Patrick Egan's Blog, page 67
July 10, 2013
The Poor House
We never lived in a poor house…or The Poor House I am going to tell you about in the paragraphs below.
Our home was in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood on one of the more classy streets in my hometown. We had a garage and a 1949 purple Cadillac in the driveway. Our house boasted five bedrooms…there were six of us in the family so we had a chance to sleep where we wanted. It was a nice, respectable house on a fine street. But, my father, being a child of the Great Depression, always tried to do things himself so no local plumber or roofer would rip him off. He kept his wallet tight and close to his hip like many of his generation.
I tried to be a good boy. My mother did her best with four boys to be a good mom, but she too was of the generation that experienced the poverty of the 1930′s. She cooked simple meals and made use of simple kitchen tools. I think Betty Crocker was her twin that was separated at birth. Our pie crust had lard and butter. The berry fillings were often hand picked hours before the oven was turned on.
This is where I come in to ruin her perfect world. I had a secret I lived with as a child…my wife says I still have it. This horrible rotten thing dwelt in my gut, deep and untouchable. It also lived in my pockets. I was ashamed to talk about it. I was only to listen to my mother repeatedly tell me how I was going to bring shame and public scorn on our little family.
But I couldn’t help myself. My needs were greater than the welfare of the familial unit. I can still hear my mother utter those words that built a wall of self-loathing around me to this day.
Your very reason won’t allow this, but none of this had to do with puberty.
If it was that simple, all I would have to do is stop thinking of girls…but life is never simple and my crimes were unrelated to anyone named Becky or Sandy. So, perhaps it’s time for my confession:
You see, and I tremble while I type, my problem…my addiction…my self-loathing was due to the fact that I had a disease.
I had the “Buy Me’s”.
I wanted things. It might be a Schwinn one week or a parakeet the next. I just wanted to buy stuff…and best of all…I wanted stuff bought for me.
So, my mother, bless her soul, would tell me that I, yes only I, was going to send the entire family to The Poor House. Some kids of my generation feared the orphanage but not me. I feared that we would have to give up our nice house and go to live in The Poor House. I had not read Dickens yet, so the image of the Debtors Prison was not on my horizon.
But The Poor House? Who would visit? How would my girlfriends find me? What would happen to us?
The Poor House was a real place. It’s still there, right where my mother would point it out to me as she shook her finger.
A few weeks ago, after visiting my hometown, I drove past the buildings while driving my SUV; a car I always wanted.
I stopped for a quick photo with my CoolPix, a camera I wanted when digital came out. I couldn’t stop long, though, I needed to get to a particular store that had something I really needed.
July 9, 2013
Now Arriving…
I do remember it. How often does a boy get his first kiss (and not from Mom) on an afternoon, after a remedial math class taught by a nun?
My guess is that it’s not that often. However, that ‘kiss’ has to happen somewhere, sometime in a young life. It might as well be after the nun let us out for the afternoon, convinced she had made math clear in our minds, and not knowing that three of us were heading across the Susquehanna River bridge. My girlfriend (who shall remain nameless) and her friend needed walking home. After all, it was a bright sunny (September?) day and they needed to be seen safely home to my girlfriend’s friend’s home in South Owego.
I was the man to do the manly thing and walk them home,
The events that follow lasted, to me, an hour. In reality, it was all over in a few minutes.
But those minutes can and do have echoes that are heard for years to come.
My girlfriend’s friend (I’ll call her Cassandra) had a certain part to play that afternoon. But, only she knew that part. I didn’t. I wasn’t expecting what happened next.
Cassie ran and hid behind the station. I recall there was no whistle, no Mr. Conductor, no Ticketmaster, no Pullman. It was just the three of us on the platform.
But, then there was only two. My girlfriend and me.
I think she sensed my intention because she ran off a short distance and stood in an empty doorway.
She looked at me. In a nanosecond, I grew up a little for I totally comprehended what she wanted…and what I had been desperate for for about three years.
I walked over to her and took her shoulders in my hands.
Well, something has to be left to the imagination.
July 1, 2013
What Will Be Written About You?
