then, right there. He smiled with an angelic smile that only he could smile: coy and twinkly-eyed, all angel like.
As we came to know one another better, I was even more convinced, so much so that I promised to one day write an essay about him as the angel in my life. “I hope that you will,” he beamed, giving me what was by then the angelic, twinkly-eyed smile that was his signature smile that I so adored.
Ironically, when Allen died, I had never gotten around to writing that promised angel essay.
To be certain, it was not because of any waning conviction that an earth angel had entered my life with perfect timing, as angels always do.
Looking back, I think that it was simply because, rather than write the essay, we chose to live it jointly in every dimension of our earthly life together, side by side. Partners. Lovers. Friends. Hikers. Cyclists. Chefs. Gardeners. Educators.
Obviously, we lived it separately as well. Allen was an incredible human being, accepting of whatever life offered. No moans. No groans. No complaints. He knew the power of surrender. He knew the power of acceptance.
Like all earth angels, Allen loved serving others, helping others, and healing others. As a Surgical Technologist, he was a passionate practitioner not only in multiple hospital settings where he distinguished himself but also at the colleges whose Surgical Technology Programs he directed.
Like all earth angels, his aura inspired in his patients and his students confidence and trust.
At our end-of-day, before-dinner cocktail conversations, Allen was always at his angelic best as he talked about his challenging surgeries or about his precepting experiences. Always at those moments, I could count on seeing his angelic, twinkly-eyed smile.
Like all earth angels, Allen gave unconditional love, and his unconditional love met with the same from me. During our life together, we learned the value of affirming our mutual love. Whenever we went our separate ways throughout the day and always at bedtime, we made a point of saying, “I love you.” Without fail. “I love you.” We wanted those three words to be the last thing that we heard. And indeed, “I love you” was the last thing that each of us said to the other, just minutes before Allen died.
Like all earth angels, Allen turned to nature–to gardening–for quiet renewal. He helped turn a mountaintop wilderness into a coveted botanical oasis for the two of us. Always true to himself and his beliefs, he took greatest joy in watching small, undernourished—and sometimes unwanted—plants thrive and flourish under his care, against all odds, against all wishes. Perhaps even greater was the perpetual joy that he derived from the ever-so-constant, ever-so-required, and ever-so-faithful maintenance of our gardens, spending hours and hours and hours on end—with great satisfaction—pulling weed after weed after weed, fervently and constantly, up by the roots, one by one by one.
Little wonder that when I started to write Allen’s obituary a year ago, it was as if angel wings brushed across the page, just as magically as Allen had brushed across and touched our lives together.
Immediately, I knew that I would anchor his obituary to angels. It began with: “A kind, gentle, and angelic soul—ever so quiet and ever so reserved but ever so full of life and light and ever so much loved by all who knew him personally and professionally is with us no more.”
Little wonder that I ended his obituary with: “Now, Allen gardens forever and forever and forever with angels.”
But obituaries are not the final word.
And death is not the end.
Twenty one years after my promise, I’m actually writing the essay honoring my angel–Patrick Allen Duff.
And as I honor him, he’s right here by my side, always, giving me back his coy, twinkly-eyed, angelic smile, once more and forever.
“We seize the unrealistic question–the call–as an opportunity to formulate a response. Maybe my “call” and our “responses”–yours; mine; my students’–might be just enough to anchor us, to ground us, to keep us steady, and to keep us connected to what matters most.”
A few months before Daniel Boorstin retired in 1987 as the 12th Librarian of Congress, I had the honor to interview him. It was a rare opportunity. Armed with pencils and pad, I was readied with more than an ample number of questions, the answers to which I hoped might reveal new insights into the man whose prolific, prize-winning books included the trilogy: The Americans: The Colonial Experience (1958); The Americans: The National Experience (1965); and The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973).
I still remember one of those questions.
I wanted to know, as preposterous as I knew the question to be, what book in the Library of Congress he would keep if he had to throw every book away save one.
I still remember Dr. Boorstin’s response. It stings as much now as it did then.
