My Cane

I didn't need it until this morning. The pain in my hip began a couple of days ago, but, as usual, I said to myself, tough it out. It'll pass. But, it hasn't passed. In fact, it traveled down the rest of my leg and stayed there. It's there now - hip to calf. Where I completely ignored that cane before, I automatically reach for it now. I reached for it right from the git-go this morning which in itself was unusual because my kids and wife have been on me to use the cane for weeks, but the thing had a tendency to get lost a lot or else I simply refused to use it. Only old people need canes, right? People who could fall. Only the infirm. Right? Geez.

There's history here. My father had a degenerative bone condition called Paget's. His bones became fragile and misshapen. Before he needed to use two aluminum forearm crutches he used this one: a classic, handsome, amber colored, bamboo model.Its rubber tip made no noise compared to the aluminum others which gave off a distinctive, metallic clank every time they touched the floor. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. You knew my father was there.

Once, years ago, I was in a carrel doing research at the downtown Los Angeles public library, a very handsome place. At the time, my father had been dead for decades. Although, I certainly thought about him from time to time, he was in no physical way a part of my life. Cut to the chase. I was in the carrel when whatever I was reading rendered me groggy enough to lay my head down on the desk and drift into sleep.It was against library rules, but I couldn't help it. I went deep asleep. Out. Then. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. The metallic jangle of his crutches punctured my sleep. He was there. He was alive. My breath caught. My heart jumped. He was walking by. My father was walking by!...Except it wasn't my father at all but a little, old lady with two aluminum crutches of her own. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. She disappeared around a corner, and her clanks went with her. For an instant my father was as alive as he'd ever been. It startled me to my marrow, as deep as it could go. In the time it takes a quark to disappear, my father breathed again, but it was just a little, old lady walking by. Just a little, old lady walking by, but she set off every synapse in my system when she did.

The Foreman Side

So far I've only written about my mother's side of the family, the Hermansons - the Hatfields and the McCoys side - tales of my mother are a large part of that lore, as most of my friends can tell you. Here's a story. A true one. Another true one. Opening night. My first for hire directing job. She's there. Lizzie Foreman. My mother. Give her credit. She never missed an event. "Well, Mom, how'd y'like it?"

                  "I thought it was very nice, dear, but wouldn't it have been better if your fiance' had been there?"

                 "Mom, I don't have a fiance'."

                  "My point."

So, I, being righteously infuriated, scream, "I directed Carousel and that's all you've got to say - where's my girlfriend?"

                    "Fiance'."

                    "Get outta my face. Go back to the hotel. I do not need this shit." 

With that I turned around and walked away. A few days later I get a letter.

                    "Dearest Son: I just want you to know that all mothers dearly love their children and are proud of them, even if they are mentally retarded. Love and kisses, Mother."

Grow up with that.

But the Foreman side - ten brothers and sisters - was equally eccentric and worth a few words of their own. Fasten your seat belts. Here's the first of them.

Just because she wore Uncle Mitchell's underwear didn't make Aunt Gertie a lesbian. Here's the story on that one. Early on, at the turn of the twentieth century, when they were kids on Smallwood Street back in Baltimore, Aunt Gertie was the Foreman family extrovert, always singing and dancing around the house, the latest lyrics, the latest steps. Came adolescence and with it acne, terrible acne, pimples that turned purple, oozed and would not go away, cheeks ripe with fruit gone bad. She was a misery. No solace whatsoever until the day she heard about this new gizmo specifically designed to treat acne with x-rays focused on the ravaged skin. They were not wealthy people but my grandparents were determined that Gertie should get the treatment, and so she did. One side of her face was smooth as creamery pudding. The other side was burnt nut brown, her entire cheek, burnt nut brown. Bad calibration. Something. Nut brown. A recluse at fifteen, she rarely left the house again. 

I don't know if Uncle Mitchell were her older or younger brother, but they were close in age. A twin brother to Uncle Mitchell - Uncle Millard - died young. Mitchell was as introverted as Gertie was extroverted.  If Gertie were prosecco, Mitchell was buttermilk. She would whoop and holler and splash me with a kiss whenever I came to visit while Uncle Mitchell would simply smile meekly from his seat on the sofa and say, "Hi, there, Stevie." In retrospect, I think Uncle Mitchell was gay. I have no evidence to this effect except the accumulated cues of a lifetime of observation. Uncle Mitchell did that? Oh, yeah. Uh, huh. And that? I see. And that? I get it. If it looks like a duck...

So

Aunt Gertie and Uncle Mitchell continued to live together until Mitchell's death, and even then Gertie continued to live in the same house. Once, when she was taken to the hospital, she asked my mother to pack a kit bag for her which is when my mother discovered Mitchell's gotkes in Gertie's underwear drawer. When questioned Gertie didn't flinch. She saw no point in spending money for something already so accessible.

How they got to where they did is another story. It began somewhere near Vitebsk, inside the Pale, Lithuania.My grandfather, Louis, had an older brother who was shot in the back by the cossacks because he refused to sign up for the Russian army. Louis and another brother took note, ran away from Russia, and somehow landed in Baltimore where Louis procured a horse and wagon and started a teamster business. My grand uncle, Louis' brother, decided the pickings were better out west so that's where he went and wound up working on the railroad. Come payday the paymaster doesn't call out his name but does call out the name of a worker who had dropped dead the day before. My granduncle's hand shot right up. He took the dead man's paycheck and the dead man's name. Right there and then an entire branch of the Foreman family disappeared. Gone for a paycheck.

Listening to Pachelbel's Canon in D Major

I did the unthinkable: I allowed myself to do nothing all day but listen to this one piece of music, this one specific piece of music, a variety of interpretations but still the same exquisite composition, music I find mercilessly beautiful. I allowed myself to do nothing but listen. Actually, willed myself was closer to the truth. I went on YouTube, pressed go, and was instantly presented with hours worth of nothing but the Canon. I wanted so badly to be lost in the music, to feel it pulsate through me, and I did, for stretches and more, but guilt kept seeping through the seams, perhaps as one version transited to another, so for an instant I wasn't engaged with music but silence. "Aren't you supposed to be doing something?" yaps the little beast on my shoulder. "Don't you have a bill to pay or a phone call to return or an appointment to make, or a book overdue...?"  Dontcha? Dontcha? Dontcha? "You're not doing anything." 

"I am. I'm listening." 

"Like I said..."  

Like a tincture, I feel that maybe, just maybe, if I soak in it long enough by osmosis it'll somehow seep in, somehow infuse. And then what? Then maybe, just maybe, some of my words will have some of that music that the Canon in D does. Beautiful words can do that for me. 

I learned a new one this morning, way before I even got out of bed. Jamie was beside me, up early as usual, on her IPad, her morning cruise. I touched her hip to let her know I was awake. "Listen to this," she said, "I found a new word." 

Apricity.

The warmth of the sun in Winter.

From the Latin, apricus - from the sun. It was briefly popular around 1600 but faded quickly. Don't think about the word so much as the feeling it evokes. Imagine: an icicle day, a bleak and dreary sky but then, of an instant, the sun breaks through the gristle and, for a little while - one brief spell  - there is warmth. 

Isn't there a metaphor floating around here somewhere? Hope, for example - hope being the notion that circumstances will change, hope being that distant glow from a dismal sky. 

The Canon is what's possible. 

Two Part Invention by Madeleine L'Engle