Merton returns home and goes to the movies . . .
May came, and all the trees on Long Island were green, and when the train from the city got past Bayside and started across the meadows to Douglaston, you could see the pale, soft haze of summer beginning to hang over the bay, and count the boats that had been set afloat again after the winter, and were riding jauntily at their moorings off the end of the little dock. And now in the lengthening evenings the dining-room was still light with the rays of the sun when Pop came home for dinner, slamming the front door and whooping at the dog and smacking the surface of the hall table with the evening paper to let everybody know that he had arrived.
Soon John Paul was home from his school in Pennsylvania, and my exams were over, and we had nothing to do but go swimming and hang around the house playing hot records. And in the evening we would wander off to some appalling movie where we nearly died of boredom. We did not have a car, and my uncle would not let us touch the family Buick. It would not have done me any good anyway, because I never learned to drive. So most of the time, we would get a ride to Great Neck and then walk back the two or three miles along the wide road when the show was over.
Why did we ever go to all those movies? That is another mystery. But I think John Paul and I and our various friends must have seen all the movies that were produced, without exception, from 1934 to 1937. And most of them were simply awful. What is more, they got worse from week to week and from month to month, and day after day we hated them more. My ears are ringing with the false, gay music that used to announce the Fox movietone and the Paramount newsreels with the turning camera that slowly veered its aim right at your face. My mind still echoes with the tones of Pete Smith and Fitzpatrick of the Travel-talks saying, “And now farewell to beautiful New South Wales.”
And yet I confess a secret loyalty to the memory of my great heroes: Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Harpo Marx, and many others whose names I have forgotten. But their pictures were rare, and for the rest, we found ourselves perversely admiring the villains and detesting the heroes. The truth is that the villains were almost always the better actors. We were delighted with everything they did. We were almost always in danger of being thrown out of the theater for our uproarious laughter at scenes that were supposed to be most affecting, tender, and appealing to the finer elements in the human soul—the tears of Jackie Cooper, the brave smile of Alice Faye behind the bars of a jail.
The movies soon turned into a kind of hell for me and my brother and indeed for all my closest friends. We could not keep away from them. We were hypnotized by those yellow flickering lights and the big posters of Don Ameche. Yet as soon as we got inside, the suffering of having to sit and look at such colossal stupidities became so acute that we sometimes actually felt physically sick. In the end, it got so that I could hardly sit through a show. It was like lighting cigarettes and taking a few puffs and throwing them away, appalled by the vile taste in one’s mouth.
In 1935 and 1936, without my realizing it, life was slowly, once more, becoming almost intolerable.
In the fall of 1936, John Paul went to Cornell, and I went back to Columbia, full of all kinds of collegiate enthusiasms, so that in a moment of madness I even gave my name for the Varsity light-weight crew. After a couple of days on the Harlem River and then on the Hudson, when we tried to row to Yonkers and back in what seemed to me to be a small hurricane, I decided that I did not wish to die so young, and after that carefully avoided the Boat-House all the rest of the time I was in college.
Once again, young Merton falls into a pattern in his life that proves to be empty and unsatisfying. Merton the memoirist is slowly building his case that his existence was meaningless before he discovered his religious vocation. All the normal distractions of daily life--school, home, movies, and such--just leave a vile taste in his mouth, like smoking cigarettes when you've never smoked before.
Today has been a day that I'm glad is behind me. I worked from home, making phone calls and typing up proposals and sending e-mails. Dreaming up new programming ideas for the library. And I taught a class at the college in between the e-mails and dreaming. That part of my day was wonderful.
The difficult part of the day was my son, who was in a rare state of adolescent defiance that included sneaking out of the house when he was supposed to be going to a doctor's appointment, butting me in the face with his head, and screaming that I was a "fucking shitty father." I was no saint in this confrontation. It felt like I was under attack, so I tried to hold my ground, remain calm. I failed. I found myself yelling back at him, physically restraining him a couple of times when he charged me. In short, by the time it was all over, I pretty much felt like a fucking shitty father.
So, as I sit here typing this post, I have a vile taste lingering in my mouth from today, plus a little bit of a fat lip from my son's skull smashing into my face. I am ready for this day to be over, but I know, in the morning, I face a new fresh hell with my son again.
Everyone has a breaking point, I suppose. I think I reached mine this afternoon. I was angry and tired, frustrated beyond the point of speech. Instead of stepping away, taking some deep breaths, I charged into the valley with sword drawn. I didn't recognize who I was.
After my son stormed out of the house, I spent the next hour or so crying.
I don't expect life to be perfect or easy. That's a fantasy. I don't expect my son to do what I tell him to do all the time. That's also unrealistic. He just turned twelve, and he's trying to figure out who he is. If I place expectations on my son, I set myself up for failure. Day after day after day. My expectations are not my son's.
So, I stand before you tonight a little broken and bruised, not wanting to face morning's light. Perhaps, after a night of sleep, I will find my center again. Become a better person.
Another expectation. Saint Marty will never learn.
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