Friday, December 23, 2011

A Christmas Gift

It actually was the night before Christmas and the two boys were running out of both time and money. With just a few dollars in their pockets, they walked the length of the shopping center, looking into any number of stores, but they couldn’t find a present for their grandmother.

They had never imagined that they might fail. After all, on the morning after Thanksgiving Santa’s helicopter landed in the parking lot of this shopping center to start the holiday season. Elvis Presley’s Rolls Royce had been displayed there, with 16 coats of gold paint flecked with real gold and leather seats in the back and a little bar you could see from the other side of the velvet rope. This shopping center had everything. Surely there was a present for their grandmother.

But she was not easy to buy for. She kept gumdrops in a dish for her grandchildren but she also owned a French poodle with a frantic, yapping disposition that only an old person could love. She believed that the Coca-Cola in six ounce bottles tasted better than the Coca-Cola in larger bottles. She made fresh applesauce. They knew her narrowly, the way kids do, and were unable to recognize her in the black and white photograph of the dashing 1920s couple. She was recently widowed and she didn’t drive and it was too far to walk to the grocery store or the church. She lived life almost completely in the kitchen and living room of her little house, they thought.

In the last hour before closing time, customers thinned out and the boys retraced their steps. The bookstore. She was their warm, familiar grandmother, but they had no idea what she might read there on the other side of the long divide between youth and age. The refreshment stand. They didn’t dare buy themselves a fresh pretzel to share, as their funds were so low. The gift carts were stacked with odd cheeses and meats that required no refrigeration and boxes of novelty crackers and sweets that felt half-empty when lifted for a closer look. They considered a number of strange knickknacks likely to be tucked out of sight in a closet forever. In the holiday spirit shopkeepers had conspired somehow to fill the whole place with junk. Taunted a little by joyous Christmas music, the boys pressed on. Their time grew very short.

By rehearsing what they knew of her circumscribed life, they ended up at last, nearly in desperation, in the housewares department of one of the larger stores. But a cooking spoon or a potholder seemed an embarrassingly bland present for their grandmother. The boys couldn’t have put it into so many words, but buying her housewares felt somehow like a cruel accusation that she was just an old woman living alone with her poodle dog in her little house.

But in housewares the boys found a white, quilted toaster cover with a happy poodle on the side. There was a loose thread, a Made in China label, and a price of three dollars, which they could still afford. A gift is a hunch about another person, a clue about how deeply the receiver of the gift is known. She did love her dog Mitzi. The white fabric was bright and the image of the dog was cheerful and vivid. They were out of time. Maybe this gift was okay. It would have to be.

So they bought it in the last half hour of Christmas shopping and wrapped it that night and handed it over dutifully the next morning. Later they heard that she loved it because it was so unexpected and so well chosen. And there on the tidy counter in her narrow, sunny kitchen that sometimes smelled of chicken roasting or apples stewing, she covered her toaster with the cloth image of that bouncing poodle for the remaining few months of her life.

Broadcast by Ken Smith on December 23, 2011 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Commerce • Customs & Rituals • Family & Friends • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, December 09, 2011

Outsiders, In

It may not be seasonably appropriate, but I cannot get that Pepper Spray Cop out of my mind.  What is it about that stolid guy that stuck so fast in the public imagination?  Was it his Kevlar-cool, his flat-line affect, as he methodically shook the mixing marble in his pepper can and strolled down the row of earnestly Occupying college students, training the toxic spray right in their faces at a distance we reserve for loved ones and dental hygienists?

That juxtaposition – the intimate proximity and neutral brutality, the arm stretched out not to touch but to maim – will stand for many of us a low mark on the barometer of compassion.  I have my book-slam ugly moments, sure, but I’d never unhook from humanity enough to do that.

This smug conclusion drummed its fingers on my conscience when I attended the Dismas House Forgiveness Breakfast, in the new Community Corrections and DuComb Center—an expanded halfway house that provides work release, stability, safety, and a web of friendship for ex-felons as they get their footing back in a community that rarely greets them with open arms.

