Object Lessons

Dear You,

On a recent evening with friends I noticed a little pile of stones surrounding a potted plant on a side table. "I pick them up wherever I go," explained my hostess. And she listed some of her favorite places, each stone provoking a smile and a memory.

In nearly every room of my house are little things -- a tiny clock here, a glass figure there, little bits gathered from a long-ago beach walk and little presents brought back from trips. If I really worked at it, I could catalog them; no doubt, however, I would forget a few -- there are so very many. What I enjoy, then, is the happy discovery (and the resultant memory) when my eye falls on one of these when I am otherwise occupied. I might open a drawer, or push aside a photo frame, or reach for a book . . . and there it is: Didn't that come from Manomet? I muse?

No doubt nearby is an old woman or man in a nursing home, looking back and trying to recapture a lost adventure, struggling through the cobwebs of fading memory. If she or he is fortunate, some object from that past is at hand to light the way.

Shhhh. Listen

Dear You,

Despite all the notations on my calendar, I lead a quiet life. Last evening, sitting alone in a room darkened with the draperies drawn against the heat, holding the stem of my wine glass, I looked at the framed certificates on the wall, the academic accomplishments of my hosts for the dinner to come. And I reflected -- not for the first time -- that I now can look into a mirror that is already six decades deep.

What brought me to that room at that moment is, of course, the result of hundreds of decisions and choices that I made (many based on insufficient evidence, but let that pass for now). More, however, seem to have been the result of mere happenstance. And it occurs to me that at least a small measure of wisdom comes from knowing the difference.

I am no longer convinced, as I once was, that I am Captain of my Fate. I am not so arrogant to believe that I owe no debt to those many others who multiplied my efforts in life. I am not so smug to think there is no Higher Power that has put fortune in my path, often when I most needed it. What portion of ambition and intelligence I possessed and have been able to marshall along the way has taken me pretty far, I think. But those alone cannot explain why I sat there so contentedly, sampling a very nice little merlot and awaiting a dinner I did not earn.

Once more, sledding downhill

Dear You,

A key to most novels is discovering the effect of earlier events and decisions. Indulging her hypochondria, Zeena invites her pretty cousin Mattie to keep the house ... and husband Ethan comes to realize the awful truth of his loveless marriage. Crash. And isn't it interesting to ponder how many collisions you and I experience, the unforeseen consequencs of our youthful choices?

I thought of this last Saturday, when I picked up my three-month supply of various medications and signed the paper to pay $260. Nearly half of that is for the pill that keeps my arteries from becoming further clogged. Ninety tablets, $333.08 and the insurance pays $228.08 of it. I pay $105. At the time my thoughts divided: "Whew, I'm glad I don't have to pay the whole $928.91!" and "Yikes! $260 on the credit card!" and the second thought made me yearn for even better prescription medicine coverage.

Now, of course, I'm able to reflect further. And I know that my share (as well as that portion borne by ... whom? my neighbors, in some sense of the word) is the result of years of sloth (I loathe exercise) and greed (I love a triple bacon cheeseburger at the drive-thru). Way too late ... for Zeena, for me ... for you, too? ... comes reform. Zeena doesn't get her husband back (well, she does, but you'll have to read Ethan Frome to see how that works), and I can't take the stents from out my heart (Sorry, Poe). But I'm walking more often, and I haven't bought a burger in a year.

Along the barge canal

Dear You,

Hamlin Garland once observed that the highway is traveled by all sorts of people, but that the poor and the weary predominate. Still true today -- probably moreso. Yet I find in my time and in my place, the places where I find myself most often, the poor are invisible.

It was with surprise, then, that I came upon a vagrant yesterday. I was cycling along the barge canal just outside Pittsford (where per capita income is unarguably rather high), and I spotted what I took to be a pile of discarded clothes in the weeds beside the trail. As I passed I could see worn boots on one end and a cradled mass of hair at the other. My next thought was that it was a corpse and nearly stopped. Then I realized that this man was no doubt sleeping in the afternoon warmth, and the other bikers, hikers, joggers that were taking this path would surely have determined whether someone were dead or not!