“Oh, I can’t answer a question like that. It’s not realistic.”
Of course, he couldn’t. After all, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with more than 25 million cataloged books.
Nonetheless, he proceeded to respond to my unrealistic question.
“I might say the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). When dictators burn books–let me say the first books to keep are the books that would be burned by a dictator. I’m saddened that people in parts of the world … can’t read what they want. We should weep for our fellow human beings who can’t read whatever they want.”
You would think that I would have learned a lesson about asking unrealistic questions.
And I did.
But if you’re thinking that I learned not to ask unrealistic questions, you’re wrong.
What I learned is this: ask the questions even if they might be perceived as unrealistic.
And that is exactly what I have always done. And that is exactly what I will keep on doing.
It should come as no surprise, then, when I tell you that I love asking my students questions, even unrealistic ones.
Just last week, smackdab at the beginning of the semester, I tossed one to my Creative Writing students:
“What important lesson have you learned during the pandemic?” Write a 500-600 word essay responding to the question.
I had no sooner given the assignment than Dr. Boorstin’s comment started reverberating in my memory. “I can’t answer a question like that.”
But after the echo quieted, I remembered that Dr. Boorstin responded to my question anyway, unrealistic as he considered it to have been.
And I remember so vividly that his response joyed me, thrilled me–not so much for the content (though I think that his selection of OED was a stellar choice)–but more because he graciously went right ahead and responded to a question that he had just stingingly characterized as unrealistic!
Truth be told, it wasn’t until just now–this very moment, actually–that I realized how successful I was with that interview. I went into the interview simply hoping that I might gain at least one new, unique insight into this acclaimed historian. And I did! By asking my unrealistic question, I gained a priceless response: Dr. Boorstin’s statement that the OED might be the one book from the millions of books in the Library of Congress that he would save.
Search and explore, if you will, all the published interviews with Dr. Boorstin, and I daresay that you will not find this little nugget anywhere other than in the September/October 1987 issue of Insights: The Library of Congress Professional Association Newsletter that published the full interview.
But I digress, as I am so inclined to do, as I so love to do when I’m fooling around with ideas and words.
Let’s get back to my students, wherever it was that I left them before my digression caused my moment of forgetfulness! Ah, there they are: I found them again. I usually do! It seems that they might be talking about how preposterous the topic is that I asked them to explore, how unrealistic it is.
If they feel that way, I get it. I feel that way, too. No doubt, you do, too. No doubt, we all feel that way because we have all gone through so much during a pandemic that has lasted for two years and that threatens to dog us into the future. Globally. Nationally. Personally.
How do we cope with the challenging times ahead, whatever they might be?
Maybe, just maybe, we make it through the same way that my students will make it through as they write about what they have learned.
Maybe, just maybe, we take a moment to pause.
Maybe, just maybe, we take a moment or three or more from all the busy-ness that so often prempts the genuinely important things in our lives.
We let our minds wander. We pause in wonder. We think about what we have learned. We reflect.
We seize the unrealistic question–the call–as an opportunity to formulate a response. Maybe my “call” and our “responses”–yours; mine; my students’–might be just enough to anchor us, to ground us, to keep us steady, and to keep us connected to what matters most.
I have no idea how my students will respond to the call–absolutely no idea. I am writing this blog post days before I will have seen their submissions. But I am confident that they will respond. And it won’t be because of a grade. It will be because they have an opportunity to sort through it all.
It will be an opportunity for them to explore a question that, perhaps, no one has asked them to explore before, especially with the requirement that they chronicle their explorations in writing.
As they sort through it all and share what they have learned, I reserve to them the right to preface their lessons learned with the same caveat that Dr. Boorstin used to preface his response: “I might say […].”
Tomorrow, my students might change their minds and explore another lesson learned. Actually, I hope that they do!
Whatever it is they might say, I will value, honor, and respect their responses. For they will have done what I hope each of us will do as we grapple with a pandemic that baffles science and scientists and that requires daily changes to the game plan.
Respond. Write. Distill.