That morning, the atmosphere in the Center was buoyant; people in suits – or the sweater-and-scarf academic equivalent – took in the dining room’s freshly painted, if institutional, concrete walls, and listened to several residents tell their stories with quiet composure, stories that were both harrowing … and familiar. A divorce, a layoff from work, a family tragedy, a dip into addiction, and then a bad snap decision – one any of us could make – and then, incarceration.

The cracked-open humility in those stories of growth reminded me, uneasily, that I’d risked little of myself that morning.  I’d shown up to sit with colleagues, I listened, I wrote a check, and after an hour I stood up with most of the rest of the room --pleased, absolutely, to have attended, but already mentally rehearsing the day’s campus appointments as I felt in my book bag for my car keys.  I’d taken notes on the fact that anyone can prepare a supper once a week for Dismas residents – not just to drop off the food, but to sit down, and actually share the meal. Would I do this?  I’m no pepper-spray cop, but I can hold at arm’s length situations that deserve better.

The generous vulnerability of the Dismas residents stayed with me, though, and loosened a sharp childhood memory that hadn’t risen to the surface in a while.

When I was nine, a mid-week suburban evening that had been humming along suddenly went dark and terrible.  I was in my bedroom, rereading a favorite book by the radiator, my folks were catching up after work in our paneled Seventies kitchen.  My older sister was outside … or had been, until there was a fumble at the back screen door and my sister staggered into the house, dark blood running from her ear down her neck, and so not my sister, but possessed, a crazy person, raving, eyes rolling. ~ Dad’s running to dial the phone, my mom’s trying to capture my sister’s flailing arms in her own, and I’m bawling and breathless, tearing outside at the first sirens I hear winding down out front – police cars? I shook my small arms, channeling grade-school outrage and yelled: “We need DOCTORS, not the police, stupids! Doctors for my sister!” I ran back inside, trembling with terror.  But then I went still as I tracked the cop’s practiced glance around the house, realizing that his deliberate sizing-up of the scene meant something even worse was unfolding. I saw our house through his wary eyes—the bloody, raving child fighting the arms of a parent, an after-work beer on the counter—and realized that my house, and my scared, heroic parents, were under suspicion.  I’ve never felt less safe, less sure who was on my side.

I ran back outside … and in the chaos of flashing lights and gawkers, I saw a still and open figure ten feet away.  Mr. Lundquist from next door, a towering, sharp-angled man whose booming voice usually scared me. But now he was transformed, kneeling low and quiet.  He looked me full in the face, eyes soft, and spread his arms wide. I ran right into them.

Inside the house, the misinterpretation quickly passed; the EMTs figured that my sister had fallen off our backyard jungle-gym.  It was serious: a concussion that soon bloomed into a coma, followed by a long recovery … but mercifully, a full one.

I, on the other hand, haven’t recovered, mercifully, from learning the bravery it takes to throw open your arms to another person … and the equal measure of bravery it takes to rush in.

Maybe this is a holiday story, after all.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on December 09, 2011 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Community • Family & Friends • News & Editorial • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, November 25, 2011

Useful to Be Useless

Is it better to be useful or useless? I can’t decide, and that’s a problem. I have the age-old drive to “do something” with my life. I feel compelled to be practical, to pursue realistic goals, and to turn my skills toward earning money or helping people. Those goals allow me to justify my existence. But I also feel the strong tug of uselessness. I enjoy creating for no purpose and thinking for its own sake. I could be a happy lay-about. But always that other drive to please people, to fill my resume, to prove my worth, to show my team spirit – that residual sociability keeps me from wandering away entirely.

Of course, there are ways to escape the world. I had a friend in college who purposely sauntered through the halls mumbling to himself, because he didn’t want anyone to think of him as useful. He wanted only to read and study, and the surest way of guarding his solitude was to appear incompetent or unhinged. In the long run, the plan failed. Today this friend is one of the busiest people I know. His sense of social responsibility proved too powerful.