“My Childhood days bring back sad reflections Of happy days so long ago. My boyhood friends and my own relations. Have all passed on like the melting snow.” (Traditional.) As recorded by Van Morrison.
I have a gift for you. It isn’t wrapped in gilded paper and it does not have a magenta ribbon tied into a dainty bow. In fact its not wrapped at all. And, there’s no way it can be ‘re-gifted’ by you. It’s yours for as long as someone is around to mow, and take perpetual care of the place; and as long as the owner of the land doesn’t get his or her head turned by the sign of the dollar and destroy your present by turning it into a golf course or a condominium complex. You see, I’m giving you your own blank, black marble tombstone. Yes, you read it correctly, it’s blank. It’s isn’t real, though, it’s at the bottom of this page. Now, that begs the question of what someone will have engraved on that smooth and exquisite black surface.Will it be that you were a giant of industry, hiring and firing at the first sign of the stock market trends? But unable to take the time to attend your son’s little league game? Or your daughter’s softball championship? Or perhaps, you were a high-ranking diplomat, off to Tangiers but not to Coney Island with your children. Maybe you were an elected official living in D.C. sitting on a committee to uphold some Commandment, but you were actually away to an ultra-private club with your mistress. Maybe you were a tele-evangelist assuring us that “God Cried” when the Supreme Court rejected the Defense of Marriage Act while you support Capital Punishment in Texas and “know” that God’s tears are for a man wanting to marry a man or a woman to wed another woman. Perhaps you glorify war and detest pacifists. Whatever. But for the sake of those left behind, let’s hope your epitaph tells the tale of an honest person, who sees that forgiveness is better than retribution and love is far more enduring than distrust, jealousy and scorn. Rest peacefully and with as clean a soul as a mere mortal can be expected to have. 
June 23, 2013
18. Drunken Steps
My father came home late one night
with drunken kisses on his lips,
he swore he didn't drink,
despite the bottle in his grips.
He stumbled through the gate,
and cursed with every wobbly step,
the neighbors could hear him, I was sure
through the thatch hut where we slept.
I felt my mother stiffened,
from where we lay side by side,
I'm sharing this poem because I think it says a zillion things in only a few words..like a true poem should.
Killing Me Softly With His Song
[WARNING: IF SAD SONGS MAKE YOU SADDER, THEN STOP READING NOW!]
Before you shake your painted fingertips at me and call me “Mr. Doom and Gloom” (a girl-friend once did that), I’ll save you some time and energy. I have a great deal of Irish blood in my veins, I’m Black Irish and raised as a 1950s Catholic. I carry around my fair share of sin and guilt. After all, I’m the one who was told (as a young teenager) that I would burn in hell for all eternity because I French Kissed my girlfriend. Yes, I was told that in the Confessional. I’m not even sure I ever got over being told that by the priest who grabbed me from my bicycle and asked me when I had my last confession.
Consequently, I’m a card-carrying melancholy soul. But, we all are, when you think about it. Isn’t 50% of great drama, Tragedy? Of course it is. It’s what gives life it’s true meaning…destiny, redemption, forgiveness, memory and the love of life itself.
That said, this post is getting many things off my chest. So, read on…
Our pop culture is rife with teen angst songs like “Tell Laura I Love Her” and “Teen Angel”. We loved them in our youth even though they were quite tragic in nature. There are, however, three songs (at least ones that I can recall) that have developed an aura of sadness, loss and heart-break and even suicide, around them.
These songs are “Gloomy Sunday” the classic 1930s hit by Billie Holliday, “Long, Long Time”, made famous by Linda Ronstadt and “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, a major score for Bonnie Tyler.
These songs have been connected, by rumor I must add, to suicides. The story is familiar: a body is found in a boarding room or a cheap motel and the song is playing on the tape player…or the lyrics are scratched onto a paper held in the hand of the deceased.
Consider the Hungarian Suicide Song: “Gloomy Sunday”. Composed by the Hungarian, Rezso Seress who ironically committed suicide in 1968. There is no question that the song is dark, very dark:
“Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless
Dearest, the shadows I live with are numberless
Little white flowers will never awaken you
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you”
And further:
“My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there’ll be candles and prayers that are said I know
But let them not weep, let them know that I’m glad to go.”
