House of Hope

Last week, at a company barbecue, my buddy Kyle and I were contemplating how tempting it would be to bring our shotguns to work one day and take out a few of those huge Canadian Geese that frequent the lagoon behind our office. Before someone sics the anti-NRA lobby on me, let me assure you this was strictly a fantasy. I don't even have any ammo for my classic 16-gauge shotgun that resides under my (or rather, J's) bed, and it hasn't been shot for over 40 years. (Kyle, however, is an active hunter, so he's got something that could do the job, I'm sure.) More importantly, I'm not sure whether Canadian Geese even taste any good and, as a predator, I certainly would never kill anything I didn't intend to eat.

It's probably not one of my better parts, but I don't have much sympathy for the animal rights movement. I wonder how much time any of those activists have actually spent in nature. It's not a nice world, but one where predators are constantly stalking their prey, ready to pounce and eliminate the young, the old, the weak, the careless.

Rather like our class-based society's collective approach to the poor, the homeless, the addicted, and the lost souls who inhabit our streets. In other words, I am suggesting, it might be better to examine our cruelty to other animals through the prism of how we treat our own kind. If we do that, we have to admit we are a violent herd of predators, feeding on the misery of those who fall over the edges of our comfort zone, as we acquire the resources we feel we need to feel safe and keep our families protected.

Not much different than a covey of Canadian Geese might feel if they saw me and Kyle approaching one morning, our guns raised at the right angles so that they were in our line of sight.

***

The photo I am publishing tonight (below) is one of the classics in my family collection. That is my father, around the age of 69, demonstrating to my kids the art of cleaning a fresh-caught fish, probably a bass he hooked in Mud Lake not long before this photo was taken. The kids are watching much as I watched, a generation earlier, as Dad (now Grandpa Tom) patiently fillets a small, freshwater morsel.

Soon after this shot, they ate chunks of this fish. I remember the look on their faces and the excitement in their voices: "This is good!" None of them had ever before liked fish, but never before had they tasted it fresh out of the lake and into the frying pan. That taste is just about as good as it ever gets. No restaurant, no matter how good nor how expensive, can compete with this cuisine, that of the outdoors, freshly gathered and killed and cooked and eaten before any of nature's degenerative processes have time to get underway.

That food eaten in the wild resonates deeply within us, transporting us back to our ancient origins as upright predators with big brains and big sexual organs, is obvious. We're a smart kind of animal, and an extremely sexual species as well. Thus we have taken over planet earth, and are rapidly overpopulating it, without regard to what the outcome will be.

***

I am grateful to my father on so many levels for how he shared his own private knowledge about life with me, both when I was a boy and then much later on, when he was an old man. In between, we had many problems, but despite that, he never lost me entirely. (By contrast, my sweet J's mother very clearly lost her,though I hope some day they will reconcile.) I always loved him and I was devastated the night he died, just hours before he would have met his newest grandchild, my daughter Julia. I felt so mad at him for exiting at that point, until I let in the true meaning of my mother's memory of his last words, as he lay writhing on the floor, "I've got to go, I've got to go..."

He and another Canadian friend told me on a golf course one day about how even after 70 years since they were in school, they still could recite poems from memory. Then they proceeded to do so, two old men in checkered pants and goofy hats, reciting poem after poem and never missing a word, never missing a line.

As I listened, I noticed something else. Both Dad and Roger were reciting these poems with a noticeable English accent -- not American, not Canadian. I asked whether their teachers had been English, and they said some were, some weren't.

But all were, clearly, at heart, as these two students confirmed almost three quarters of a century after the lessons first were learned. Repetition has its virtue when training young children.

***

A lot is going on out here. I just found out that at the giant engagement party we are throwing tomorrow night for my oldest daughter (pictured in the middle of her little sister and brother in the photo below), one of my new special friends will attend. She is bringing a friend. I have arranged my painted sand dollars along the railing of the back porch, my rather sad little attempt at using watercolors to express a small portion of love for my daughter as she embarks on this next stage of her life. My very nice new neighbor has given us use of her grill, so we can cook the 40-50 pounds of meat our guests will consume. Some of those flowers J planted last summer have been coaxed back to life during this heat wave and my daily waterings.

So, a lot is happening around here, most of it good. Still, late at night, my mind wanders down to Biloxi, and the image of a certain redheaded Angel sleeping on her air mattress on the balcony of a Methodist church. Someone who during her days probably is fighting the relentless bureaucratic morass that the local community encounters whenever they try to rebuild their lives.

It's enough to drive a perfectly sane person crazy.

So my hope is that she is taking care of herself, because I always will love her and want her to find happiness, if possible, or at least meaning. She, more than anyone I know, deserves that.

She once told me my words can be "magic." I hope so. Not only for J, but also for everyone I know and love, if I can add magic to your world I will do so for as long as I am breathing. Tonight, as I tried to add some magic for a new friend, she started crying. I immediately recognized the symptom -- those in her past, including her parents, had not done their work well enough. Otherwise she would already know how special she is. Same with J.

I'll say this. Whatever happened in my childhood to send me hurtling into an obsessive, compulsive, depressive future, my parents did a wonderful job of making me feel as if I were special. My own chemistry may have doomed me to challenge their assessment, but every time I hit bottom, their words, whispered in my boyish ears, return to me. "You are smart and you are special."

Thanks, Mom and Dad. Whatever I have to offer others, I owe, ultimately, to you.