Come See, Willie Lee

                                               COME SEE, WILLIE LEE

1964

My best guess is that he’s dead by now. Maybe not, though. He knew how to survive, that boy. His wiles came from his heart and got him by. Sixty years have passed, more than half a century since I last set eyes on him. Summer,1964. Willie Lee Sampson, 11 years old, a Black kid on the gritty streets of Baltimore. His thought process shut down before the age of seven. I met him on the streets. I left him on the streets. I’d never seen him cry before but he teared up when I told him I was moving on. Another job. Another state. Another city. Another life. Because Willie Lee hadn’t the capacity to think beyond a few minutes ahead, he couldn’t understand so much about the future or, to be specific, why one would make plans to go there? And do what? “We be here. Why we be someplace when we be here?”

Willie was functional, but Willie was retarded. Today’s jargon concerning the mentally “disadvantaged” would not necessarily abide the use of that word, but we’re talking sixty years ago, amigo. Willie was my client. He had intermittent bursts of insight that seemed to come from nowhere, yet his thinking never strayed much beyond the age of seven. But Willie Lee could talk. Oh, lord, could that kid talk. His tongue took in everything he saw and gave it words.

I was a social worker in the emergency care squad, children’s division, City of Baltimore, Department of Public Welfare. There were five of us, each having instant access to a car if the situation warranted  which, in most cases, it did. A report would come in of a child that had been starved, abused, abandoned, injured or, as was usually the case, all of the above. One of us would find the child and get him or her to care and safety. Then we’d work to reconcile the family or to prosecute. Mainly we worked to keep the child warm, fed, dry, and harbored from further harm. Each case as horrible as the one that followed, and the one that followed that was even worse. I can’t remember a single incident in which poverty was not a factor. The joint was rigged to keep people in place. When was being poor a choice? When was it a moral failing? Who still believes this crap? Come on.

The civil rights movement was underway, although it hadn't quite exploded into the vibrant days of Black Power. Stokely Carmichael, not yet center stage, waited in the wings. I went to work each day in a suit and tie, and spent most of those days "in the field" making my way through the bleak streets of the poorest sections of the city, mostly Black, some crackers, a smattering of gypsies. No Jews or Episcopalians (other than African Methodist) anywhere in sight. I'd go through alleys, cross the parks, ride the battered and clattering elevators up to the top floors of the projects, funeral homes, dinky groceries, jail, prison, bars, churches, and pool halls, but I honestly cannot remember fear. I’m not saying I had none, just that I don’t remember any. I went where I needed to go, and that was that. Would I do the same today? I was young, had been an active duty Marine, still active reserve. Parris Island taught us we were invincible. Even now, writing these words three score years later, I still feel that way, full well knowing how ridiculous it is. Denial? Refusal to accept reality? When reality happens I’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I’m extremely aware of my surroundings, and I sense danger when there is some, but I don’t walk around worried about what I don’t need to worry about. Not then. Not now. As far as I'm concerned, I’m a tourist visiting extraordinary places. Too many things to see. No time for fear.

True, many of the homes I visited were derelict, but many were tidy with pictures on the wall of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln all decked out in aluminum foil frames. Who would be pictured now? Like the man said, different times.  I feel caution where I never before thought about it. When I hear the  weather report warning us about bad air days, I think, “When wasn’t it a bad air day?“ And yet: different times when, after a civil action – a demonstration, a picket line - Blacks and whites put their arms around each other’s shoulders, swayed, and sang, “We Shall Overcome”

It was a hot day in July when I walked down the bedraggled street listed in Willie Lee’s file. This would be the first time we’d met even though his file told me quite a bit about him. On either sides were the red-brick row houses, battered, filthy, chronically in need of pointing and painting. An empty carton sized for a refrigerator sat on the street in front of Willie’s address. I walked up the few steps and knocked. Even the wooden door was hot. It was opened by a very tall, very slender woman with cocoa skin in a raggedy dress.

“Here for Willie Lee?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, “Is he around?”

“He ‘round but don’ know where he ‘round’ right now.”

Willie’s file described her as functionally retarded, seven kids, all mentally deficient to a greater or lesser degree. Nothing negative except everything negative, yet she was a loving mother, devoted to those kids. She told me, “Come inside”, so I did.

