But oh, how many possibilities there were ahead of me and my brother in that day! A brand-new conscience was jut coming into existence as an actual, operating function of a soul. My choices were just about to become responsible. My mind was clean and unformed enough to receive any set of standards, and work with the most perfect of them, and work with grace itself, and God's own values, if I had ever had the chance.
Here was a will, neutral, undirected, a force waiting to be applied, ready to generate tremendous immanent powers of light or darkness, peace or conflict, order or confusion, love or sin. The bias which my will was to acquire from the circumstances of all its acts would eventually be the direction of my whole being toward happiness or misery, life or death, heaven or hell.
More than that: since no man ever can, or could, live by himself and for himself alone, the destinies of thousands of other people were bound to be affected, some remotely, but some very directly and near-at-hand, by my own choices and decisions and desires, as my own life would also be formed and modified according to theirs. I was entering into a moral universe in which whole masses of us, as thick as swarming bees, would drag one another along towards some common end of good or evil, peace or war.
I think it must have been after Mother went to the hospital that, one Sunday, I went to the Quaker meeting house with Father. He had explained to me that the people came and sat there, silent, doing nothing, saying nothing, until the Holy Spirit moved someone to speak. He also told me that a famous gentleman, who was one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, would be there. That was Dan Beard. Consequently, I sat among the Quakers with three more or less equal preoccupations running through my mind. Where was Dan Beard? Would he not only be called beard, but have one on his chin? And what was the Holy Spirit going to move all these people to do or say?
I forget how the third question was answered. But after the man sitting on the high wooden rostrum, presiding over the Quakers, gave the signal that the meeting was ended, I saw Dan Beard among the people under the low sunny porch, outside the meeting house door. He had a beard.
It was almost in the last year or so of Mother's life, 1921, that Father got a job as organist at the Episcopalian church in Douglaston. It was not a job that made him very happy or enthusiastic. He did not get along very well with the minister. But I began to go to the church on Sundays, which makes me think that Mother was in the hospital, because I must have been living with Pop and Bonnemaman in Douglaston.
Merton is still quite young when he attends the Quaker service. Five to seven years of age, I believe. As a person who is untreated ADD, I can't imagine sitting in a church pew in silence at a young age for any extended period of time. To wait for the Holy Spirit to reach down and jump start anything would have been an excruciating test of patience and willpower for me. Merton, who seems to have been just as full of passions and energies as I was at seven, must have gone a little bonkers in that Quaker meeting house.
My son takes after me a lot. While I never really got in a whole lot of trouble in school when I was his age (I was labeled a little "too social" by my teachers--translation: I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut), my son has been in and out of principals' offices since he started kindergarten. He has been diagnosed with ADHD and takes medication to help with that. In addition, he has anger and impulsivity issues. When he was around six years old, I remember him running away from me in a church parking lot. When I told him to get in the car, he cocked his head and yelled "fuck you" at the top of his lungs, causing quite a few blue-haired women leaving the church to quake with the Holy Spirit.
I love my son, but we clash a lot because we are so similar in temperament. Passionate about the things that interest us, and bored to distraction with anything else. My whole life, however, I've also been sort of driven to succeed at any endeavor of which I'm a part. I don't give up, no matter how difficult or distasteful or uninteresting I may find the experience. That's the way I was raised, and I've tried to instill in my kids the same ethic. Quitting just isn't an option. Ever.
My son, however, is stubborn. (I think this is a part of his other behavioral problems.) He doesn't like being told what to do. Therefore, sometimes, when he's involved in an activity that requires some discipline and practice, he has a tendency to give up, especially if he has lost interest in the activity. Right now, he is at one of those giving-up moments, and it is bothering me. A lot.
I've been praying about this situation a great deal today. Trying to figure out how to respond to my son's decision. So far, I haven't come up with anything constructive. Most of my solutions involve my son either getting a job (he's only eleven, so that may not be an option), or running laps around the block until his eighteenth birthday (another non-option, as that may be misconstrued as child abuse). How do you make an eleven-year-old understand the value of reliability and perseverance?
I don't think my son is Thomas Merton reincarnated. Can't really imagine as a monk or candidate for sainthood. He is simply being his orange self again, and I need to somehow accept that. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the poem below.)
Saint Marty is a reformed orange kid himself.
Orange Day
by: Martin Achatz
My son had an orange day
in kindergarten, stuck crayons
in his ears, red in his left,
yellow in his right. Chased
kids at morning recess,
tried to lick them, his tongue
a pink bullet in the barrel
of his mouth. Sat under his desk,
screamed like a peacock at dusk,
roosted in dogwood above Georgia
clay, while his classmates practiced
their numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, up to 100.
Took off his shoes, socks, spread
his monkey toes, picked up
a brush with them, painted
water lilies in a pond on the floor
where sunlight sparked purple,
pink. Chewed his mac and cheese
at lunch to orange glue, spat it
on the table, made a map of Hannibal's
journey over the Alps, raisin
elephants on the highest peaks.
Beat plastic drums in music class,
refused to make that damn spider
climb the water spout, instead
played Ligeti's Atmospheres,
moonrise over the monolith
of his chimpanzee heart.
His teacher calls me at night, says
she's at a loss with my son,
doesn't know what to do
with his untamed ways.
I want to tell her it's all about
evolution, that he's learning
how to walk upright, hunt
through pinecone and maple
for blueberries, slabs of bloody
venison. Give him time, I want
to say. To learn the agriculture
of her classroom, its fields, furrows,
seasons of alphabet, trapezoid,
computer and gym. In this epoch,
he won't be caught in tar lakes
underneath asteroid rain. He will
survive, become a new link.
Homo kindergartenus. Note
the wide scoop of his skull to accommodate
all he will know by year's end.
His cave drawings hang on our fridge.
Concentric orange circles, bull's-eyes.
"See," my son points, "this is King
Pumpkin. He's bigger and oranger
than the rest." I stare at his paintings,
feel the planet skip, stars reorganize,
something end, something begin.
The dawning of a new age.
Tonight, I'll pack his lunch,
for another orange day.
Apple juice, carrot sticks,
maybe a grilled cheese sandwich.
It's supposed to rain tomorrow,
enough to make the mastodons
hunker down in the woods,
orange hair slick with mud, moss.
Maybe my son will find
them there, in the trees
behind the playground. He'll climb
into their orange center where all
he can hear is breaths.
Deep, orange breaths.
He'll skip school. Stay there
for the rest of the day.
Happy. Wild. Orange.
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