Since my students have to grapple with and respond to my unrealistic question, it seems to me that I should have to do the same. It seems to me that I should have to sort through my own pandemic experiences and arrive at a lesson that I have learned.
And that’s exactly what I’m doing in this post.
What I have learned (re-discovered, if you will) is how much I love fooling around with ideas and words. It brings me great delight. It always has. As a child, I fooled around with ideas and words in the dictionary, letting one definition lead me to the next and that one to the next and so on, just as my mother ran reference in her Biblical commentary books. It was so easy to get lost running after ideas and words. Sometimes I even lost myself.
More important, though, sometimes while fooling around with ideas and words, I landed upon moments when a great calm washed over me and comforted me and made me believe that everything might be all right after all.
It’s akin to what Robert Frost observed about poetry and about love: “[Poetry] begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion […] Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting” (“The Figure a Poem Make,”Collected Poems, 1939).
I’d like to claim that thinking about today’s post began in delight. It did not. My initial thoughts were a mishmash of all that I have missed out on–lost, if you will–during the last two years. I won’t even begin to list my woes and heartaches and tragedies here because you know them all, already, all too well. I’m betting that yours have weighed as heavily on your spirit as they have weighed on mine.
I had to reign myself instanter. I had to shift my focus from lost to found. From lost to learned.
Ideas and words have always anchored me and held me fast during the raging storms of life, even before the pandemic, and they will continue to do the same long afterwards.
As soon as I made that much-needed attitude adjustment, my essay-in-progress–this post– started giving me delight! Then, I allowed impulse to take over, and I went with the flow as the essay rode along on its own melting.
And, by the time that it ended–as it is about to do–I had a moment of clarity– perhaps even a moment of wisdom.
I am delighted that I called on my students to tackle my unrealistic question.
I am even more delighted that I tackled it myself because in sorting through my own lessons–in creating my own “call and response”–my essay ran a course of lucky events, and I achieved my own Frostian stay against confusion, momentary though it might be!
“Knocking? No. Pinging? No. Tapping? Yes. Tapping. A rhythmic tapping, tapping, tapping, growing louder and louder and louder as I climbed my mountain, homeward. Neighbors stared. Dogs ran. This was a palpable noise that required reckoning.”
My two-door Jeep Wrangler was a substantial investment. I took good care of it, hoping that it would last forever. I felt that it deserved the longevity that I desired, so I came up with a fool-proof, sure-fire plan.
I read the owner’s manual carefully and repeatedly.
I vowed: never skip scheduled service appointments.
I pledged: always review the maintenance and service checklists, always review the safety checklists, and always review the fluids checklist.
Easy promises for something worth so much. Right?
I swore to review faithfully all the other checklists. Tires—pressure, tread, spare, jack/tools. Lights—headlights, hazard lights, park lights, and fog lights.
I even swore that I would check all the general things that need periodic checking: hoses, filters, batteries, and belts.
My fool-proof plan worked well.
My Wrangler aged over the years, but gracefully so.
Fading headlights didn’t matter much since I don’t drive a lot at night anyway.
Failing sound systems mattered more. Silence is golden for some, but not for me. I figured out with great speed how to jerry-rig my iPod to a Bluetooth speaker. Voila! I had perfect surround-sound gospel music wherever I went.
The miles crept up and up and up. I couldn’t turn back the odometer, but I couldn’t stand to look at it either. So I opted to use just the trip-odometer to track single, solitary journeys. Those lower numbers comforted. But, in the back of my head, I was mindful that the real engine mileage was getting higher and higher.
And then came the day when I forgot to recharge my jerry-rigged sound system. Alas! No music.
For once, I heard internal sounds, and they were not what I expected. I had never heard such reverberations before.
Knocking? No. Pinging? No. Tapping? Yes. Tapping. A rhythmic tapping, tapping, tapping, growing louder and louder and louder as I climbed my mountain, homeward. Neighbors stared. Dogs ran. This was a palpable noise that required reckoning.
