celtic_writer

First Draft and Final

Memorial Day Weekend. Swimming pools are now open to splashers, the white purses and shoes of my childhood acceptable. I bought a pair of plain white Keds the other day, and they are already dirty, and comfortable. They are meant to last 'til Labor Day.

And here, below the Mason-Dixon Line, the switch for the central air conditioning is turned to ON, until October 1. The Labbies wander outside in the afternoons of 92 degree humid heat, do their business, then scratch on the front door to be let back in the cool.

And the roar of Harleys and big bikes abound on Virginia roads this weekend. It is called Rolling Thunder. It is memory in sound, redemption sought on wheels, a quest to continue to make some sense of it all.

Veterans are everywhere, even in grocery stores. I watched a group from Jersey and Pennsylvania, who silenced loud bikes with simple turns of keys in the parking lot, talking quietly among themselves in the produce department, selecting apples and lettuce, as many people do.

Last year, heading north on I-395, I heard the unmistakable roar of Harleys coming up behind me, and soon was surrounded by many grey-haired Rolling Thunder participants headed toward DC to the annual memorial gatherings. On one overpass sat a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, holding an American flag. The cyclists around me gunned their Harley engines in unison as we passed under the chap, saluting their comrade.

Loyalty has its own voice. It is that of a motorcycle engine,  metal song in search of someone so very far away. The sound of my old man telling his children, "Don't you ever quit." Is that same statement the one so many heard, the sentence that made them sign up, volunteer, end their lives, or survive to return to a land where no one understood them? 'Cause it was a job to be faced, embraced, yet one you came to understand could destroy you. Some voices are silenced young. How old are we when we start to lose our friends? 50? How about at the age of 18, as so many have? It's unfathomable to me.

I remember a man I knew in school, a young fellow trained as a Green Beret, dead set ready to go to Vietnam, only to have the rug of truce sweep the war out from under his feet. "I go down streets at midnight," he told me. "I punch brick walls with my bare fists 'cause I don't know what to do. I've been trained to kill. And I am stuck in a place where I dare not achieve what I have been taught."

That's why there is a roar of cycles in DC the end of every May, and why I continue to listen to that music. The few times in my life when someone has said to me, "I cannot do this any longer. I am moving on," has hurt more deeply than I can ever explain. For to me, this Celt, it is disloyal, but standard issue of the human condition. Whether it be in Laos, or Virginia, or down the street from where you have lived all your life, it is a demise, the experience an end of some consequence to us all. But it is the death of relationship, physical or emotional, that makes us veterans of life. And I, as many, live my life as a first draft and final. No way to edit what has been done.

Dear Allison,

So the clan has another publicly-proclaimed graduate. Allison Helen Gillen, graduate, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia.

We all attended the The One Hundred and Seventy-Seventh FINAL EXERCISES on The Lawn in Charlottesville on a sunny Sunday, May 21, 2006. Thomas Jefferson determined the basic educational policy for UVA. It has changed very little in the school's 187-year history.

You look happy. You are beautiful. You are in love with a man, one who has a big heart, who studies hard to become a pediatric ER physician. And you are a teacher, birthed from two teachers, so it is right you will soon be guiding young lives in Chesapeake, VA.

Your mother shown so bright that Sunday, enthusiastic for your accomplishment. Your Auntie Peg, despite a stress fracture of the foot, hobbled her way to sit on the stairs of the concrete amphitheatre to cheer your hard work. Your brother and cousins, Uncles Chas and Kev, Aunt Kathy, future in-laws and friends, and mentors were there. You deserve it all.

Besides you, it was your father I watched most. My brother. Sunburned, in khakis, UVA cap on his head. Striped tie, and button.

I have not seen him this happy since you and your brother Matt were born. You came to this world during a massive winter blizzard, when your old man called the AT&T Security folks, the guys with 4-wheel drive, to come help transmit your Mom to the hospital. How, after your birth, he had to hitchhike home in the snow. He didn't mind. And how that cold February evening he called to say, "I have a daughter. Her name is Allison."

And I bet, standing there after the ceremony, arms around you, he put his face close to yours, you in your cap and gown, and said, "I am so proud of you." 'Cause, ya know, that's what his old man said to him on his graduation day. The apple never falls far from the tree.

So, as your crazy old Aunt Mary is apt to do, I wandered about in the short time between graduation and dinner, looking for stuff most people miss.

I found it. It is an engraved stone, sunk into the ground under some trees, so near the intersection where people cross the street to go to Starbucks or buy t-shirts. Most people walk right by. They don't even know it's there.

