I was born at the end of the decade
that began when naked people were being gassed in big rooms they thought were
showers.
In first grade I learned to crouch on my elbows and knees underneath my little desk, clasping my hands over the back of my neck and waiting uncomfortably for the air-raid alarm to stop buzzing. In eighth grade, I read Death Be Not Proud during recess and wondered whether the world would end the next day because Khruschev had called Kennedy’s bluff or vice-versa.
In first grade I learned to crouch on my elbows and knees underneath my little desk, clasping my hands over the back of my neck and waiting uncomfortably for the air-raid alarm to stop buzzing. In eighth grade, I read Death Be Not Proud during recess and wondered whether the world would end the next day because Khruschev had called Kennedy’s bluff or vice-versa.
In ninth grade, I watched on TV the
funeral of the assassinated President. A few years later, my college
education was regularly interrupted when North Vietnam was bombed, when my
college’s administration building was overtaken by African American students,
and when students at Kent State University were gunned down by the National
Guard. As a young adult I saw cars queue up at gas stations to claim their
share, and that same year, I participated in the dark Christmas, when there was
no light to spare. I saw another President resign because he was a crook
even though he had said he wasn’t. I lost a child to birth defects; I
watched my husband, whom standardized tests had categorized as a genius, surrender to mental illness.
Evil or ill-timed or unfortunate,
these events were fathomable. Scrutinizing them, I stole from each some
crumb of meaning. But now in this current mood of prosperity and well being,
there is little to sustain me. In my workplace my colleagues boast
daily about the increasing value of their mutual funds and retirement benefits,
even as they complain that they are not being paid enough for the too much work
they do today. In my home nightly the news anchor talks of the stock
market’s endless recoveries and gains. With televisions programmed to display never-ending tickertape of
the dollars and cents of the nation, acquaintances chew their steaks,
discuss the weather, and flush the toilet. I listen to my college-age
children talk about the stock-options and career paths they have mapped out to
maximize their take before their expensive, hard-earned skills are no longer
marketable. I see my aging parents struggle to keep up with the
pace of change via computers, recreational vehicles, and vacations from their
retirement.
I don't get any of it.
Perhaps it is that there is no meaningful work to do—we express our instinct
and will to survive using the media of our time, twice or thrice removed from
the ultimate sources of our well being. To us, work means having a job,
bringing home a paycheck, salting some of its value away for days when we may no longer bring home paychecks as large, and spending the rest on an
endlessly evolving supply of technological devices whose supposed purpose is to
make our lives easier and, as a result, happier. We have
forgotten how to use our hands to put food on our tables and into our mouths,
and we have no way to understand what that means.
I am not sure that living easier makes people happier than they would be
otherwise. I have considered what I might do if I were really, really wealthy.
I might go to France or California. I might install a heated
swimming pool in my backyard and build a glass house over it so I could
swim when the temperature dipped below zero. I might buy my mutt a heated pillow to sleep on. I might give a million
dollars to my Alma Mater to establish a chair of Contemporary Ponderance in my
name. I might buy my second husband a Porsche and my father a condo in
Florida, not because I think these things would be good for either of them but
because that’s what they have dreamed of, and I would be their hero. For myself, I might buy another dog.
It’s a good thing I am not really, really wealthy. For one thing, my
fuzzy mutt is quite cozy, healthy, and happy without a heated pillow:
he sometimes sleeps between me and the cold wall next to my bed, where the
temperature and the camaraderie are to his liking. I
would miss him, even if a dog with a more respectable pedigree replaced
him. And with a modicum of effort in winter I can find a public pool to
swim in. My backyard, if I were to take the time to consider it
carefully, is far more interesting, I know, than France or California, if only
because I have lived on its edge for years and know its seasons and its
cycles. My husband, who drives a Geo Metro, has become accustomed
to getting 50 miles to the gallon and bragging about it; presenting him with a
Porsche would deprive him of that pleasure. My father, who speaks of
Florida so wishfully, routinely with his snowblower dispenses for free the snow
in the driveways and paths of his aging New Hampshire neighbors, a champion because
of it.
My Alma Mater will have to make do without another chair.
My Alma Mater will have to make do without another chair.