My local mechanic figured that heavier oil with an additive would reduce the friction and lower the noise. His concoction became a new part of my old plan to keep the Wrangler going.
Sadly, the remedy didn’t last long. The tapping grew louder and louder, even after I recharged my sound system and regained my soul music. I knew that it was time for my Wrangler to go back to the dealership, back to the manufacturer.
Off I drove.
It only took an hour for the diagnosis: faulty hydraulic lifters. My heart sank.
It rose again, though, when I heard the recommended fix: replace the lifters. We all believed the old Wrangler still had lots of miles ahead.
It took hours to get the job done. One led to two; two led to three; three led to four; and four led to saddened faces.
Yes. The lifters had been replaced, but the repair hadn’t worked. The problem was deeper. The whole engine had aged, had given away.
That was it. Finis!
Little did I know—when I drove my Wrangler back to the dealership, back to the maker—that I would not drive it again.
I emailed a friend about my dilemma.
“Does this mean your poor Wrangler is in the shop getting that rattle fixed? Or worse …???” she probed.
“Worse,” I answered. “It looks like the engine is shot.”
“Awww, I’m sorry. Wranglers are sort of human, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I mused. “Both are wrangling for the final drive.”
‘Tis true there is much to be done […] but stick to it steadily, and you will see great Effects, for constant Dropping wears away Stones, and by Diligence and Patience the Mouse ate in two the Cable; and little Strokes fell great Oaks, as Poor Richard says in his Almanack, the Year I cannot just now remember.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Improved (1758)
A few years ago, I bought a new indoor bike. I had to. The axle on my old bike snapped, just like that. I wasn’t surprised: I had biked 20 to 30 miles on it every day—seven days a week—for the previous eight years.
I was surprised, however, by the total mileage: 73,000. Actually, I was stunned. If I had biked from West Quoddy Head (Maine) to Point Arena (California)—the two most distant points within the mainland United States—it would have been 2,892 miles. Round trip: 5,784 miles. I had biked from sea to shining sea and all the way back again, the equivalent of 13 times.
Incredible. Impossible. Yet, I did it, even though I had never intended to do so. All that I had set out to do was to bike regularly—no, faithfully, every day, seven days a week.
I’ve been thinking about other things that I have done regularly.
Like the $25 Series E Savings Bonds that I started purchasing bi-weekly in the 1960s when I was in college and kept purchasing for decades. When the time came to buy my first home, I was surprised by my investment. Actually, I was stunned. I had a down payment for a row house in the shadow of the United States Capitol. My own piece of the American Dream.
Incredible. Impossible. Yet, I did it, even though I had never intended to do so. All that I had set out to do was to save regularly—no, faithfully, every other week.
Or what about the pocket change I started saving daily when my niece/goddaughter was born? That first year, pennies. The next, pennies and nickels. Then, pennies, nickels, and dimes. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters followed. Finally, all of my pocket change. I saved it regularly—no, faithfully, every day, seven days a week. Seventeen years later, when it came time for Minnie to go to college, it was time for me to take all of my coffee cans—chock-full of daily pocket change—to the bank. I was surprised. Actually, I was stunned. The total? Nearly $10,000, not nearly enough for even one year’s tuition, but certainly more than enough for textbooks, computers, cell phones, and even a $500 Series EE Savings Bond. A future as bright as a shiny new penny.
I shared these examples and my essay-in-progress with my students. One emailed me later, “I think your essay would be marvelous. Your three examples are kind of unbelievable, but, of course, anyone could bike 13 times round trip across America or save up a down payment for a house or start a college fund if they tackled those goals a little bit at a time, fairly regularly.”
Yes, Bonnie: that’s my point, precisely. Anyone can achieve any goal—regardless of how impossible or how incredible it may seem—simply by tackling it a little bit at a time regularly and faithfully.
” If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
We have all grappled with the age-old question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
No doubt, a physicist would answer with a resounding, “Yes. The existence of sound is objective and does not depend on its being heard.”
On the other hand, some philosophers might take a contrary view, arguing that sound is subjective, existing only in our minds.