Now this is stuff that anyone who thinks it’s worth dying for another will chew up and swallow like a clam chowder. The real kicker is that the last verse tells us that the narrator has only been dreaming…that her heart is only talking.
Let’s move on. Bonnie Tyler had a huge hit with “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. I can’t think (sorry Tyler fans) of a bigger single in her opus. But here she sings a similar sentiment:
“Together we can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time
I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark
We’re living in a poster keg and giving off sparks
I really need you tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight
Forever’s gonna start tonight.”
Sound familiar?
Which bring us to the last of the cycle of doom songs. The sweet, pure voice of Linda Ronstadt sings in a plaintive voice:
‘Cause I’ve done everything I know
To try and make you mine
And I think I’m gonna love you
For a long, long time.
Here we go with the long, long time theme again…eternity (I’ll meet them all there because I French Kissed my girlfriend about forty-five years ago, remember).
There are some lyrics to contemplate, just don’t go your Kenmore Range and stick your head inside.
So, what are we to make of all this? Here are my thoughts:
Suicide is one of the most tragic acts one can foster on one’s family and lovers. The pain it causes never ceases and the hearts that are left behind, broken, make the suicides’ heart ache mundane by comparison. I’m not saying that the act is easy to explain. Indeed, it’s a complex issue that minds greater than mine have struggled to explain. [Take note: I am totally avoiding any involvement in the physician assisted deaths that are being debated in the courts as I write. RIP Dr. Kevorkian!]
I know something of what I write about. Once I thought of ending my life. I checked PVC tubing and how secure the garage door was. I had a tablet at the ready for the note. But, that is as far as I got. I really believed that the pain in my heart would never end…but it did. Things got better. They really did, on levels that baffle me to this day.
Everyone who has a heart, a brain and who thinks and who loves will enter the dark valley in their lifetime. If you are lucky enough to never have been there, then bless you!
I won’t end with a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ reference…that’s a death metaphor. But climbing up to the sunlit, heather covered meadows, lying down among the wildflowers and watching the clouds morph is its own reward. Yes, the clouds will darken the sun sometimes and those stunning cumulus clouds can cast shadows across the flower bed, but someone, somewhere is waiting for you.
Roll over, they may be lying beside you.
Now is the time to kiss them.
June 1, 2013
A Lonely World
Reblogged from Kendall F. Person, thepublicblogger:
i believe the children are our future. teach them well and let them lead the way - the late, great Whitney Huston
On Tuesday, January 12, 2010 mother nature unleashed her full fury. A catastrophic 7.0 earthquake rocked the nation of Haiti to its core. Striking directly under the country's most populated city, the carnage was biblical. 250,000 dead, devouring entire neighbors, wiping out all government facilities and in a spectacular display of power, brought down the presidential palace.
Thanks for your interest. I hope you looked back on some old blogs in WordPress.
A Jigsaw Puzzle
Hey, I took an art course once so I should know a thing or two about the visual and temporal renderings of the Great Masters as well as the Nouveau, Op Art or the trendy new Steampunk. So, to probe your right hemisphere (or is it the left?), here is a Multiple Choice Quiz. Please take a breath and center yourself before you attempt answering!
This photo is:
A Negative Space Study of a canoe paddle.
A Stress Test of a saw blade.
A Way to eliminate part of the plank so I can use the rest of the wood for something really interesting.
A way to spy on my neighbors through something they would never suspect.
The beginnings of my wife’s birthday present.
May 30, 2013
Epitaphs: Part II
Less Is More
Sometimes, the stories that headstones tell you are long and often full of Biblical references. Some I’ve seen are brief and to the point: “We Will Meet Again in Jesus”. Once in a great while, one runs across an epitaph that is pithy and wholly understated. The photo below is such an example.
It doesn’t leave much to reflect upon in terms of God or the future. Here was a man. He was three things. Without question, he was a man of more than three roles, but this is all the family chooses to tell you. The rest is up to you. If you knew the gentleman, maybe you could add something. But for those of us who never met or even heard of this soul, this is all we can look upon.
