Telling Time

As a nod to Presidents' Day, I watched a documentary, 'Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment',   courtesy of TCM my greatest distraction platform.  Like many of these pre-digital black and white documentaries, it felt deliberate and important.  At that time there was comparatively little spontaneous footage of official discussions and phone calls. I was mesmerized.  For much of the afternoon I obsessed about Bobby Kennedy… the way he put his little daughter on the phone to Nicholas Katzenbach, the way both of them enjoyed the moment—  from a time when political policy-making seemed groundbreaking and permanent.  Their wise approach to a civil rights problem set a precedent.  Democracy was working; the absurd directives of segregation were being avenged, legally.  

The intimacy with which the negotiating was presented-- well, it was reassuring and human.  Bobby's access to his brother, the president, was direct and personal.  The contrast between his lively breakfast table and the staged, formal interaction of George Wallace and his daughter-- well, it was everything.  After a quick 'shoot', Wallace's little girl was removed by her black housekeeper.  Robert Kennedy had a total of eleven children.  Their chatter was not filtered from the soundtrack behind his conversations.  His compassion and humanity were on display; also the courage and devotion to the founding principles of the Constitution.  It was quiet and effective leadership.  

Watching history being made via a 1960's style phone receiver had its charm, for me, craving more and more any connection with what felt like an era of solidity and trust.  Newspapers reported news... speeches were grammatically correct and archive-worthy.  I was 10 years old when the first Afro-American students  enrolled at the University of Alabama.  Just seven years later I was in college, discussing civil rights, protesting the policies of a Nixon-led administration which was slated to be brought down. 

'Who knows where the time goes,' a lyric from that same era asks? It's difficult for me to pinpoint the small events of the last two years which have felt depopulated of joy.  Mostly deaths, cancellations... forgettable birthdays and Christmases, sorrows.  In the papers, daily articles addressing anxiety, depression; even the pod-popular professor of the Happiness course at Yale has taken a leave.  Time is a bitch, they say; it yaps at my heels.  

'I met an old lover on the street today...' This used to be a sort of nostalgia-evoking occurrence.  Often in the city-- on subway platforms or sidewalks-- we have these intersections, we relive small intimate moments and tiny passions.  Some of these people would be forgotten-- the bartenders, the roadies, the casual one-nighters that for the most part had a certain poetry in my life.  Each encounter added color and depth.  Some of them became long-standing affairs or even a marriage or two.  But today-- I passed what literally was an aged man, who tapped me on the shoulder.  Wiping his eyes, removing his mask, with a couple of proffered hints, I remembered him from so long ago.  I guess it is only by registering the age of our peers that we really take stock of our own.  It was a little shocking. None of the poetry that filled my heart on those other encounters-- just the stark realization that we are old people. Grow old with me, my young husband begged when he proposed, paraphrasing the words of Robert Browning-- not exactly the material of seduction for someone like me who lived in the present tense, but comforting-- reassuring.  How we both surely have grown old; while at the same rate, not together.  

The New Yorker today suggested a great archived short piece by Hannah Arendt on the poet W. H. Auden, born on this day 115 years ago, which quotes one of his lethal poems 'If I Could Tell You'.  Hard to imagine that this was written a mere 23 years before the Kennedy moments I watched.  Nearly sixty years from these moments I read, as Auden observed, 'Time says nothing but I told you so.'  

Most of the figures in the 'Crisis' documentary are long gone. Online today I followed the trajectories of Robert Kennedy's children, all of whom are much past the age of their father when he was killed.  It surely was a fairy-tale but tragedy-suffused family; many of his children have grown to honor their heritage and avenge the 'curse'. It's so easy to find information now-- photos, footage, gossip, letters... What is difficult to find is trust.  We live with many of the same terrible issues, but without the old version of democratic credibility or faith.  I doubt things.  Is that simply age and a kind of sour wisdom?  Things don't seem to have the same weight... we are further than ever from solutions and a compassionate human denominator.  Most of the world was afflicted with the same virus; was there no lesson learned from this?

Besides heroic politicians and leadership, I lament the lack of really good poetry.  Auden, we miss your ilk more than ever.  And your trustworthy, perfect lyric, posthumous as it is, 'If I could tell you I would let you know.'

The Suitcase

On the eve of my own birthday I find myself testing mixed waters of introspection, gratitude, dissatisfaction, nostalgia--  a murky pool or some kind of strange episodic soup.  Sink, swim, stir... ?  Things I never expected have been served up against a human landscape that is both familiar and ominous. Whether we thrive or survive used to be a choice; I'm not so certain anymore.  