I started thinking about that brain teaser late last night when I should have been sleeping. Instead of sleeping, however, I decided to look at the blog statistics for last year to see the extent to which it was an objective or a subjective entity! I guess I wanted some kind of evidence that the blog mattered even if I had not been as faithful to myself and to my readers last year as I wish that I had been.
I ended up with a confirmation. “You’re reading my blog! Therefore, it is! Therefore, I am!”
There! That settles it! It certainly settled it enough last night for me to lie down and sleep peacefully right through the night!
The blog’s statistics for last year make a far stronger showing than I had expected. Let me share some highlights.
Last year, the blog had 3,940 visitors. Twenty-five percent of those were from the United States. Seventy-five percent were from 40 other countries. I am delighted–simply delighted–to have such an international readership!
My most visited post last year was “Serendepity on Sullivan’s Island”going all the way back to 2013. I’m still pondering why that post would be so popular! No doubt, it’s because it deals with Edgar Allan Poe. The second most visited was “In Praise of Fruitcake.” No doubt because it is a recent post. No doubt, too, because folks wanted to see what claims I would make in praise of fruitcake! And, as an educator, it pleases me, of course, to see that my “Philosophy of Teaching”is another popular read.
Dear readers–whoever you are and wherever you are–I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for continuing the journey! Thank you for continuing to read my blog! You continue to mean the world to me!
Moving ahead in 2022, I have lots and lots of ideas tumbling around in my head–hopefully being polished and smoothed–headed your way, hopefully on a more regular basis!
As a teaser, I will share with you that one of the forthcoming posts will be a full exploration of what I will declare to be the Great American Novel. It is not Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. It is not Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. It is not Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. It is not F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I could continue to dismiss many other contenders, but I won’t. Let me say, simply, that it is a recent novel–one that has received considerable international acclaim–one that will be acclaimed, right here in this blog, to be the Great American Novel!
Hopefully, that teaser alone will keep you coming back for more!
“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a lot of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance this list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives … not looking for flaws, but for potential.” –Ellen Goodman
I have never been a big believer in New Year’s resolutions. In fact, I have never ushered in a new year with any firm resolution to do–or not to do–something. This year, however, I may make an exception. This year, I may make one, single solitary resolution.
Here’s why.
Last week I sat down to write some personal notes to a few alumni of Lord Fairfax Community College where I am a professor of English. It seemed to me that the personal touch would be the right touch.
Armed with my blue-ink, roller ball pen—and just barely into my second note—I realized that something was wrong. My fingers felt cramped. My upper arm muscles felt atrophied. My relaxed and cursive grace of yesteryear was gone.
I was “drawing” my letters. They were tight and cramped like my unused writing muscles.
Once upon a time, I knew how to use those muscles, and they were robust and firm.
Once upon a time, I knew how to write naturally and smoothly and uniformly.
But that was long ago when I wrote letters in cursive—in longhand—with my special pen, on my special paper.
Suddenly, I realized that I had not written in longhand for a long, long time. For nearly four decades, I have word processed nearly everything. I just don’t “do” longhand anymore, beyond the mechanical “Enjoy the holidays” or “Feel better soon” or “I love you” scrawls. How strange, especially considering that I love reading published volumes of letters and, in fact, I spent ten years locating, deciphering, and editing the letters of New England writer Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and I am now working on a revised, updated, two-volume edition.
Suddenly, I realized that I have not received many personal longhand letters and notes in a long time either. Over time, the volume has decreased steadily, and I no longer need trunks and file cabinets to store those personal artifacts, treasured objets d’art. Handwritten notes from friends and family have been hardly better than the scribbles I have sent their way. Touché.
Paradoxically, I receive far more communiqués these days. My smart phone goes with me everywhere because I want to stay connected and be accessible. My email inbox has nearly reached its maximum storage capacity. Truthfully, those messages are far more frequent, far more detailed, and far more extensive than the longhand letters of yesteryear.
