Merton graduates from Columbia and sets out to find happiness . . .
The last week of that school year at Columbia had been rather chaotic. Lax and Freedgood had been making futile efforts to get their belongings together and go home. Bramachari was living in their room, perched on top of a pile of books. Lax was trying to finish a novel for Professor Nobbe’s course in novel-writing, and all his friends had volunteered to take a section of the book and write it, simultaneously: but in the end the book turned out to be more or less a three-cornered affair—by Lax and me and Dona Eaton. When Nobbe got the thing in his hands he could not figure it out at all, but he gave us a B-minus, with which we were more than satisfied.
Then Lax’s mother had come to town to live near him in the last furious weeks before graduation and catch him if he collapsed. He had to take most of his meals in the apartment she had rented in Butler Hall. I sometimes went along and helped him nibble the various health-foods.
At the same time, we were planning to get a ride on an oil barge up the Hudson and the Erie Canal to Buffalo—because Lax’s brother-in-law was in the oil business. After that we would go to the town where Lax lived, which was Olean, up in that corner of New York state.
On “Class Day” we leaned out the window of Lax’s room and drank a bottle of champagne, looking at the sun on South Field, and watching the people beginning to gather under the trees in front of Hamilton, where we would all presently hear some speeches and shake hands with Nicholas Murray Butler.
It was not my business to graduate that June at all. My graduation was all over when I picked up my degree in the registrar’s office last February. However, I borrowed the cap and gown with which Dona Eaton had graduated from Barnard a year before, and went and sat with all the rest, mocking the speeches, with the edge of my sobriety slightly dulled by the celebration that had just taken place with the champagne in Furnald.
Finally we all got up and filed slowly up the rickety wooden steps to the temporary platform to shake hands with all the officials. President Butler was a much smaller man than I had expected. He looked intensely miserable, and murmured something or other to each student, as he shook hands. It was inaudible. I was given to understand that for the past six or seven years people had been in the habit of insulting him, on these occasions, as a kind of a farewell.
I didn’t say anything. I just shook his hand, and passed on. The next one I came to was Dean Hawkes who looked up with surprise, from under his bushy white eyebrows, and growled:
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
I smiled and passed on.
We did not get the ride on the oil barge, after all, but went to Olean on a train, and for the first time I saw a part of the world in which I was one day going to learn how to be very happy—and that day was not now very far away.
Merton's life is about to change. In that last paragraph, he pretty much spells it out. He's traveling to place where he will learn to be happy (my emphasis). It's not the place that's going to make him happy. It's the place where he will somehow undergo a education in which he attains happiness. There's a big difference.
I think we're all looking for happiness. There'd be something wrong with you if you set out every day to make yourself as miserable as possible. Sought out grief and tragedy. That's the job of journalists, to show up at every school shooting or plane crash or Donald Trump press conference. Places and events that engender sorrow and outrage.
It has been a little over 24 hours since I found out that my son was COVID-positive. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening watching Christmas movies. Normally, after doing my four hours for the library on Saturday morning, I would have spent four or five hours getting ready to play the pipe organ for the 4 p.m. Mass. Getting music prepared and practicing, and then, eventually, sitting down on the organ bench, switching on the organ, and playing. Instead, I watched A Beautiful Day and Elf and Miracle on 34th Street and The Polar Express and The Nativity Story and The End of the Tour.
It was a comforting activity. Something that, under normal circumstances, I would never have allowed myself to do. Because I'm too busy. It was like those afternoons from my childhood when my mother would make me a grilled cheese sandwich and Campbell's chicken noodle soup. I would sit by her huge hi-fi wooden stereo, eat, and listen to her records. Doris Day. Bing Crosby. The soundtrack of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Brenda Lee. Petula Clark. I felt so . . . content in those moments.
It's Sunday. I was supposed to play a service for a Lutheran church this morning. I didn't do that. Instead, I slept in, another thing I never allow myself to do. Then I got up, checked my email, and took my puppy for a spin around the backyard. I was just sinking onto the couch to do some computer work when my phone rang again.
It was the local Health Department, doing a call for contact tracing. I spent about ten minutes on the phone talking to the nurse, giving her details about each person in the house and their health conditions. She reconfirmed our quarantine and isolation times, suggesting that we all get tested, as it might shorten the time we are house-bound.
Now, I am back on the couch, watching movies again. And working. I am leading a poetry workshop this evening, so I have some prep work to do for that. Then, writing and writing and, after that, a little more writing. I haven't figured out what I'm making for dinner yet. I'm not feeling very ambitious, so I may be throwing together a ham-and-cheese quiche.
My life has slowed down these last 24 hours. Time seems to be stretching out, like a cat in a shaft of afternoon light. I am learning about happiness and gratitude. I loved watching all those movies yesterday. Grilled cheese sandwich movies. I loved the peace of not rushing from one obligation to another yesterday. Doris Day peace.
And I have felt so loved. So, so loved. People offering to drop off food and go shopping for us. More texts and IMs than I can count. I already knew that my family and friends are amazing people, but, in the middle of this pandemic and contentious election, it's easy to lose sight of the goodness that exists in the world. To feel jaded and angry. Yet, I can tell you, as Anne Frank wrote so long ago in her diary, ". . . in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."
I am learning new happiness today. A quiet happiness. Filled with kindness and compassion.
Here are a few snapshots from the last 48 hours:
- My beautiful daughter is feeling worse today. Body aches and fever. No respiratory problems.
- My beautiful friend, Rose, dropped off a Christmas turkey on our front porch this afternoon.
- My other beautiful friend, Esther, is bringing frozen pizzas and treats for my puppy tomorrow.
- My wife's beautiful cousin, Amy (we are the obnoxious drunks at family gatherings), has offered to replenish my liquor cupboard once my supply has dwindled.
- My beautiful puppy snuggled with me for almost an hour last night. She's enjoying the quarantine. A lot.
- Some of my beautiful poet friends will be joining me this evening for a poetry workshop on miracles.
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