Over the past few days I've had deep conversations with my girlfriends that prompted this state of ruthlessly self-critical reflection.  Of course the pandemic has forced many of us backward into a sort of Plato's cave of stagnation; I for one am truly disoriented.  I've been forced to distinguish between what I believe and what is true.  There used to be more clarity and confidence.

When I was a girl, my father kept a packed suitcase in the coat closet.  Not that he used it, but it was kind of a symbol-- for him, an escape hatch; for us, the threat of consequences if we weren't good children.  For my poor Mom, God knows.  So many of us girls have held onto relationships where one or the other keeps a metaphorical suitcase on some shelf... past, present or future.  My friends remind me periodically about the poor choices I've made in my life.  Choices, yes.  Poor? I'm less sure about that.  

This morning I read a Facebook post which mentioned a song I hadn't heard since I was girl and recalled how I received the record as a birthday present, so long ago.  It was the Who Knows Where the Time Goes album from Judy Collins.  In those years I listened closely to folksingers-- rock and roll-- anything that took me out of my teenage existence and into some atmospheric zone of music and daydreams and hope.  I'm not sure I fully understood the meaning of time; things often seem so drawn out and boring when you're a teen--  you long for things and they are at the other end of a school break, or downtown in the city where you are not allowed at night.  Time was often your enemy. 

All these decades later, the accumulated experiences are maybe more than I can fathom.  I felt so wrung out at 24-- I had achieved nothing... felt so worn and useless and 'old'.  I know that girl.  By the light of my laptop keys tonight the person I am now-- the writer-- has waded through miles and years of people and places- experiences, joys-- births, deaths, griefs, passions and emptinesses.  But I still know that girl.  It occurs to me that she was missing some kind of belief-- that the father with his suitcase was so absorbed in his own difficulties that he forgot to teach his children how to love themselves.  It was confusing.  

On the same album is a heartbreaking song called My Father.  I played that today... I remember how sad it made me back then.  I used to pretend someone else was my father-- someone kind and happy. Mine was so often dark and disappointed by life.  Unable to experience joy.  I failed him too... in his limited parameter of what children should be-- the acceptable journeys and small successes of life-- I had no place.  

I have friends who still, in their 60's, resent parental shortcomings, family dysfunctions.  It's not exactly that... I mean, we all have to find our own voice, but somewhere we also crave for those we love to be happy.  For my father, this was impossible.  I understood little his war experiences and heroics.  Medals and awards did not compensate for the horror he witnessed, for the guilt of survival, and maybe this inability to embrace life.  People didn't have therapy then, or it was taboo.  Even now, plenty of veterans live on street corners and beneath bridges- unable to process what they saw, unable to integrate petty daily life with the scale of violence and terror of war.  

I've been forthcoming about expressing my dissatisfaction with the relationship I had or did not have with my father.  I was relieved, in a way, when he passed.  I'd tried many times to make some kind of amends, but he was not having it. He hated everything about me, or I felt that.  Maybe, one ex-husband postulated, he was envious of my free spirit and my unconventional decisions.  It made him bitter... reminded him of what he missed.  Whatever.  I failed him... and somehow I suspect he processed this as his failure.  But listening to the song today, I cried my eyes out.  I'm a grownup-- beyond that.  I was hard on him, as he was on me.  But I should have forgiven him.  I couldn't possibly fathom the hardships he lived through and I was relatively spoiled.  So what if someone doesn't support your 'platform', ignores your work and product?  Being a musician, it's rare anyone really listens.  Not many buy my books and fewer actually read.  And I'm not any stellar example of thwarted or underserved talent.  I'm an independent woman-- a mother, a friend.. and forever, despite death, a daughter.

In honor of the song... rather than blowing out an unmanageable number of candles tomorrow, I think I will light one for him.  I know my mother was overjoyed on this day so many years ago... she celebrated me with home-made cakes and hand-knitted sweaters over the years.  As a grandmother she loved my son with all her heart.  Her husband? I don't quite know where he was... but he provided for us... he never used that suitcase; it might have been all he could manage, and for that I must be grateful.  

So I suppose the blessing of this birthday is that of forgiveness.  It won't come all at once, like a cleansing wind, but I will resolve to soften my heart in that direction.  I lecture people all day long about how the gift we give to others is the most valued we can receive ourselves.  Music is an amazing thing-- these soundtracks of our lives still have things to teach us, messages we can still hear, as long as we keep listening.