It reads:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

- George Bernard Shaw

A Skunk, The Lone Ranger and Some Demented Trucker

My mother, Dottie M., had a small sign in her kitchen. It read, "Bloom where you are planted."

It made sense to her, this wooden reminder, as she was a small town girl who signed on to marry a traveling lawyer man, a woman who never liked to venture out to foreign places, a lady who loved to stay put. She probably looked at that quote many times a day, when she was left alone in the suburbs most weekdays with four children. Bloom she must. As CSN&Y sing, "Rejoice. Rejoice. We have no choice."

But it sure made for some interesting stories.

Like the time a skunk walked through the open garage door to discover a chaise lounge in the form of a long-in-the-tooth spare GoodYear tire, a rubber round innocently resting against the garage wall, its inner space readily available for a skunk snooze. My sister, the then-four-year-old Kathy, witnessed this event, and reported it to the mater who was busy trying to make something-from-nothing for dinner one late spring afternoon.

Kathy: "Mommy, there is a bunny in the garage."

Dottie M.: (not really paying much attention, as a woman with many children learns to do, for her own sanity) "Oh? What kind of bunny?"

Kathy: "It's a black bunny, with a white stripe."

Sound the alarm.

My mother had the skill of turning a small event into the Poseidon Adventure, with a little Wreck of the Hesperus mixed in for what-the-heck-and-why-not. Neighbors were summoned, and soon there was a crowd that seemed like New Year's Eve in Times Square gathered on the driveway. My pop Frank J. motored the station wagon home to see the multitude witness my mother hurling mothballs into the garage through that sinister open door. Methinks he stopped the car, rested his forehead on the steering wheel and thought to himself, "Oh my God, the poor woman has finally flipped."

My mother had a simple explanation.

"I read in Helpful Heloise that skunks don't like mothballs."

To which my old man probably replied, "You all should have been sprayed for stupidity."

Frank J. had a solution. He suggested the crowd disperse, found a rake, threaded its long stick though the tire hole, and moved the rubber resting place to the woods. The skunk must've been hard-of-hearing, as it never stirred. Eventually it woke up, stretched its little skunk arms, and wandered off, taking its potential foul-smell to other tires and mothers. We all went to bed exhausted that night, as I recall.

Then there was the ugly "let's chase the semi and its demented driver" incident.

One winter evening, when all had gathered to partake of the evening meal, the typical question "So what did you do today?" was posed. My mother responded,

"Kathy and I chased a trucker."

That piece of information got everyone's attention. The clink of fork-to-plate was heard table-wide.

Seems Dottie M. was out conducting errands, Lone Ranger commandeering the Ford station wagon along Connecticut roads with little Kathy standing behind the front seat positioned as the faithful Tonto, already skilled at such a young age to hold tight to the fake naugahyde of the front seat top as my mother whipped along country roads, or it was "meet your maker time, kid."

An impatient, probably very-high-and-late-for-delivery trucker forced Dottie M., innocent daughter and trusty steed wagon off the road in the rush to get on with it. It got my mother's Irish up, so she regained her rightful position on the asphalt, and gunned it, catching up to the poor unsuspecting truckah. The consistent flashing of the Ford's headlights convinced the lad to pull his rig over into a gas station to bear witness to Dottie M's displeasure.

Seems to me we all sat at the dinner table that evening, chins to the floor, not quite believing our ears.

"He pulled off into this gas station, and got out of his truck, " Dottie M. announced. "He was mad at me. He said, 'Lady, what is your problem?' I simple shook my finger at him and said, 'Don't force me off the road!'"

"Jesus, Mom, you could have been killed," my brother Fran offered in response.

Dottie M. replied, "No way. I just talked to him like I talk to you kids."

Yep, you could've been killed.

Happy Mother's Day, Maw...wherever you are.

Brothers and Cousins

In the Celtic tradition, so many centuries ago, children were fostered. Young boys and girls were loaned at an early age to other adults responsible to instruct them in the practical skills necessary for living.

My dear old dad Frank J. had an older brother named Jack. They were pals, and were fostered every summer of childhood out to the wilds of their grandfather's dairy farm on the south shore of Long Island. Partly to get away from the heat of the Bronx, but mostly to get out of their mother's way.

Like the old Celtic working class, the bluecollar brothers learned how. To milk cows, scythe hay, clean barns, herd some wandering animal. And they were taught to love the story, to comprehend the way to use it right. Their Irish grandfather had talked his way, without passage papers, off a ship straight through the halt of Ellis Island, and found employment as a laborer in New York City until he had enough to buy land near the water for a buck an acre. So the farm became encouragement; life's rules set in dirt, not city stone.