Unless you are poor you have no idea how hard life can be, regardless of the brainwash that John Calvin and the trickle-down proponents concocted. There was very little furniture – a shabby armchair, a tattered couch. Another large packing crate, this one wood, sat in the middle of the living room floor. Mrs. Sampson excused herself and left the room. I walked over for a look at the crate. An infant, maybe six months, lay there nearly asleep while a large, black rat hunkered in one corner. I reached in and lifted that baby up and out of the crate. Mrs. Sampson returned with a baby bottle. When she saw me holding her baby she held out her arms and collected her with a “Gimme here.” I did, and she quickly popped the bottle in her baby’s mouth.

“A rat was in there with her,” I pointed at the crate.

“She OK,” said her mother.

“You got a shovel or a hammer, something like that?”

“Hamma.”

“Fine.”

She left the room and returned with a three pound mallet in her hand. Perfect. I took it from her, crept with supreme stealth to the crate. Very cautiously, very, I leaned over the crate and slammed that evil critter over its black, pestiferous head, except I missed, so it ran towards the far side of the crate, jumped over it, and went wherever rats go after a near death experience.

She looked at me. Her face bore an expression of great concern.

“Where I’m gonna go?”

I had no answer. Well, actually I did: nowhere. This was it. She told me her daily prayer was to “stay alive ‘til my chillun don’ need me no more.” There was nothing else she would do with her life. Nothing else she could do with her life. Many folks, I believe, might think of this as a drain on our "resources", a pox on society. But to see how that woman loved her children was a wonder to me, the depth of her love and responsibility an awakening to what could be.

“No Willie Lee, huh?”, I asked

She shrugged.

“Some place cool and shady. Slow but ain’t no dummy. You here to take ‘im?

“No, ma’am. No way would I do that.”

“You ain’t takin’ him!”

“No, ma’am. He’s all yours.

“How ‘bout dat school thang?” she asked.

“Dat school thang” was my determination to get Willie Lee into a public school with a curriculum designed for potentially independent students like him. Now, I wasn’t against the state. Hell, I was the state! Except the state wanted him institutionalized, but I didn’t. Special programs were available, tucked away somewhere, only, back then, few and far between. I was determined to get him into one. Maybe even Willie could live home, see his mother all the time. If he were stashed away he’d disappear, fall off the earth. She’d never see him again. I damn sure wasn’t going to be responsible for shutting that boy up knowing that every morning for the rest of Willie Lee’s life he’d awaken to a world of seriously demented inmates, their ailments dwarfing his. The howling never stops in such a place – a real bad black and white British horror film ca. 1927 – only unimaginably worse because it is real. Piercing, relentless, terrible shrieks, shrieks of everything, of pain, of anger, of loss, of loneliness, of dread. Willie Lee did not belong in a place like this. His mother had been in one as a child. No way was she going to inflict that on her son. She didn’t know much but as best she could she knew how to be a mother. Never beat them. Never locked them outside in the snow. Never molested them. Taught them, ma'am and mister. Never chastised them in front of people. Fed them everything she could. Went through dumpsters years before it became a middle-class sport. Nothing wrong with her at all except an IQ up there in the sixties.

"Tell Willie Lee I’ll be around. You all got enough to eat?”

“We fine. Say ‘Bye, mister,” she said to the infant and waved the baby’s hand, “Bye, Bye.”

It was listless, limp. I instantly registered, “another one”, again, an assessment not a judgment. I closed the door behind me and stepped out onto a stoop so hot the heat waves writhed from it like skinny snakes stretching upwards towards the sky. That refrigerator-size carton was no longer in the street but now at the curb. Noticed but not given much thought. Somebody'd kicked it. I had turned to walk back up the street to my car when Mrs. Sampson came outside, baby in arms, a jelly glass of Kool-aid in the other. She bellowed so loudly the whole neighborhood could hear.

“Willie Lee Sampson! Come git your Kool-aid. Don’t you git too hot, hear me? Hear me?”

The voice of a young boy answered, “Yes, ma’am.” It came from under the refrigerator carton by the curb.

