I took my daughter for her driving test this afternoon. She has been sick to her stomach all weekend long over it. Cranky. Short-tempered. I understand. She's been driving for many months now. Most of her friends already have their licenses. She did not want to fail the test.
And she didn't. It was a tense half hour of parallel parking and driving, but she did well. Tomorrow, she goes to the Secretary of State office, and tomorrow night, she will be asking me for the keys to my car. I have entered a new stage in fathering.
Seven years ago, I was thinking about how my daughter was going to remember me . . .
October 27, 2010: Saint Namatius
I often wonder what kind of legacy I'm going to leave behind. As a writer, of course, I want to leave behind a few books that people are still reading fifty or a hundred years after I die. As a father, I want to be remembered by my daughter and son as a presence of love and support. I want my daughter to remember the nights I read Charlotte's Web to her, doing character voices, making her imagine the manure pile in Wilbur's barn. I want my son to remember the nights I sang him to sleep, rubbing his head and back like I was polishing a delicate flute of Waterford crystal. As a teacher, I want my students to remember me as a person who taught them how to live better lives (and hopefully avoid comma splices). As a Christian, I honestly don't know what my legacy is going to be. It may be this blog, floating out in cyberspace like a note floating in a bottle in the Pacific. Forever unread.
The saints who intrigue me the most are the ones whose biographies start out something like this: "Not much is known about Saint Joe Schmo..." It's as if their entire lives are empty chalkboards, and, yet, they're regarded holy enough to be saints. That's astounding to me. That would be like me winning the Nobel Prize in Literature because the members of the Swedish Academy heard from a friend's cousin that I'm a good writer. It just doesn't work that way.
Last
night, I started teaching a spiritual journaling workshop. It was a
good first night, with a lot of sharing of stories and backgrounds. The
focus of the session was trying to define what our "present periods"
are and how we all go about trying to preserve our histories and pasts.
At one point in the evening, we discussed cemeteries and how visiting
one gives you a sense of clarity and peace. I have been a cemetery
stalker for a long time (not in the Ouija board, chicken blood sense). I
find strolling among headstones, reading names, noting birth and death
dates, grounds me. It reminds me of how trivial most of the things that
occupy my days really are. And it also reminds me that, when I'm long
gone from this little rock of a planet, the only physical reminder that
I've walked, breathed, spoken, took craps, loved my wife and children,
or wrote poetry is going to be a piece of marble with my name chiseled
into it. That's it. For a majority of the residents of cemeteries,
that's the sum total of their legacies. A slab of cold stone.
That's
not a very comforting thought. To be honest, it scares the shit out of
me. I guess I haven't quite left behind the ten-year-old boy who
wanted to be the next Stephen King. I can't shake the fantasy that, one
day, some huge literary agent is going to stumble across my blog and
send me an e-mail with these words in the subject line: "YOU ARE THE
BE$T WRITER I'VE EVER READ! PLEA$E LET ME REPRE$ENT YOU!" Or something
like that. I'm not sure if this scenario is a reflection of my
stubborn refusal to accept reality or a genuine possibility for a
lucrative, successful writing career. I just don't want to give up my
dream, because, without my dream, I'm just one step away from being Al
Bundy in my own version of Married With Children.
Which
brings me back to my original question of what my legacy is going to
be, the thing or things for which I'm going to be remembered. If I'm
remembered at all. I'm not a saint. I will never be a saint. I can't
imagine doing anything for a sustained period that even remotely
resembles being saintly. Let me give you an example: today's feast is
for Namatius, a man who was the Bishop of Clermont, France, in the
400s. Namatius and his wife (yes, Catholic bishops were allowed to
marry at one time) are best known for building cathedrals filled with
beautiful artwork. His wife created the Bible of the Poor--"sacred
images figuratively transcribed from the revealed texts." Basically,
she created picture book Bibles on church walls for the illiterate
poor. By the way, none of this information is first-hand. This stuff
comes from stories told by Saint Gregory of Tours about Namatius and his
wife, which, in my book, is like being nominated for sainthood by a
nephew of the chief saint-maker committee guy. (There's an actual
title, I believe, but you get the idea.) The point is: legacy is tied
to memory, and memory is subject to human failings (like too many Jell-O
shots at a Halloween party). I'm not saying Saint Gregory got it wrong
on Namatius. He probably didn't. But who's to know?
So,
I'm just going to keep writing my posts, taking care of my family, and
dreaming. Who knows what could happen? I don't think there's a patron
saint for bloggers yet. Now I just have to find someone to nominate me
after I'm gone.
You know, the nephew of that chief saint-maker committee guy.
And a poem for this evening about broken dreams . . .
Without Words
by: Martin Achatz
Some things leave me without words.
Clouds the color of spawning salmon.
A wolf spider as fat as my thumb.
Thunder in the comma of lake-effect snow.
I struggle for adequate verbs and nouns
When faced with grasshopper borealis
Or the scream of peacock at midnight.
It’s a fault line of language, deep
As hieroglyph or rune, untranslatable
By alphabet into the raw meat
Of what you feel this morning.
When your baby’s heartbeat ceases.
When joy evaporates like frost
From a windshield. What can I give you
This day of ash and sackcloth?
I open my arms to you, try
To wrap them around the universe
Of your shoulders.
God blinded Saul to peel the scales
From his eyes, make him embrace
Love. God makes me mute.
Please, take my silence.
Turn it into what you need most.
Tuna casserole. Jim Beam. Lasagna.
Fluke of whale. Minaret of Taj Mahal.
I try to shape my tongue
Into a gift of gold or myrrh to leave
At your empty crib.
first published in "The MacGuffin"
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