I store these electronic messages in virtual folders, where, hopefully, they will remain, virtually forever. But I doubt it. Maybe I should start printing those messages. Maybe I should start putting them away somewhere for safekeeping.
I’m thankful that I sat down to write personal notes to some former students. Writing them has given me a wake-up call. I realize that some traditions can be preserved alongside all the marvelous advances that propel us magically forward.
Ironically, here I sit at my computer on New Year’s Day, pecking away at the keyboard, wondering: What else in my life is cramped? Atrophied? What else should I re-train? Re-learn? Preserve? Potentialize?
For now, I’ll resolve to make one—just one—New Year’s resolution for this year and this year only. I’ll strive to renew my old tradition of reaching out to folks from time to time with longhand letters—my hand, my pen, my ink, my paper, my postage stamp. My arm, my hand, my mind, my heart, my soul—retrained to a cursive tradition that is natural and social and graceful.
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Sir Winston Churchill
As a student and as a professor, I have learned some of my best life-lessons through classroom repartee—those lively, light-hearted and spontaneous exchanges that give way to intellectual magic.
As this season of celebrating and gifting winds down and as the year 2021 that gave us all fantods comes to a thankful end, I am reminded of one those magically powerful exchanges from long, long ago. However, its initial significance has been outdistanced by its long-range influence: perpetual mind food (more accurately, soul food) given freely (perhaps, unknowingly). It matters little or not at all whether it was intended for mind or soul. It matters little or not at all whether it was given deliberately or unknowingly. I have savored it and relished it down through the years.
I knew that I had better know all the intricacies of the story before going to class. It was, after all, a graduate class. Equally important, the class was so small that we met in a small conference room and sat around a small oval conference table, with Professor Myerson charismatically leading us. Youthful (only several years older than I and the rest of the class), energetic, and intellectually stimulating, he inspired us to come to class prepared to engage in stimulating conversations, demonstrating our abilities to analyze literary works. Professor Myerson was a Formalist and a Textual Bibliographer. Nothing mattered but the literary work itself. Nothing mattered but the text. Without doubt, I needed to give that story my best.
I had been introduced to Freeman the semester before when another professor gave us some of her stories to read, and I had fallen in love with her fiction. Having to read her “Life Everlastin'” was a joy for me.
I read the story initially, and I gave it a second reading, and I am confident that I gave it yet a third reading. Professor Myerson loved giving literary works a close reading. So did I.
I wondered what take he would give the story.
Would he give it a close reading based on the story’s accurate depiction of New England village life?
Would he give it a close reading focusing on the sharp character delineations of the two diametrically opposite sisters? Maybe Mrs. Ansel who is totally preoccupied with being fitted for a new bonnet: “She was always pleased and satisfied with anything that was her own, and possession was to her the law of beauty.”
Maybe her spinster, non-churchgoing sister, Luella Norcross, who was always giving to others, who was always going “somewheres after life-everlastin’ blossoms. … If she was not in full orthodox favor among the respectable part of the town, her fame was bright among the poor and maybe lawless element, whom she befriended.”
Would he take the conversation up a notch or three by pitting seemingly shallow churchgoers (e. g. Mrs. Ansel) against those of seemingly deeper convictions (e. g. Luella Norcross) who stayed home and foraged the fields in search of life everlasting blossoms to give away, much in the same spirit of Emily Dickinson’s “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church”? Or would he perhaps compare Mrs. Ansel’s apparent lack of religious depth to E. E. Cummings’ poem “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls”?
Or might he go even deeper and explore the story as a subtle indictment of religion similar to the charge that Mark Twain gave organized religion in his “Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Who does not recall the fact that Dan’l, the frog, was so full of quail-shot that he when he went to hop, “he couldn’t budge: he was planted as solid as a church and he couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out.”
And, without doubt, Professor Myerson had to give the backbone of the story lots of attention: Luella’s discovery of two murdered neighbors; her discovery that the alleged murderer (John Gleason) was holed up in a vacant house next to her home; her realization that she had to give him up to the law; and her dramatic decision that she had to give in to her faith: “I don’t see any other way out of it for John Gleason!”