“Come on now. I ain’t wanna stand out all day."

The box moved, lifted off the ground, and there he was: Willie Lee Sampson with that eight-lane smile of his. A fixture. Available on the instant. I watched him walk right by me and take the glass from his mother. “Want one?” she called out to me. My first instinct was to say, “No”, give some excuse – appointments, doctor’s office, something – but a red flag popped into my head like a flag from the barrel of a magician’s trick pistol. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, “Thank you.” “Set,” she said, pointing to the stoop. “Willie Lee, set with this man so he ain’t be lonely.” She went inside, and Willie Lee dutifully sat down on the stoop beside me.

“Want some?” he asked, offering me his glass.

“No, thanks,” I said, “Got some coming.”

Then that smile.

“Lots of sugar.”

“Way I like it,” I said.

“Way I like it,” he replied.

His smile was as large as his face would allow. He then startled me by abruptly asking, “Does you believe in God?” I didn’t, but, keen observer that I fancy myself, I sensed this was not the moment to argue theology.

“Sure,” I said, “You do, right?”

“Yessir!”

“What’s He look like?”

“Ain’t never seen him.”

“How do you know who He is?”

“’Cause I know.”

“Tell me.”

“God,” he said. His face changed in the instant. He held my eyes. I could not turn away. In a soft, sure, positive, almost matter-of-fact manner, he said, “He the man what take me by the hand and lead me ‘round this world.” No smile then but a simple expression of peace and quiet pleasure.

I loved that job more than any other I’ve ever had in what is by now a very long and eclectic life. I never looked at the streets in those vibrant days of the early sixties as combat zones. Many of the neighborhoods did look as if they had suffered a bombing run, like photos showing Berlin and London after World War II, but these Baltimore ruins were about neglect and worry, about making next month’s rent, tomorrow morning’s breakfast, staying dry without a roof, zoning laws that put them there. These neighborhoods, these streets, their alleys and nooks, streets where poor people pitched pennies or shared a bottle of cheap wine or slept. But, the children! Often shoe-less, always in tattered clothes (except for Sundays at church), but most with all the energy of a switch-back wind - running, darting, jumping, hiding, seeking, pushing, pulling, fighting, dancing, growing. When my own children were younger, still at home, we’d be walking somewhere when a cute little kid would toddle by, and suddenly it was my duty to get them to smile. Sometimes I just said, “Hi”, and waved, but, most times, I came up with questions and faces designed to give me and them a nanosecond of pure joy. It provoked the hell out of my own children who could not understand why I wanted to talk to all the  babies out there. Don’t ask me. I’ve already asked myself, “Why this particular quirk?” It’s a simple pleasure. That nanosecond of true connection injects joy into my day. Fair enough.

My job was also to make sure Willie went where he was supposed to go and do what he’s supposed to do – doctor’s appointment, court appearance, testing center – wherever, so we were often in the car together. He just loved it like it a fun park ride. Once we passed a street corner with a gaggle of Asian school girls. Willie twisted his neck around to cop a final glimpse. I don’t know how he did it: seemed like his head swiveled backwards.

“Mr. Foreman?”

“Yup?”

“Is you got a girlfriend?”

“Uh, huh.”

“Tell me,” Willie said, “Is she white or is she Black or is she like them Chineses I sees on the corner?”