Gentlemen, turn your collar to the wind and lower your fedora. Ladies, open your parasols and hold tight to them. In Epitaphs: Part III, I will present you with the ultimate engraving that contains, in essence, an entire philosophy of life. It is reputed to be one of the longest epitaphs in America. And it stands on a hill, in a beautiful cemetery, that looks down upon the town where I grew up.
Until next time…..
May 22, 2013
Boy, You’ve Got To Carry That Weight
It’s been said that the human soul weighs 21 grams.
A gram is equal to the weight of a standard paper clip. So, if you hold 21 paper clips in the palm of your hand, you’re hold what amounts to the heft of an eternal soul…a soul that will spend all of time in eternal bliss or never-ending torment. 21 paper clips! That’s a pretty small amount for such a precarious an item as a human soul.
I’ve been doing some thinking about this and my musings has led me to astonishing places. I own an iPhone and I’ve been hard at work calculating the weight (really it’s called ‘mass’, but I’ll stick with ‘weight’) of email. My phone, like everyone else’s, receives a ton of text messages, voice mail, email and photos, among other things. Most of this comes to me from those people I care about, but, alas, some comes unsolicited, i.e., junk mail. I really don’t want to know about a bargain condominium in Boca Raton or a relaxing get-away weekend flight to Thule, Greenland. This avalanche of data begins to make my iPhone heavy. So much so, that if I carry it in my pants pocket, my pants begin to sag and droop down my leg forcing me to tighten my belt which in turn cuts off circulation between my torso and my thighs. It can get ugly, I tell you. So, I delete. I delete every day. If I’m in an aggressive deleting mood on certain days, I do so with abandon. The little rubber nub at the tip of my stylus begins to show signs of stress fractures about the width of three microns. Soon I’ll have to spring for a new stylus. $18.00 for a plastic pen-like thing that won’t even write.
But, I digress.
The general rule, as I see it, is that the fewer emails and such, the lighter my iPhone becomes. But this brings on a new and very serious dilemma: some emails are heavier than others and I am forced to make a value choice. There are texts from my wife about not forgetting to buy the Skim Milk. A reminder of a doctor’s appointment. A photo of my new grandson. Some weird object or broken down barn that caught my eye while driving. A note from my son thanking me for getting him two tickets for a Broadway show. A birthday wish. A simple “I love you” from someone I love in return.
I want to keep these special emotes, but I can’t keep them all. My pants would sag. So, how do I choose what goes and what stays? I’ve come up with a rough rubric to solve this situation:
Some stuff is too heavy to hold onto. A threat of an argument. A negative comment. A bad reminder of a bad memory. These go.
Some messages are light and airy like a cloud…like smoke rising from a campfire…like morning mist rising from the lake. The love notes….a promise kept…a secret revealed…an image of an infant, smiling his first smile and caught in pixels for all time by an…an iPhone. These stay.
Once upon a time, many of these connections were made over a telephone. But they had to be stored in your head. Maybe that explains why people in the 1950′s seemed to walk around with their heads hanging. Now, this slim package of diodes and chips are, at once, your wallet, purse, scrapbook, phone book, tape recorder, camera, arcade and library. It’s all there in the palm of your hand. And it fits nearly everywhere. Now, that’s heavy. Heavier than your soul.
So heavy, it can make your pants sag.
May 19, 2013
The Clock On The Wall: A Play In Eight Acts
Act 1: Sitting at an IBM workbench.
I knew the call would come soon. I was soldering diodes onto a computer chip. The resin smoked. The phone rang in my manager’s office. Go home to your wife, he said, she called and said it’s time. I pass by the electronic parts window. A guy says to play with them a lot and soon. They grow up fast he called after me. I pace the waiting room thumbing old copies of Argosy. Early ’70′s, fathers-to-be weren’t allowed in the Delivery Room, remember. The doctor pushes through the door. Erin is here, he says. Then he leaves. In a short time I’m standing in a hallway and looking at the bassinet the nurse had pushed to the glass window. I look down. A red face looks back at me. Erin is swaddled tight like a pharoh’s wife. I look and think about the future. There is a clock on the wall of the white room. I think about grabbing the hands and stopping time. Off to call the family.
Act 2: An apartment in Scranton.
