Our friend the teamster Pierrot was a huge, powerful man, but he did not play on the football team. He was too lazy and too dignified, although he would have been a decorative addition to the outfit. There were three or four others like him, big men with huge black moustaches and bristling eyebrows, as wild as the traditional representations of Gog and Magog. One of them used to play whole games wearing a grey, peaked street-cap. I suppose if we had ever played on a really hot day he would have come out on the field with a straw hat on. Anyway, this element of the team would have made a fine subject for Douanier-Rousseau, and Pierrot would have fitted admirably. Only his sport was sitting at the table of a cafe imbibing cognac. Sometimes, too, he made excursions to Toulouse, and once, while we were standing on the bridge, he gave me a bloodcurdling description of a fight he had had with an Arab, with a knife, in the big city.
It was Pierrot who took us to a wedding feast at a farm up by Caylus. I went to several of these feasts, during the time when I was at St. Antonin, and I never saw anything so Gargantuan: and yet it was never wild or disordered. The peasants and the foresters and the others who were there certainly ate and drank tremendously: but they never lost their dignity as human beings. They sang and danced and played tricks on one another, and the language was often fairly coarse, but in a manner which was more or less according to custom, and on the whole the atmosphere was good and healthy, and all this pleasure was sanctified by a Sacramental occasion.
On this occasion Pierrot put on his good black suit and his clean cap and hitched up a gig, and we drove to Caylus. It was the farm of his uncle or cousin. The place was crowded with carts and carriages , and the feast was a more or less communal affair. Everybody had provided something towards it, and Father brought a bottle of strong, black Greek wine which nearly pulverized the host.
There were too many guests to be contained in the big dining room and kitchen of the farm, with its blood-sausage and strings of onions hanging from the beams. One of the barns had been cleaned out and tables had been set up in there, and about one o-clock in the afternoon everybody sat down and began to eat. After the soups, the women began to bring in the main courses from the kitchen: and there were plates and plates of every kind of meat. Rabbit, veal, mutton, lamb, beef, stews and steaks, and fowl, fried, boiled, braised, roasted, sauteed, fricasseed, dished this way and that way, with wine sauces and all other kinds of sauces, with practically nothing else to go with it except an occasional piece of potato or carrot or onion in the garnishing.
My favorite phrase in this whole passage is ". . . all this pleasure was sanctified by a Sacramental occasion." Yes, there's coarse language and lots of alcohol, people playing tricks on each other, and enough food to choke an army. Even with all of this excess and indulging, there is still something holy about the festivities, Two people, pledging to be there for each other, in sickness and health, richer and poorer, in good times and in bad, for better or worse.
I have always tried to be a good husband and father. Worked hard to provide for my family, holding two and three and four jobs at a time. I try to be present at all my kids' big occasions--concerts and sporting events and plays and musicals and recitals. Plan special occasions with my wife--plays and movies and dinners. I'm not perfect by any means. I have made tons and tons of mistakes.
Yet, I have done my best, in the face of a lot of struggles. I have a beautiful, smart daughter who wants to be a doctor. I have a son who makes me laugh all the time and is smarter than he realizes (all A's and B's on his last report card, and the kid doesn't even try). And I have a wife whom I love very deeply. All of those things make me pretty darn lucky.
I can describe myself in a lot of ways. If a person asks me, "What do you do?"--I may answer that I'm a poet or teacher or professor or church organist or medical office worker. Each one of those titles describes a certain part of who I am. But the two most important jobs I have, or will ever have, are father and spouse. My family is the reason I do all those other things.
Maybe I'm old fashioned. I believe in love at first sight, because I've experienced it. I believe that fatherhood is more than biology--it's about sacrifice and commitment. Putting the needs of my family above everything else. That's who I am.
Goodness is hard work. In fact, it can be fatal. Think Mother Teresa working with the poor in Calcutta. Oscar Romero assassinated for preaching peace and human dignity. That doesn't mean that goodness isn't worth it. It means that goodness comes at a cost, no matter what. Whether you're a saint or father, poet or martyr.
Saint Marty will always choose goodness, for better or worse.
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