Leaving that job ranks as one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make in my entire life. Because of my education from Morgan, I had been accepted into the three graduate schools to which I had applied (I also won a Fulbright, but that's another story): State U. of Iowa (their prestigious writing program), University of Chicago (Ph.d in Linguistics), and Yale (Playwriting and Dramatic Lit) Yale! I mean, how do you turn down Yale? My dismal high school record had me scarred for life. To this very minute. Not kidding. I mean, why would anybody accept me anywhere? Even now! But, Yale did! Hot damn! Yale! How do you turn that one down? But it meant I would need to leave my clients behind, Willie Lee, most of all. I'd spent more time with Willie Lee than anyone. The city of Baltimore would not have approved that time. Couldn't help it. I liked that kid so much. I'd always come away from him feeling better than I had before. I can hear some folks saying stuff like just another privileged honky making himself feel good because he spent a couple-three hours with a helpless Black boy who didn't know no better, any better.  Believe it. Don't believe it. He did know better about things that kept him alive. He knew every alley, twist, turn, fence, hedge in the neighborhood. He couldn't fight them off but he could outsmart them. That's what I mean. He knew the stores he could go by where someone usually gave him some sort of food. The Chinese lady who ran the donut shop would give him a donut for his mother. He had to pay 15 cents for his. Three nickels not fifteen pennies, please.  Whether or not they did, he'd smile and ask folks did they need help carrying stuff?  He might get a few coins some days, although he would not come right out and ask for them. "Momma say how you like somebody do you like that?" That's also what I mean. Another great thing was that Willie Lee, intended or not, was very funny, really offbeat funny. His take on things: I never knew what was going to come out of his mouth, like that "Chineses" crack. Being with him made my day brighter, for Willie Lee as well. We shared joy. Making his life a little better made my life a little better. Leaving him obliterated all that.

He was not happy about it when I told him.

"Me, too?"

"What would your momma say?"

"Don't know."

"Yes, you do, Willie Lee."

He nodded because he knew I knew.

"Why?"

I told him I had a job very far away.

"Where?"

"Long way." I pointed up.

"Be  cold?"

"Too cold."

"That ain't nice," he said.

"No," I said, "It's not."

"Girlfriend goin'?"

"No more girlfriend."

"That ain't nice neither," he said.

"Tell  the truth?" He nodded. "It's a lot nicer than it was."

He continued to look serious. It took a while before he looked at me and said, "Come see, Willie Lee?"

"When I'm home again I'll come see you."

He snorted, brushed the back of his hand across his eyes, "I be here," he said. I moved to hug him but he spun around, ran away down the street, up an alley, gone. I died a little.

It was a good while before I came home for a visit. By then it wasn't home any more. I drove by his house. It was all boarded up. Condemned. The entire block. No Willie Lee. I asked some people but nobody knew, nobody even knew who lived in that house or where they went or when they went or nothin'. The donut shop was still there but somebody else ran it, little guy, white turban. The grocery had become a convenience store that cashed payday checks. In the days when I worked the neighborhood it was pretty far gone but still functional. History had taken over. So many houses boarded up. So many bedraggled people on the streets. So many pot-holes ignored by the city. I didn't know much about gentrification yet, so no way could I predict that a Holiday Inn had already been planned to replace it. Had Willie Lee survived all this? Where was he now? Where might he be? I drove around and looked. No Willie Lee. I asked the clerk was there a Sampson family around here? Lots of heads shook. Don't know.

    Who? Willie who? Lee what you say? Don't know no Willie Lee.

What now? Yeah. What now? I wondered if I'd never left Baltimore would I have been able to protect him? Hell, if I'd never left Baltimore, I wouldn't even have been able to protect myself.

I parked my car and sat there for awhile amid the desolation, the squandered lives, human beings who pray they don’t get shot while eating dinner at their own kitchen table. Where was the Marshall Plan for our own? Where the hell is it now? A little nation building in our own nation? How about it? If oil were discovered under the streets of a ghetto, you can bet the money would come and the people would go. Willie Lee’s smile was the bright spot here, had been, yes, but he was gone.  The child had spirit, a zest at being alive, even though he had little reason to be. Or is that not true, that he had little reason? I don’t think he had a reason or needed one. Probably never even passed his mind. He didn’t complain, didn’t kvetch, was right there and nowhere else when with you. Willie did not see his world as problems, just stuff to do. He hurt when he had to and wouldn’t when he didn’t. I think simply being on this earth was fine for Willie Lee. Talk to him about the sound of one hand clapping, he’d look at  you  like a damn fool.

It's hard to end this piece because there is no ending. Maybe he isn't dead. Willie Lee might be out there somewhere. Warm. Safe. There are times when you pop unbidden into my mind, Willie Lee. I smile when you're there. Thank you and be well. I hope God has taken you by the hand, and I hope that, from time to time, you think of me and smile.

