For two days it was all rush - airport on Thursday, get to New Haven and the wedding dinner, then Friday the wedding itself. Saturday, the aftermath, and Sunday a brief respite before the rush on back to O'Hare. Largely because of my brother's wedding and its timing, nothing was traditional. I don't believe I saw a shred of turkey or stuffing anywhere. And we, my cohorts and I, had become the home crowd, the centers of ceremonies, for the old people, our parent's crowd, are either dead or incapacitated. Odd in all, although not bad either, with two outstanding facets for this blog.
One: the guests of the wedding were to stay at The Study, a hotel on the edge of the Yale campus that catered to the concept of an American elite set. Books by Yale authors were laid about, while references to tradition, to Yale football, to famous members, and to the gripping present (former Pres Carter was to give a speech on campus the following week!) made one believe in that rarefied air, the sense of an unofficial American nobility of greater ability and influence that keep the Ivy League in business.
We are, I suppose, supposed to resent it if we are not included and I suppose I did and am a bit, but that is not the outstanding facet. Rather, it was the juxtaposition of the elite and the street, for outside The Study on the edge of campus was The City. We walked around that Friday morning looking for congratulation cards, for forgotten items of hygiene in the drug store, and for the best pizza in the US, and found much more - the America of the city, the drug addicted, the alcoholics, the insane who wander dazed or strung out in filthy clothing to beg. I know this is nothing new for those who live in the big city, and I have lived there myself, in Philadelphia and Caracas, and it is always the same, but the black and white of it, of Yale superiority and beggars in the street, called out for thought. The poor will always be amongst us, Jesus said, and he is right (of course), for wherever civilization is, there is hierarchy and always will be, regardless of politics. But these were not the poor- they were the lost, so many found cheek and jowl with the found, with the connected and smart and talented, with the people for whom civilization was created - and who continue to recreate it.
I will not get political about it, for that, too, recreates a hierarchy of sorts, but simply wonder about the have and have nots; why, again, are the loosers, those on the bottom, blessed? And how is it that the movers and shakers, the doers and the talented and the hard workers are fallen, are beggars themselves at the Lord's table?
Two: visiting my mother at the dementia section of the old folk's home. We go to the third floor, my bothers and wife and son and I, and the door is locked so that the inmates cannot escape into the cold, to wander and die. My mother is brought out, more dazed than usual from her nap, her teeth out, and she is skeletal. It takes my breath away. I am immediately reminded of the ancient mummies found recently in caves high in the Andes of Peru. She comes to life slowly, and with time and the cups of juice we hold to her mouth, the words form, the eyes knitted trying to make them come together to make sense. My niece comes then, her two year old with her, and my mother brightens at her baby's light blond hair. She had beamed on seeing me, too, knowing who I was while not being able to grasp a name, any name.
Still, she knows, as a passive baby might know, not having words but having a sense and that sense is simple. After some time we have to go to the airport and I hug her in her wheelchair as I never would have when she was one of us, the rationals, and she holds my hand for warmth and tells me so, clearly, and says just as clearly that she is glad to see me, and then presses my warm hand to her cheek and kisses it.
That is all the goodbye that there is, she left smiling and a little dazed in her wheelchair as the elevator door closes and my younger brother goofs, pretending to hold off crying to keep from holding off crying. She could never address a room of the smart and talented now; she would not be welcomed as the ancient but still rational and well-connected former Pres Carter will be at Yale. I can barely write of this myself, as hackneyed and used a platform that it is, but I do anyway because it is real. There was more to that visit than the movers and shakers could give, not because they are bad, but because they are here, they are part of this world that we have made, so complex and layered. But we see how the poor of spirit are welcomed, for sometimes in their alienation they are the ones who really are for real, with hearts that are uncovered. They do not grasp for the future because they have none. It is all here now, all they have, and when it is beautiful, it is beautiful, simply and just so, as the first rays of morning on the first day that is every day. FK
One: the guests of the wedding were to stay at The Study, a hotel on the edge of the Yale campus that catered to the concept of an American elite set. Books by Yale authors were laid about, while references to tradition, to Yale football, to famous members, and to the gripping present (former Pres Carter was to give a speech on campus the following week!) made one believe in that rarefied air, the sense of an unofficial American nobility of greater ability and influence that keep the Ivy League in business.
We are, I suppose, supposed to resent it if we are not included and I suppose I did and am a bit, but that is not the outstanding facet. Rather, it was the juxtaposition of the elite and the street, for outside The Study on the edge of campus was The City. We walked around that Friday morning looking for congratulation cards, for forgotten items of hygiene in the drug store, and for the best pizza in the US, and found much more - the America of the city, the drug addicted, the alcoholics, the insane who wander dazed or strung out in filthy clothing to beg. I know this is nothing new for those who live in the big city, and I have lived there myself, in Philadelphia and Caracas, and it is always the same, but the black and white of it, of Yale superiority and beggars in the street, called out for thought. The poor will always be amongst us, Jesus said, and he is right (of course), for wherever civilization is, there is hierarchy and always will be, regardless of politics. But these were not the poor- they were the lost, so many found cheek and jowl with the found, with the connected and smart and talented, with the people for whom civilization was created - and who continue to recreate it.
I will not get political about it, for that, too, recreates a hierarchy of sorts, but simply wonder about the have and have nots; why, again, are the loosers, those on the bottom, blessed? And how is it that the movers and shakers, the doers and the talented and the hard workers are fallen, are beggars themselves at the Lord's table?
Two: visiting my mother at the dementia section of the old folk's home. We go to the third floor, my bothers and wife and son and I, and the door is locked so that the inmates cannot escape into the cold, to wander and die. My mother is brought out, more dazed than usual from her nap, her teeth out, and she is skeletal. It takes my breath away. I am immediately reminded of the ancient mummies found recently in caves high in the Andes of Peru. She comes to life slowly, and with time and the cups of juice we hold to her mouth, the words form, the eyes knitted trying to make them come together to make sense. My niece comes then, her two year old with her, and my mother brightens at her baby's light blond hair. She had beamed on seeing me, too, knowing who I was while not being able to grasp a name, any name.
Still, she knows, as a passive baby might know, not having words but having a sense and that sense is simple. After some time we have to go to the airport and I hug her in her wheelchair as I never would have when she was one of us, the rationals, and she holds my hand for warmth and tells me so, clearly, and says just as clearly that she is glad to see me, and then presses my warm hand to her cheek and kisses it.
That is all the goodbye that there is, she left smiling and a little dazed in her wheelchair as the elevator door closes and my younger brother goofs, pretending to hold off crying to keep from holding off crying. She could never address a room of the smart and talented now; she would not be welcomed as the ancient but still rational and well-connected former Pres Carter will be at Yale. I can barely write of this myself, as hackneyed and used a platform that it is, but I do anyway because it is real. There was more to that visit than the movers and shakers could give, not because they are bad, but because they are here, they are part of this world that we have made, so complex and layered. But we see how the poor of spirit are welcomed, for sometimes in their alienation they are the ones who really are for real, with hearts that are uncovered. They do not grasp for the future because they have none. It is all here now, all they have, and when it is beautiful, it is beautiful, simply and just so, as the first rays of morning on the first day that is every day. FK
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