I went to class fully prepared to give my own two cents worth on any or all of those angles.
Indeed, we gave all of them lively pursuits, all that is save one. We did NOT discuss what seemed to me to be the very essence of the story: life everlasting.
I was stunned. No. I was surprised. I suspected that it was with deliberate intent that Professor Myerson did not take the conversation in the direction of the story’s obvious eschatological meaning: the destiny of the soul and of humankind after death. I knew that he wanted us to think about—and talk about—that aspect of the story independently without giving us any coaching.
Silence fell over the class.
There I sat, feeling that we had an obligation to move toward the eschatological and that he had an obligation to take us there. I gave a question that broke the silence.
“So, Professor Myerson, what exactly IS life everlasting?” I was hoping that the question I gave him would make him squirm.
But he had the upper hand and knew precisely how to make me squirm. An expert in the Socratic method, he gave the question right back to me. “What do YOU think it is, Brent?”
Aha! The chance for repartee had arrived! I gave in to the moment. I seized it.
I looked him square in the eye, with an ever-so-innocent look, as I gave him nothing more than the straight botanical definition—a flowering plant in the mint family, noted for its healing, medicinal properties. Then I rambled on about Luella’s inclusion of life-everlasting in the pillows that she made and gave to help neighbors, especially those who were asthmatic.
I could tell that Professor Myerson was on to me. I was known for this sort of academic maneuvering, and he was not amused. He gave me his over-the-glasses look that he was so skilled in giving.
I waited to see what he would say—he always said something whenever he gave that look—but we both had to give up for the time being. Class ended.
But Professor Myerson always had a way of getting his way, in one way or another. This time would be no exception. A few days later he stopped me in the hall. With a twinkle in his eyes, he gave me an offprint of one of his articles that had been published in a scholarly magazine. On the front, he had written:
Brent,
This is life everlasting.
Joel Myerson
“What does THAT mean?” I pondered, as I walked away. I confess, however, to no small degree of jealousy. At that point in my life, I was unpublished. Nothing had appeared in print under my name. But here was Professor Myerson—already a well-known, published scholar, albeit a young one—giving me an inscribed, offprint of his most recent scholarly article.
I had to give this gift more thought.
Did he realize the full impact of his gift?
Or was he a young professor giving me the selfsame banter that I had given him in class?
Or was his gift more serious? Was he giving me another way to look at life everlasting—perhaps different from the traditional eschatological view? Was he suggesting that we live on forever through what we share with others, especially ideas that are immortalized in print? Maybe so. After all, some cultures believe that we live as long as our name is spoken. If that was his intent, he succeeded. Here I am blogging about him, nearly fifty years later. Here I am placing his name in public view, albeit this time under my own name. Whoever reads this blog post will speak his name, even if silently. They may even share my story with others. Professor Myerson continues to live.
His inscribed offprint had an immediate impact. It gave me some extra encouragement not only to finish my doctoral degree in American Literature but also to publish my own scholarly articles and books. I wanted to give my ideas away to others through the printed word. When that happened for the first time, I was thrilled, and the high that I experience now through being published is as high as it was then.
But here’s the greater truth. His gift touched my soul perhaps more than it touched my mind. It kept me mindful that as human beings we all have needs—immediate and long-range.
It kept me mindful that the needs are great, always and in all ways. In fact, during these pandemic years, the needs are daunting. No. They are staggering.
Fortunately, for us and for others, the ways that we can touch lives through giving— whatever it is that we have within ourselves to give—are countless.
We can give our ideas.
We can give our talents.
We can give our time.
We can give our purse.
We can give our love.
We can give ourselves—mind, body, and soul.
Our gifts need not be large. Our gifts need not be given with any expectation of ever knowing how much they touch others’ lives or of how much they impact others’ lives. This much, though, we do know about giving. It connects us to one another. It binds us to one another. It makes us aware of our relatedness to one another.
Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, when we touch others’ lives by giving freely of ourselves—without any expectation of receiving anything in return—we might be edging our way, even if unawares, closer and closer and closer toward the very essence of life everlasting.