  

December 23, 2019

If you are reading this on 12/22/2019, I am still one day away from celebrating the day of my birth, my first day of life on earth. Gotta make a note of it. Or that was my intent. Still is, but not the way I originally intended. At this point in my life I am good with it, if not yet completely at peace. I certainly do have "miles to go before I sleep", how many miles as yet to be determined. If I were Elaine Stritch I'd be singing, "I'm still here..." I've still got a lot to do, so, Fate, "Don't bring me no bad news." I'm gonna eat fried chicken and goddamn the cholesterol!

So much for background music.

Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for the New York Times. She's young (Of course, I'm at the point where Grandma Moses looks young), exceptionally bright (a higher form of really smart), literate, knows a lot about a lot of things, listens well, argues with conscience and facts, misses nothing. A passionate intellectual. There is nothing fake about her.

Her most recent column, Democracy Grief Is Real, reflects
my own current feelings: our nation is in serious trouble because of a rogue president and the politicians who violate their constitutional vows and enable him. Jesus had an easier time of it under trial than Trump? What person in his/her right mind would state such a thing?  A republican congressman just did. And people who vote believe this crap?

I, for one, am not ready to learn to speak russian. Maybe you are. I'd rather shoot first. Many years ago I took that same oath they're all talking about: to protect our constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. I was a United States Marine, your basic grunt: an american citizen who basically wrote the government a blank check for any amount up to and including his/her life. I did that. So did millions of others. Thank God so many of us came home alive and in one piece, but too many others did not. I believe  Donald J Trump is doing his best to undo all that so many good  people died to preserve.

It's not my wish to drive anyone away. I am well aware we all do not believe alike. But this, for me, is a matter of conscience. Something is very wrong. I need to speak my piece. You don't agree? I've said what I had to say. My mother gave me one good piece of advice: "You've got a mouth. Use it!"

I hope the following link works and that you read this passionate cry from a person who fears we are losing what we have so valiantly defended for nearly three centuries, as am I.

Michelle Goldberg, "Democracy Grief is Real".

www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13opinion/sunday/trump-democracy.html 

By the way, since as all sane people know, there is no war on Christmas or Thanksgiving. More bullshit from Trump, the man who epitomizes "serial bullshit artist". So, from a nice, Jewish guy (who admits to having slung a bit of his own from time to time) "Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah!!!!!!!!!!

Stephen

NOBODY IS PERFECT

Descendant of Mongol warriors, birthed North of India, East of Bangladesh. The wisdom of a great sage who reached one hundred years. Conjoin his view of the world with yours. Peace attend thee.


                                                    NOBODY IS PERFECT

Each one of us is a mixture of good qualities and some perhaps not-so-good qualities. In 

considering our Fellow Man we should remember his good qualities and realize that his faults

only prove that he is, after all, a human being...We should refrain from making harsh 

judgment  of a person just because he happens to be a dirty, rotten, no-good, son of a bitch....        


Enjoy your holidays!

Yo!

I would love more readers. 

Know anybody? If so, please send me their e-mail address, and I'll add them to my list...which, by the way, is growing, not by leaps and bounds, yet with the occasional leap and random bound, it's lurching its way along.

My intent is to keep this going for the duration. In my Hollywood days I used to day dream that one day, if I wanted to write about a blade of grass I could. Well, I am one lucky Jewish guy from Baltimore because I do that now. Of course, Hollywood paid handsomely, and a blade of grass doesn't pay at all, not even bupkus. Quid quo pro, right? Always the trade-off. But, hell, the house is paid off, there's gas in the tank, and plenty of gluten loaded food, so, yes, I admit it: I'm happy. I hope you are, too.

MORE READERS,PLEASE!!!

The Beauty of A Long Life

I'm not one of those Holy Rollers who preach the gospel of growing older as Glory Years. The Golden Age? Sorry, it's not. More like the Rust Belt. Of course, it has its very real pleasures, however these pleasures are fewer - your imagination might wander but your body stays put - and the penalties greater. I've taken falls in my lifetime with barely a bruise that would have pulverized me had I taken one this morning. Still, have all the fun you can because, why not? It's been a long and rambunctious ride, and I see no reason to quit.

