Bookends

Like a blot on our conscience, the fires burn on in California. A kind of hell ironically consuming the City of Angels, we are reminded to one degree or another that we are vulnerable-- hurt, touched, concerned, destroyed. The emotional 'noise' of human trauma seems constant, and like a warning punishment, this one is close. There is looting... the military presence... and the blame game, too-- the politicizing and weaponizing of catastrophe.  There will be recovery narratives and those who profit from them. Like Hurricane Katrina, some of the deep human damage is unseen. 

Yesterday walking through the Harlem Meer at dusk, I nearly stepped on a small stuffed animal... a little squirrelly thing, wrapped in a tiny blanket... I picked it up and ran ahead toward some strollers leaving the park... but no one claimed it.  It's a damn toy, one woman scolded me.  

When my son was a baby, his first 'cradle toy' was a stuffed sock with a kind of stitched face... with tiny felt antlers.  It was cheap and squishy and small enough for even an infant to grasp.  As he fell asleep, he waved it back and forth and watched it. Ghee-ghee, he called it. It was his first baby-word. In those days when I dragged him to work and back... loaded with baby stuff and my own, we logged so many miles the carriage manufacturer replaced our wheels at no cost.  One night in a soaking rain I had to hail a cab and in unloading everything outside our door, we must have dropped Ghee-ghee on the taxi floor.

I called every medallion company in the city... they thought I was crazy.  Ghee-ghee, my baby boy kept repeating... nothing else.  He refused to eat, cried himself to sleep. He woke many times... inconsolable, exhausted.  Next morning I began a diligent search of stores for this toy... I'd naturally memorized the label and phoned the company in South Carolina... it had been discontinued, but they were sympathetic.  Maybe fifty phone-calls later (pre-internet days), we at long last located one... and arranged a fedex shipment to their showroom here in midtown.  Our Ghee-ghee had been washed and squished so many times, it little resembled the brand new one but I wheeled him into the showroom, three days after our loss, and he happily exclaimed 'Ghee-ghee' when they offered it, with a kind of casual grab. The whole place broke out in applause.  

Seeing footage of displaced children... much more fortunate than those in Gaza who were left completely without, and sometimes physically wounded-- is maybe easier to process than the deep, catastrophic loss of life and property.  It is the small things that touch us-- the man combing through rubble for his missing wedding ring... or someone's cat that managed to survive a fire and jumped out of steaming rubble... a cup.. a small symbol of survival in the wake of massive loss. Children, we are told, are resilient.

During the pandemic I often passed a mother and her severely autistic teenage son in the park.  He walked, waving his hands and making sounds... he cannot be touched, she warned, or he would tantrum.  But he had an old stuffed bear... and a matching scarf he kept tightly around his neck. It occurred to me a fire event strips these ultra-sensitive children of their only comfort. How does one fix this?

In a drawer somewhere I have my two wedding rings... these things apparently survive fires but not so relationships.  A kind of sentimental irony: one has nearly no meaning. Underneath my bed-- an old guitar with the capacity to bring to life all those songs I wrote and played... like a magic lamp.  It would not last a minute in a fire. There was a time people wanted to hear my musical stories on a stage... we nervously debuted our hearts, took turns on stages.  I am attached like an old sentimental child to things which with any luck will outlive me-- and will surely be discarded by the next generation as empty and without value. 

This time of year my student interviews engage me. Yesterday I spoke with a boy who left Afghanistan in 2021; his family was in some danger, and his sisters would have had no educational future, had they remained. They fled, with few possessions... were moved from one encampment to another.  In the process, he lost his pen.  He used this to write stories and to study and learn English.  Worried, and finally placed in a school here, he was shocked to be given a Chromebook. So he adapted... and his English was wonderful... his gratitude and love for his sisters... his father has finally found work in a large store, despite the language difficulty; his mother works in a bakery. He thinks about his pen, he said. 

Throughout history wars and catastrophes have forced people to hurriedly pack a few possessions and leave.  Home is so much more than a shelter. Old people and children are attached to things that cannot be replaced. In the end, life prevails... survival. There was a moment on camera this week of Bruce Willis thanking the firefighters. His luxurious home is safe, but he simply has lost everything... another version of what is missing. 

I am not sure what is coming for us all now... the constant visual drone footage surveying the Los Angeles damage.  The ruined homes make the destruction live for all of us who fear what we can lose-- our things, our minds.  Maybe we are all slated for a kind of devastation;  maybe a renewal of some version of faith and compassion. Had I been able to cross personal boundaries in my official interviewing role, I would have shared with the Afghan boy the Paul Simon song from Bookends.  I was 15 when I heard it, the age at which he was violently torn from his home. From the warm safety of my teenage room, with my plastic stereo... the record... it opened and closed with the lyrics that haunted me throughout my life... a kind of prophecy... 'preserve your memories... they're all that's left you.'

Thirty-five years ago I often wheeled my baby stroller into a church... I was struggling and it gave me a little strength.  One day I approached the altar to contemplate the unfathomable Crucifixion.... my son was maybe 10 months old.  He leaned forward and looked; he loved the church, too.  He pointed his little finger up at the suffering but calm Christ figure. 'Ghee-ghee,' he pronounced, with a kind of absolute certainty.