The children’s poem below, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, was first published in Wide Awake, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January 1882). May it awaken your trusting, childlike heart!
And how, although no earthly good Seems into thy lot to fall, Hast thou a trusting child-like heart, Thou hast the best of all.
The Gift that None Could See
“There are silver pines on the window-pane, A forest of them,” said he; “And a huntsman is there with a silver horn, Which he bloweth right merrily.
“And there are a flock of silver ducks A-flying over his head; And a silver sea and a silver hill In the distance away,” he said.
“And all this is on the window-pane, My pretty mamma, true as true!” She lovingly smiled; but she looked not up, And faster her needle flew.
A dear little fellow the speaker was — Silver and jewels and gold, Lilies and roses and honey-flowers, In a sweet little bundle rolled.
He stood by the frosty window-pane Till he tired of the silver trees, The huntsman blowing his silver horn, The hills and the silver seas;
And he breathed on the flock of silver ducks, Till he melted them quite away; And he saw the street, and the people pass — And the morrow was Christmas Day.
“The children are out, and they laugh and shout, I know what it’s for,” said he; “And they’re dragging along, my pretty mamma, A fir for a Christmas-tree.”
He came and stood by his mother’s side: “To-night it is Christmas Eve; And is there a gift somewhere for me, Gold mamma, do you believe?”
Still the needle sped in her slender hands: “My little sweetheart,” said she, “The Christ Child has planned this Christmas, for you, His gift that you cannot see.”
The boy looked up with a sweet, wise look On his beautiful baby-face: “Then my stocking I’ll hang for the Christ Child’s gift, To-night, in the chimney-place.”
On Christmas morning the city through, The children were queens and kings, With their royal treasuries bursting o’er With wonderful, lovely things.
But the merriest child in the city full, And the fullest of all with glee, Was the one whom the dear Christ Child had brought The gift that he could not see.
“Quite empty it looks, oh my gold mamma, The stocking I hung last night!” “So then it is full of the Christ Child’s gift.” And she smiled till his face grew bright.
“Now, sweetheart,” she said, with a patient look On her delicate, weary face, “I must go and carry my sewing home, And leave thee a little space.
“Now stay with thy sweet thoughts, heart’s delight, And I soon will be back to thee.” “I’ll play, while you’re gone, my pretty mamma, With my gift that I cannot see.”
He watched his mother pass down the street; Then he looked at the window-pane Where a garden of new frost-flowers had bloomed While he on his bed had lain.
Then he tenderly took up his empty sock, And quietly sat awhile, Holding it fast, and eying it With his innocent, trusting smile.
“I am tired of waiting,” he said at last; “I think I will go and meet My pretty mamma, and come with her A little way down the street.
“And I’ll carry with me, to keep it safe, My gift that I cannot see.” And down the street ‘mid the chattering crowd, He trotted right merrily.
“And where are you going, you dear little man?” They called to him as he passed; “That empty stocking why do you hold In your little hand so fast?”
Then he looked at them with his honest eyes, And answered sturdily: “My stocking is full to the top, kind sirs, Of the gift that I cannot see.”
They would stare and laugh, but he trudged along, With his stocking fast in his hand: “And I wonder why ’tis that the people all Seem not to understand!”
“Oh, my heart’s little flower!” she cried to him, A-hurrying down the street; “And why are you out on the street alone? And where are you going, my sweet?”
“I was coming to meet you, my pretty mamma, With my gift that I cannot see; But tell me, why do the people laugh, And stare at my gift and me?”
Like the Maid at her Son, in the Altar-piece, So loving she looked, and mild: “Because, dear heart, of all that you met, Not one was a little child.”
O thou who art grieving at Christmas-tide, The lesson is meant for thee; That thou mayst get Christ’s loveliest gifts In ways thou canst not see;
And how, although no earthly good Seems into thy lot to fall, Hast thou a trusting child-like heart, Thou hast the best of all.
The Wired Researcher 