One of the beauties of a long life is that people come back into it.  There are times when you know someone so well you might even die for them. You make room for them in all the minutes of your life, hold them there, hang out, listen to music as if you've been together forever - and then they disappear. It's not abrupt. If this were a movie they would slow fade to black. Decades pass, so they are remembered, if at all, as wisps that dissolve soon after they appear, memories as intense as they are frail.  

Lara is one of those people. I first saw her on an early Spring morning thirty years ago. I was standing on the small bridge that spans the creek in front of our house. I don't know what made me turn around - maybe it was a bicycle bell? - but there she was, couldn't have been more than eleven, speeding by on a battered boy's bike, long blonde hair streaming behind her, a wisp of forsythia her headband. I can't remember how we began talking or how Jamie joined us, but the day came when Lara knocked on our door for the first time. She with her mother and her mother's boyfriend had moved into the cabin on the edge of our property that had earlier been a one room schoolhouse. I thought of "A Midsummer's Night Dream" when I first saw them, phosphorescence cavorting in the forest, slender and fetching the way (if you had a strong stomach) Keene paintings were in the sixties, in their own dimension, victims of the city, refugees from daily life. We live way up a small, beautifully isolated valley in the midst of the Catskill State Forest. By coming here they chose Thoreau over Warhol. They had both been on the cusp of that world. Lara's mother, Nancy - cropped blonde hair, a damsel fly on moss - had sung back-up on the 70's spoof hit, "Monster Mash." Her father, (now dead) danced in West Side Story. I don't know what Oliver did. He looked like a jockey,  but I've never been sure. The first time I went down there to say hello, he was sitting in the crotch of a maple tree maybe ten feet up, elf-like, and he never did come down. Later on I learned he fantasized being a hobbit. He actually came up here to be a Hobbit! Lara, on the other hand, wanted nothing more in life than to get back to New York City. She'd been born and bred to the rhythms of the streets, and that's where she wanted to be. Jamie and I, a tenth of a mile east, were the next best thing.

She knocked and told us her mother wasn't feeling well, could she come in? The first of many more knocks, the beginning of a relationship neither Jamie nor I had intended nor were we prepared with how deeply we would come to feel for this child, and she for us. Had we invited it? Had I? Had Lara herself put things in motion and kept them there, albeit unconsciously? Basically, she barged into our hearts, and we reciprocated: kite flying, cookie making, walks with Hank, our springer spaniel, snacks, meals, sleepovers, a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay with my niece and nephew...Best of all, Lara favored the bubble baths. There was no water and no tub in the cabin - they drew water from the creek out front - so Lara craved hot, soapy baths more than food or anything else. Anticipation made her giddy, giggly, really silly. She was spending more time at our place than her own. Eventually, it came out that her mother had been very sick and had gotten sicker. Would I please go down there with her?

As long as we'd lived here, I'd never been inside that cabin. Edie Falco and her dog lived there before she was Edie Falco. No running water. No electricity. Compost toilet behind a wooden screen. I was prepared for shtoonk alley, so it was a nice surprise to find it neat and clean and...Minimalist. Any sparser, it would have been empty. Nancy lay on a mattress. The mattress was on the floor. Normally thin, she looked cadaverous, a drastic change from the times I had seen her outside. She whispered she'd contracted girardia from the water in West Kill Creek, but she knew how to treat it. Had she been to a doctor? "I've got what I need," she said patting a box of herbs in plastic containers. "How can I help?" "Lara loves being with you. It makes her happy," she answered.

I told Jamie, "That's not girardia." I'd begun to recognize that gaunt look. It was the mid-80's. AIDS was rampant - the distinctive skeletal faces of its victims. "J, it's AIDS," I said, "Nancy's got AIDS." It didn't take a month. We checked Nancy into Belleview on a floor where every patient was a young man with the face of the young man next to him. Nancy's face. "What am I doing here?", she asked, but, soon, she would return to California with her mother, an aging flower child, and die of it. We stood there at her hospital bed - Nancy so weak, almost inert - the skin on her face, stretched thin, opaque - with Lara, Oliver, and Nancy's mother, knowing that the dreaded question was coming, and it did, "Will you adopt Lara?" Will you take this child as your own who loves you and whom you love? We could not. Time and circumstance were just not right. We had no children, yet, although caring for Lara helped ready us for the ones we have. She sucker punched me. I wasn't prepared for such an abundance of feeling, never even knew it was there. What I felt and feel for Jamie was and is no less intense, but it's not the love for a child, is it? It was agonizing to say no, but we could not say yes. When memory replays this scene, as it does from time to time, I feel just as I did standing at Nancy's sick bed saying, "No", to Lara.  Awful. What had happened to her? Where had she gone? What had she become? Was she still alive? When she thinks of me does she loathe my memory?