A half hour or so later, as I was returning to where I'd left my car, I passed him again; this time he was afoot. Thin. Shambling along. Eyes downcast. He looked up, nodded. I nodded.

But for those two separated moments he exists only in my memory. Awhile later, as I sat outside a coffee shop, I watched people feeding the ducks, tossing crumbs from their bags into the water. ($1 a bag; available from the table near the door.) Young people walked by wearing tee shirts with names of universities across their chests, talking on their cell phones or discussing the contents of their shopping bags. Briefly I took notice of the young woman who selttled next to me on the bench to adjust her inline skates. Then I wondered -- again -- if the rumpled man was still walking along the canal . . . and where? Bushnell's Basin? on to Fairport? All the way out to Palmyra? Where would he find his dinner, and where his bed that night?

I can't know the answers because I did not stop . . . neither in the going out nor the coming back. I didn't stop to ask.

Round and round we go

Dear You,

Sixteen years ago we bought the house we now live in from Frank and Susan. It was in beautiful condition, with everything we were looking for . . . but facing a busy highway. The owners were already thinking of the time when their young daughter might go down the driveway on a bike and into the path of a speeding truck. Or something like it. So they put the house up for sale and were having one just like it built in a quieter part of town.

Yesterday evening my wife took one of those Alumni Fund calls from her alma mater -- a young woman named Lauren, an art major and very chatty . . . and soon learned that she is the now-grown daughter of Frank and Susan. The two talked of the sandbox that once sat under the willow tree in the back yard -- the first removed to plant grass and the other felled after an ice storm ruined it. How they both love our community and what it's like to attend that university now . . . and it ended with, of course, a donation to the school.

Lauren did in fact go down the driveway, where she continues to have all sorts of life-changing collisions and seems happy with who and what and where she is just now, just as over those 16 years have we.

I write this not just because it's another example of that well-worn observation of "Small World, Isn't It?" but because of its larger truth: that despite the apparent chaos of the universe, there is fundamentally a roundness to it all. Every decision, every choice -- even when it seems meaningless at the time (or worse, an error!) -- ultimately comes to some (probably unforeseen) end that brings equilibrium. Should we not take comfort in this awareness? We just think such things are in novels, not for us.

Making Waves

Dear You,

We have looked into the depths of the ocean and the far reaches of space, but who really knows the truth about himself? Like an onion, each of us is layers and layers of self-deception. A second cousin is in prison after years of lying to himself about his alcoholism . . . until he drunkenly wrecked his car and killed someone. Now, with years of time in a cell, he writes pages and pages of self-analysis. While I don't recommend a prison term, who among us would not profit from time spent looking within?

Recently someone quoted from a memoir: "You can't see your reflection in moving waters." I've been thinking about that, exploring its truth. The idea is that if one wants to plumb the depths of the least-understood place on earth, the Self, one needs quiet and solitude.

But I look at my calendar with dismay. Busy, busy, busy. A rushed trip to Ohio here, a dinner party there, tickets to this play and that symphony -- all before tackling the stack of books and magazines that daily continues to grow. As I type this, I have NPR on the radio, and I'm listening to news. Perhaps at one time "retirement" meant some period of quiet and the opportunity to reflect on one's life. Today, lacking the dramatic event that suggests one should make a change in his life, it appears as unlikely as my decision to write on tomorrow's calendar page, "7-9 a.m. Explore Self."

My Aunt's Legacy

Dear You,

Because she created such an imagined life, my aunt now finds herself in an awful fix. For over a half-century, Aunt G arranged everything as though she had been born into privilege. With a husband who did her bidding and worked sometimes three jobs to provide, she made her house secure, her acquaintances limited, and her outlook narrow. Now she is old and mostly friendless, and she is terrified.