Because I find myself torn between these two possibilities, I may be able to explain to you the value of uselessness, the position occupied by artists, philosophers, babies, and comedians. We are suspicious of artists and philosophers. The only reason we don’t feel the same about babies and comedians is that we don’t take them seriously. Babies can’t help belonging to the club of uselessness, but they provide an instructive example. Why does a laughing baby fill us with joy? It is because the baby is so purely inspired. In her delight, she has no agenda, no concern. A happy baby is idle, purposeless, and completely alive. She shows us how to relax our minds, which is the first step toward inner peace and creativity. We laugh with her, and participate in her joy, but we ignore what she tells us about ourselves.

To take an example from the adult world, a philosopher is also useless, by design. And obviously, I don’t mean the typical American philosophy professor, who is basically a mechanic of thought, a logician and a scholar. That sort of “philosopher” justifies his existence by being useful, by solving practical problems. He makes thinking serve a worldly purpose. But the lover of wisdom, the philosopher in the original sense, is like the poet or the comedian, in that he doesn’t serve, he doesn’t seek any practical end. He is faithful to a kind of knowing that transcends usefulness, calling us back to the first and most difficult questions, questions that can’t be answered once and for all. Even if he arrives at answers, they aren’t useful in the usual sense.

At college, we teach “critical thinking,” which is a skill, involving mastery of logical techniques. And that’s good. That’s useful. But the relationship between critical thinking and philosophy is like the relationship between the principles of design and the wonder of imaginative art. One is governed by rules; the other is only itself when it surpasses all preconceived rules. And how do you teach that? How does the rule-bound adult learn to think – and to love thinking for its own sake? How can the yoga student learn to breathe like a baby? It’s all about giving up on usefulness. The way of uselessness is the hardest path in the world to follow, precisely because it is endless, starting and ending where you are standing now.

Broadcast by Joe Chaney on November 25, 2011
Customs & Rituals • Education • Work • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

April Lidinsky -- Bring Back the Dickey! / The Chaperone’s Dilemma / Defending Dandelions / Swimming Lessons / Painting on Windows / Balm for a Bleak Season / Outsiders, In / Cooking Up Family History / Measuring Up / The Play’s the Thing / Telling Stories / More essays by April

Joe Chaney -- Imagining a Different President / Living in the Digital World / Renewal in Our Nation’s Capital / Useful to Be Useless / The High School Football Scene / The Home Frontier / The Artist’s Clock / The Nursing Home / My Years in the Injustice Factory / Return to Glory / A Culture of Cheating / More essays by Joe

Ken Smith -- A Tourist’s View of History / The Fourth Grade Robotics Team / What Is Poetry Good For? / Twitter Time / A Trip to the Science Fair / The Last Morning of Summer / Kids At The Pool / Downtown Tourist Blues / In Praise of Perennials / Pride and Hype Along the Interstate / The Music Man Returns / More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Socks / Nyanh, Nyanh / Pollyanna Grows Despondent / Good Eaters / Grubbing in the Dirt / Straddling Technologies / Order in the Court / Being Shallow / Speaking Periodically / Autumn / Celebrating Magna Charta Day / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- Want / Exercise Is My Tantrum / Running Music / A Sparkling New Year / Friendly / Death and Guacamole / Neurotic / Complaint Department / Humbled Handless / Bacon Before Husband / Parenthood / More essays by Heather

David James -- South Bend Spring / The South Bend Free Press / Mourning Doves / Autumn War / Jimmy Reed Live / Guest Lecture / The Night Shadows / When Will I Ever Learn? / Freedom Summer 2011 / Grandpa James / Standardized Tests / More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- Driving On / Be Ginger Rogers, or, How to Talk to Widows and Others in Grief / Chronicle of a Death Told in Facebook Postings / More essays by Elizabeth

Jeff Nixa -- Making Up on the South Shore / Kayaking a Great Lake / A Hybrid Awakening / Action Heroes / A Hospital Epiphany / More essays by Jeff

Louise Collins -- Minerals and Memory / Pledging My Support / Ice-Carving in St. Joseph / Of Minds and Machines / Revisiting the Past / More essays by Louise

Jonathan Nashel -- Why New Things Stink / Let’s Get Ready to Rumble / How Paris Turned Into South Bend / Women’s Football Comes to Michiana / Life after Death, Goldfish / More essays by Jonathan