Cut. Dissolve. Two months ago.

I think I was in the living room. Maybe my office? Jamie comes in with her notebook on facetime and says, "Somebody wants to talk to you." "Tell 'em I'll call back." "You want this," she said, thrusting the notebook forward. Who is it? Some woman. Mid-forties. You want me? No clue. Until I hear her say, "Hi, Stephen," and wave and smile. Jesus! Lara? Lara! Retired Army. Successful marriage. Two kids. Drama teacher. Grown woman. A good life. Lara had never forgotten us, and now she had come back into our lives. She sought us out. She wants to visit. She's remembers how we were back then, how much we cared for her, how much she cared in return. The love we felt was deep and it was real. Her heart was still full of us. Yet, those were troubled days. We just couldn't protect her anymore, but, now, here she is again: strong, loving, capable, ready.

I'm trying to remember what Lara likes to eat, for when she visits. Jamie aims to buy bubble bath, just for the hell of it.

The perk of a long life.

Next!

My Life Is Like A Word On The Tip Of My Tongue

My life is like a word on the tip of my tongue: I've...almost...got...it!  It's there. It's there. I've just about...I've almost...Oops. Slipped away. OK. Breathe. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Breathe. OK. Better?

I was fifteen, failing in school, face full of sclurbs, clothes from the "husky" rack, desperate to play freshman baseball, failing to make the cut, no drivers license - life was a mess! Better times had to be out there somewhere. Lordy, did I ever look! Everywhere! Nevertheless, it seemed all my part-time earnings went towards Acnomel, an anti-zitz product, designed to make my pimples disappear. It didn't. I was getting nowhere. One day, my father, who was a very funny guy, said to me, "Son, one of these days you're going to find yourself, and, when you do, you're going to be awfully disappointed." He smiled, cleared his throat, tapped the ash off his cigar. He'd always clear his throat after a joke - our signal to laugh. Years later, backstage after the first performance of my first play, my father, nattily dressed in his light gray Chesterfield overcoat with the black velvet collar, put his arm around me, smiled, and said, "I guess you're not going to be a bum after all." Funny guy. He died two months later.

So, where does that find me now?

What a blessing: to be sure of one self! Happy with the face one sees while shaving. Content with one's credit rating. Certain of one's sexuality. A team jersey for each season. The absolute auto. A wife who still likes you. Life is good. I'm wondering if I know anybody like that? One or the other, yes, maybe two, three, but all six at once? Give that man a sticky bun.That man, of course, is not me, not yet, maybe not never, but I'm working on it. The father of a dear friend once advised, "It's a great life if you don't weaken."

So, here's what I want to know: when does the Will go? Is suicide the end of Will or the ultimate act of Will? I recently read about a 95 year old woman who gladly, with all her reason intact, chose to starve herself to death, simply and happily stopped eating. She also stopped drinking water though moistened her dry lips with wet gauze. It took six days.  She was cheerful and thankful until shortly before her end. Apparently, this is not so unusual. Others have done it. You die by your own agency, your choice, your time, in a way that appears to cause the least amount of trauma to every one. Did she just give up or did she muster an exercise of incredible will? Does one make a decision to give up, or does it happen when gravity finally pries your grip off finger by finger? I'm clinging to the top of a sheer stone face with a drop of a thousand feet. Can't pull up. Have to hang on. Fingers cramp. Arms ache. Have to. Muscles get weak.Will I never let go? Will I give in and accept, what? The Fall. The Fall? And just how does one face that? I stop the dream before I need to make any rash decisions.