I do not diminish her gifts, nor do I love her less for knowing all this. I have some sense of what it took her to move from a deprived childhood -- father dead when she was a teenager, the Depression making the family hungry and without a home, and who knows what else? I know she has always been intelligent. She has always been generous and loving to me. But on one enormous truth she was blind.

It matters little what you have -- possessions, money, clothes, address -- if you do not weave a tapestry of relationships while you can, before you grow cold with age and need the comfort only that can provide. What friends she had are dead or dying. Many in the family now keep their distance, and those who remain cannot possibly provide all that she requires.

On the occasions when I can visit I come away with great sadness.

Rolling Stones

Dear You,

In the river of Life are different kinds and sizes of rocks. Water rushes around the boulders, which remain in place over time. Smaller stones shift, but rarely and not very far. It's the pebbles that wash around and drift downstream that interest me.

Growing up in different towns in Ohio, I never felt much of an affinity to place. I attended three elementary schools and two junior highs before spending five years (!) in the town where I was graduated from high school . . . thence to leave and return only for the occasional school reunion. Without some research I could not list all my addresses. Even now, I'm comfortable in my "snowbird phase," living seasonally in the North and the South.

I'm always curious about those who were born, grew up, and remain in the same community. Such stability is foreign to me; sometimes I'm envious. Wouldn't it be interesting, I think, to live parallel lives, just to see how different would be my outlook. Well, the river wouldn't be the river without the variety of its stones.

Copping a Plea

Dear You,

Last year I broke the law. Well . . . in truth, I probably do that now and then, on I hope an irregular basis -- but who can tell? since there are so very many laws. And one can't be completely righteous, can one, without being a totally boring person? But I digress.

This law that I broke " counts" because I was arrested and fined. It was dark, I was driving up the hill that leads from Nunda to Mt. Morris (talk about out-of-the-way locations!), and the fellow ahead of me was realllllly poking along. So I pressed the pedal and went around him. When the lights lit up behind me, the deputy told me I was going faster than 80 mph. BEFORE the 55 mph zone had properly begun. Sigh.

After the formalities, he took particular note of my age and gray hair and explained that while I was no doubt safely buckled onto my seat, he was going to cite me for driving in violation of the seat-belt law. Not the speed. He and I both knew this would (a) save me money, and (b) avoid "points" against my license, which would (c) probably raise my car insurance bill. I thanked the young man and drove on. A week later I paid the $85 the court requested.

I write this because, among other laws I've violated since that night must be perjury. On the form the deputy gave me, I signed my name to a lie. And it makes me think -- not for the first time -- that our lives are governed by way too much chaos. It's never right/wrong or black/white. Threading my way through these Scyllas and Charybdes has never been easy.

Perhaps Four Ages, not Seven, of Man

Dear You,

Most of the year, a turn of the calendar page has no noticeable effect on the weather. Not so for September. Yesterday, as in the past, I was taken aback when, on arising, I heard crows at my feeder instead of the lesser birds, and I heard a distinct rustle of leaves, as if they were impatient for that time when they would change color and fall onto the lawn. Sure enough, when I walked out for the newspaper, the light and the air were filled with Autumn. It was a bit chilly to take my coffee to the patio table. Overnight, Summer had slipped away.

Winter will announce itself at any time. Somewhere between late October and Christmas, my mother used to look out and announce, "Well, it's spittin' snow" and we boys would go to the window to watch the first flakes. Spring makes tentative steps -- a balmy day in March will give way to another blizzard just as soon as allow the appearance of the first shoots of flowers. As for Summer, the end of the school year is the only real demarcation I've been able to decide on, whatever the calendar says.

Do you, too, detect that moment when it really is Fall? Or might this be just because I have reached "a certain age" and have grown hypersensitive to that which signals the end of things? If the stages of life are seasons, then I have certainly reached Autumn. And, yes, it did seem to have happened overnight.