A gorgeous morning, early fog has burned away to high blue skies and a warm gentle breeze. The birds are out in force, some bird mimicking the back up alarm on a truck . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep, high pitched and insistent. One of the big wood peckers with its jungle laugh, and striking red head, peeping finches, yellow, brown, black, a variety of spots of color and cheer. At the moment there are no vehicles in the driveway and the cat is taking advantage of that, plopped right down in the sunniest spot on the warm cement. Sparks of light ray out from the hard drive wind chime as it swings around in the breeze. Runners are still out, odd time for them, usually they are as early as the birds but two ladies just jogged by in their bright clothes followed by a big loping golden dog. Kids are riding around the corner, standing on their pedals, pushing their shiny bikes to go faster.
When I was at school yesterday, I happened to overhear several comments that made me realize I was not the only "elder" who was sometimes impatient with the rudeness of younger people . . . cars blaring music with such a pounding bass their whole car shakes, stopping in the middle of a live conversation with someone to text someone else, and the like. Then there are mornings when as I arrive at school some student sees me and holds open the door, or volunteers to take the cart of supplies out to the truck and return the cart to the library. All the same young people, and it's the same me as well. The world is full of such varieties that it's hard to justify grousing as the very next moment there will be some lovely incident that makes you smile. A poem I read yesterday from one of the books I keep out reminded me forcefully of all this attitude on the part of "elders". From Galway Kinnell's Imperfect Thirst.
Paradise Elsewhere
Some old people become more upset about human foibles than they
did when they were younger -- part of getting ready to leave.
For others, human idiocy becomes increasingly precious; they begin to
see in it the state of mind we will have in heaven.
"What about heaven?" I ask Harold who is ninety-four and lives
in the VA hospital in Tucson.
He said, "Memory is heaven."
The physicist emeritus tottering across the campus of Cal Tech,
through the hazy sunshine occasionally chuckles to himself.
Yet it has happened to many others, and to you, too, Galway -- when
illness, or unhappiness, or imagining the future wears an
empty place inside us, the idea of paradise elsewhere quickly
fills it.
Galway Kinnell
For me the paradise is sometimes a longing to see something else, to be somewhere I have never been before, to hear a cadence of speech I do not recognize and cannot understand. "Memory is heaven." If we are only what we remember, what happens to us when we begin to lose those memories, both the near ones and the far. How many times do I stand in front of the fridge and wonder why I opened it ? Or in the grocery aisle, with a list, thinking what have I forgotten, how many times before I lose something of myself as well as those memories. Some say older people remember the past more clearly, why would that be? Do they all think childhood or early life is more pleasant, more memorable? I would not say that, though there were plenty of times I would remember from that past. If I find a time I cannot remember all that I would want to, I will have to be content with making new memories. And content with this moment, this sunny morning, this day opening before me filled with quiet and work that I love and the green oasis of the yard.
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