To Saunter

                                        To Saunter

It’s late October yet it feels as it did last May when it was finally comfortable enough to keep on walking, simply walking, rather than risking a busted hip racing back inside the house with an arm load of firewood. I’m not interested in power walking, or my heartbeat, or my personal best, or your personal best, or a gluten-free breakfast, or pushing through pain (Haven’t we all had enough of that one?). I just meander, poke around, change direction, look up, down, stop, start. Attention to detail. Which detail? Doesn’t matter. One is always there. The goal is to…saunter.  A la Sainte Terre. To the Holy Land. A pilgrim walking to Jerusalem. A sacred journey.


Now, I’m neither proposing nor pretending to go that far, but there are wonderful words, ancient words, abracadabra sounding words from all the British Isles that evoke what I do with whimsy and the ecstasy of morning dew. I love to “doddle”, to walk slowly and pleasurably. I can also “dander” or “nuddle”, walk in a dreamy manner, with my head down, like Christopher Robin searching for a toadstool. I could also “soodle”, if I wanted. My choice. Any one of those will do. You get my meaning.


60 degrees. Days like this won’t be around much longer. The hawk is on the way, so I sauntered forth on what could be the last of these junkets for a while. Joe, my pure black, sixty pound, brilliantly goofy, doodle loped ahead. We headed north towards the foot of Evergreen Mountain, an uphill walk that gradually increases grade. Easy. We cleared high brush and reached a spot bordering the woods, yards from a briskly running brook where the sounds were the same sounds for as long as this land has been – the very same sounds - breeze, some scurrying under brush, sometimes thunder, rushing water - the same as forever. Breeze and brook. The caw of a crow, the whisper of an owl, the bleat of a deer. A deep-throated, drawn out squawk jarred me out of whatever state I was in, picked up an echo, and kicked it back. I swear it sounded like a shofar, the haunting wail of the ram’s horn sounded by observant Jews to begin and end the High Holidays. Who knows? Some cultures might say the brook knows, the trees know, the breeze knows, but me? What do I know?


One thing I do know: I love being alone in a place where no one else in the world knows I am. Alone. No one. Not forever. Not even for very long, a month, long enough to feel cushioned by the world round me. Current geography has altered this somewhat. One is no longer in the middle of thousands of miles, and it’s not likely one’s going to get there again any time soon. Still, I can wander out my door and settle in somewhere with the understanding, at least until dinner, that I’m the only one who knows where I am, assuming, of course, that I do. Selfish? The people I love know I won’t stay away too long. 


Many years ago, the Hollywood years, I took off for Alaska while I was in the midst of writing a script. My plan was to follow a trap line deep into the bush and stay there for a while. Pre-cell phone. My producer wanted to make sure we kept in touch. The phrase “off the grid” had not yet been invented, so when I explained to him how completely out of reach, I’d be, it really rocked him, dazed, like a fighter who had just taken a good punch. “Aren’t you even gonna read the trades?”, he asked, attempting to process what he’d just heard. Was that a quiver? He could barely get the words out. It took me a second to realize the man was serious. I laughed a friendly laugh because I didn’t want to appear as condescending as I was actually feeling, but, really, I thought, why would I want to read the trades? That last sentence seems to explain my Hollywood career.

Put me in the middle of Alaska. Put me anywhere. I am never in the middle of nowhere. I am where I am. No matter where that is. It’s a gift, a perk from birth. Really, it is. I am safe. It’s not a lonely feeling at all. There is no yearning. Perhaps that’s why I need it? Trekking across Alaska there were times when I was many miles from another human being. Truth is, I didn’t really think about it. My feet hurt too much. It was hard enough moving one of them after the other. 


One night – late, dark – I stopped where I was, laid out my caribou skin, my sleeping bag on top of that, shed my boots and climbed in. It so happened, that particular night, I had a joint in my shirt pocket. Somebody back in Eagle must’ve slipped it to me. I can’t remember what I ate or if I ate, but I do remember lying back under a sky flush to the horizon with Northern Lights wafting in the solar wind like opera house curtains, firing up that joint with a waterproof match, and sending its bewitching smoke skywards. I’m surprised I didn’t levitate. Maybe, I did. Maybe I came as close to Heaven as I might ever come. Maybe I was actually there, you know, just passing through. Fine weed can make one a believer, but, of course, you already know that.


October, 2019