I’m working full-time as a teacher. That will take care of the next thirty-five years of my life. You crawl and get into everything your hands can grab. I sip a glass of wine at dinner and look over at you in your high-chair, your head is down and your cheeks are sitting in the mashed potatoes and peas. They stick to your face when we move you. You look like you’re part vegetable. Your hair is light, not blonde, not red…but somewhere in that mix.
Act 3: The white farmhouse on the hill.
You seem to fall asleep in the oddest places. I placed you on a potty chair and go to get a cold beer (we’re having a family reunion). I come back and you are slumped on the little seat with your head resting nicely on your shoulder. Were you dreaming about long ago when you went out into the world wrapped in a Pamper? Some years later, I play kickball with you on our lawn. Your face gets red. My heartbeat rises. There is chill in the late afternoon. Your shadow is long upon the grass. I wonder about your life to come.
Act 4: On a visit to the grandparents.
It’s thumb numbing cold as we take you to the IBM golf course where people are sledding. There is a small (I thought) rise in the snow about half way down. I got it alone. Testing. I hit the bump. The toboggan and I are airborne. Too many seconds later we crashed back to the packed snow. Toboggan goes here. I go there. My eye glasses go somewhere else entirely. You rush forward yelling. Is Daddy going to do that again? No, I said, wiping the ice from my glasses.
Act 5: Scene 1–Many years later.
You are in Dickinson College. You have made it your job to post the most recent Top Ten List from the Letterman Show. You are the expert when discussing Car Talk to anyone. We come to visit you and see you in a play staged by the Mermaid Players. It’s a Langston Hughes drama. (It’s like sticking pins in my eyes, after all, when the last words of Act 1 is Oh My God, Oh My God you know it’ll be a rough road). I’m having a hard time wondering how my quiet, shy daughter will project from the stage. We take you to lunch on the afternoon of the performance. You gently inform your dad that your character will be a victim of an attempted rape. I’m sweating. Will I storm the stage?
Act 5: Scene 2 Many more years later.
Now your living in Georgia and Germany and Arizona and Savannah and India and D.C. and Washington. We visit you in Germany and you take us to Dachau. We leave with heavy hearts. We visit you in Arizona and you take us horseback riding in the desert. We see you less and less as you see more and more of the world. I think again of the white room and the hands of the clock.
Act 6: Drinking coffee in Tacoma (what an unusual thing to do).
I walk you down the path in a field near Orting, WA. You’re marrying the man you love, Bob. ”In My Life” is playing from the box. Your loved ones have gathered to witness the marriage. There is a rainbow in the cloudy skies toward Rainer. Only someone watching me closely will notice a tear run down my cheek. My heart is bursting with happiness for you. And, under your white smock, a tiny life is growing.
Act 7: The late night phone call.
We wait and read and wait again. Your a nation away and in a hospital room, a delivery room (Is it white? Is there a clock?) The call comes on January 9, 2012. A boy! The two of you take your time deciding on a name. Finally: Elias Muir. A good name that reflects many ideas and feelings. A month later, I look into my grandson’s eyes. I’m in there somewhere. His fingernail contains a bit of my DNA. He sees me. He doesn’t know me, yet, but he’s staring. He falls asleep in the oddest places…like my lap…for nearly four hours during the Super Bowl. When you take him, I barely make it to the bathroom. I had no idea my bladder would hold off until the fourth quarter.
Act 8: The denouement.
We were in orbit around each other for years. A long time ago, you grew up, just like the guy at IBM said (but he failed to tell me how really, really fast that time would pass). You grew up and the little child I kicked the ball with found other planets to orbit. That’s the way that life goes. It goes on and on, unbroken. When you looked at your son moments after he was born, I’m sure you kissed him. I had to wait about an hour before I got to kiss you. I never thought I’d be a grandfather, but here I am. And I’m old now, there’s no other way around it. It’s as it should be. It’s as it has to be. But, please, whatever the future holds for me, promise me you will look at him like I looked at you (you’ll have to picture that part), and watch over him like I watched over you. And play with him. Play hard with him, because the time will pass so much faster than you could possibly imagine. The stage is set now for you, Bob and Elias. Go out and play the scene well.
I’ll wait in the wings.