The Celts believed a man, through fosterage, could rise above his father's experience. I suppose some of the important things we learn aren't necessarily what our parents teach us.

Frank and Jack went on to different lives. Uncle Jack became a warrior, tied to the U.S. Army in Germany during WWII, returning safely to work the rest of his life for one corporation as photographer and darkroom expert. My father, undraftable due to an accident where he lost an eye as a young child, became fostered to Fordham University, where he earned a degree in economics and philosophy, then went on to finish law school.

The two had one similarity. Each had two daughters.

I spent last week with my cousin Maryann and her family on Hilton Head Island. We too have been pals since childhood. Like our fathers, we are not the same. Maryann is frilly; I prefer plain. Maryann doesn't like to get dirty; I am always in the mud. Yet ruffled or not, Maryann has always had that spark of spirit that will try anything, and that is where we have always merged. And most of our time together is spent talking. The stories of our fathers delivered, sometimes new, sometimes shared once again for the hundreth time.

It is my theory that a daughter who is fostered by a father with the belief that she can do anything has a better-than-average chance of succeeding. In retrospect, over more than 50 years, Maryann and I have done OK, despite the common experiences we all have with death, memory, rejection, resolution. We are still here...looking it square in the eye.

She married a fine man, and after a long administrative/management career, is now earning her MBA. Her daughter, already so accomplished at the age of 25, has married a talented young man of integrity and bright smile. As for me, my job now is fostering others: in a classroom, through a speech, online. Creating stories in computer code, and traveling when I can to sit in some new silence, watching, listening, putting words on paper.

I made the journey back from the southern point of South Carolina yesterday, a 9-hour drive, gas prices rising near each big city along Rt. 95. Paul Simon tunes were on the Bug's sound system, music about baby drivers, complete with burping sax. As I drove over the Cape Fear River, I passed a lumbering RV, its name clearly marked on its bumper: TRADITIONS. Methinks the driver simply saw a blue blur zip by, some spirit heading north, that color slipping behind some other "rabbit" car going way too fast, and bound to get caught.

Greenville SC

Greenville South Carolina was originally an Indian trading station established in the late 1700s. By 1917, it was the "Textile Center of the South." Now, for some, it is a place to winter; come late spring, a location to leave, journeying out into the unknown.

Last Saturday the Mighty Bug and I motored south from Charlotte 90 miles or so to visit friend Doug Hoyt, who is a chef, thinker and nomad, currently resting in a wooden house in the woods. It is a house Doug and his son Oscar

own and are fixing up, so the extended family can live there and grow. This includes Oscar's wife Olivia, son Oscar and newborn daughter Victoria.

And let's not forget Cassie, the sweet girl who has been Doug's companion since she was a "pot-bellied pup" and who is now 16.

Doug was in the kitchen cooking when I arrived. So I sat near where he was working and petted Cassie. Doug prepared shrimp. We talked about life and traveling and where the world is going. Lamb was in the oven, chicken marinating, incense burning and conversation about politics and the possibility of his attending chef school, with maybe six months spent in Italy, if paperwork goes through.

Late afternoon, we ate good food, relaxing on the massive wooden porch in the cool damp air. There was talk about Darwin

and a fish story or two

and little Oscar spoke about becoming a scientist.

The lad also likes to take photos, like another smart child I know. Some children have "the eye," the ability to capture what is real, like his mother's love

and Cassie on the path

H.G. Wells wrote, "To be honest, one must be inconsistent." Some of us fight to keep that eye open, to not lose sight of what is really around us. And that means leaving, finding solitude, and returning once more to rest in a green place.

Doug will soon be off on a journey west, lumbering along in his truck, pulling a camper, his home for the last 12 years, behind him as he motors with the big rigs on Rt. 40, through the green of Colorado, the bones of the desert, to the freshness of Oregon and Washington state, then on to see ice as he hikes to the higher elevations of British Columbia.

Travel, journey. To seek mountains far away from settled, supposedly sane places. The world is enormous.

Yesterday, on this east coast beach near where I sit writing, middle-aged men stood in the water, surrounded by wave noise. Up to their knees in thought. It seems to me they do not know where else to go. So they stood still, and the water waved about them. It is the same sound that moves through the fir trees on some northern timberline. Near some memory we may have forgotten, but can still move towards.