January 31: Pneumonia, Old Phoebe, Blessed by People

I started thinking how old Phoebe would feel if I got pneumonia and died.  It was a childish way to think, but I couldn't stop myself.  She'd feel pretty bad if something like that happened.  She likes me a lot.  I mean she's quite fond of me.  She really is.  Anyway, I couldn't get that off my mind, so finally what I figured I'd do, I figured I'd better sneak home and see her, in case I died and all.  I had my door key with me and all, and I figured what I'd do, I'd sneak in the apartment, very quiet and all, and just sort of chew the fat with her for a while.  The only thing that worried me was our front door.  I creaks like a bastard.  It's a pretty old apartment house, and the superintendent's a lazy bastard, and everything creaks and squeaks.  I was afraid my parents might hear me sneaking in.  But I decided I'd try it anyhow.

Holden has been talking about his kid sister Phoebe almost since the beginning of the novel.  In fact, the only time Holden is happy or at peace is when he's thinking about her.  At this point in the novel, he's almost at rock bottom.  He's cold.  He's almost broke.  He's drunk.  He's friendless.  He's sitting by the lagoon in Central Park, imagining his death.  It's a dark moment.  And yet, in this darkness, Holden finds a little light.  In Phoebe.

It's another cold, snowy day in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Except for the university, all of the schools in the area have shut down.  The temperatures have been steadily falling.  It has been a week for hunkering down indoors under blankets.  However, after two or three days, kids don't want to hunker anymore.  They want to get out.

My wife just took my son to Burger King so that he could expend some of his four-year-old energy, of which he has a huge supply.  He spent a couple of hours climbing and running and eating fries.  Sometimes, I get a little jealous of my wife's ability to do things like that in the middle of the day with our children.  I mostly see my son and daughter at night, when bedtime is looming.  I'm the bad guy.  I give my son his bath and nag my daughter about her homework.  I make lunches and pick out clothes.  I don't generally have time simply to play with them.

My wife and  son are on their way home now.  They stopped by the Medical Center to drop off a Diet Coke for me.  As I was walking away from the car, my wife started beeping her horn.  I walked back to the vehicle.  My wife rolled down my son's window.

My son smiled up at me and said, "I see you at home, Daddy."

I leaned in and gave him a kiss.  "I love you, buddy."

"Me, too," he said.

I watched the car pull away from the building, into the afternoon wind and snow.

It was a Phoebe moment for me.  A light in the middle of a dreary day.  A blessing.

Saint Marty is a lucky guy.

Having a Phoebe blessing

December 1: A Churchyard, "Mr. Ives' Christmas," New Cartoon

A churchyard.  Here, then, the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground.  It was a worthy place.  Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite.  A worthy place!

What point I have to make with this passage (aside from the fact that Charles Dickens uses way too many semi-colons) is that A Christmas Carol is a pretty dark book.  As Scrooge wanders with the Spirits, the images and scenes become more and more desperate and bleak, leading to this churchyard with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.  Some people criticize the book for its sentimentality.  I find the book more terrifying than sentimental.

Most of my favorite Christmas books and movies have this streak of darkness.  It's A Wonderful Life has George Bailey contemplating suicide on a bridge.  The Santa Clause has Scott Calvin locked in a custody battle with his ex-wife over their son.  And Mr. Ives' Christmas, a novel by Oscar Hijuelos, has Edward Ives grieving for his teenage son, who is gunned down in front of a church on Christmas Eve.

Mr. Ives' Christmas is one of my favorite yuletide books and my Good Read for this week.  Hijeulos published it in 1995, and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize that year.  I love this book.  I could say it like Oprah, holding up my copy of it and declaring, "Mr. Iiiiiiiiiives' Chriiiiiiiiiiiistmaaaaas!!"  It's an amazing writing accomplishment.  Hijuelos writes a book about a truly good man who suffers a great deal.  Think the Book of Job.  There really isn't a "bad guy" in the novel.  Even the boy who kills Ives' son isn't bad.  He's a victim of poverty and drugs.

I've always thought Mr. Ives' Christmas would be the book Charles Dickens would have written had he been a twentieth-century novelist living in New York City.  Hijuelos and Dickens both write about  the underprivileged and neglected members of a society.  They both magnify issues of hunger and crime and the transcendent power of faith.  And they both have ghosts wandering in and out of their pages.

Edward Ives, Hijuelos' protagonist, is a kind, gentle, religious advertising executive living a decent life in New York City.  He has a beautiful wife, a son who is going to be a priest, and a daughter who eventually joins the Peace Corps.  Everything is perfect for Ives.  Until December 24, 1967, when his son, Robert, is murdered by a young Hispanic man near the steps of their parish church.  From that moment, Ives' life takes on Job-like dimensions.

He suffers from crushing depression for close to twenty years.  His best friend turns into a philandering husband who beat his son.  His wife contemplates divorcing him.  Tragedy follows tragedy.  Yet, Hijuelos never loses sight of redemption and hope, the hallmark of any Christmas tale. And there are passages of pure poetry in the book:

Years ago, in the 1950s, as a young man working for a Madison Avenue advertising agency, Ives always looked forward to the holiday season and would head out during his lunch hours, visiting churches, to think and meditate, and, if he was lucky, to hear the choirs as they practiced their hymns and sacred songs.  Often enough, he walked along the burgeoning sidewalks, crowded with shoppers and tourists, and made his way to Saint Patrick's Cathedral, where he'd become lost in a kind of euphoric longing--why de did not know.  And in a moment, he would find himself, as a child, attending Mass with his adoptive family again, so many memories coming back to him:  of standing beside his father during the services and noticing, as he looked up at his father's kindly face, just how moved he seemd to be by the prayers, and the Latin incantations, and the reverential chants; so moved, especially during the raising of the host, that he almost seemed on the verge of tears.

There is much I find miraculous in this novel.  The most miraculous is the redeeming power of hope.

Considering the last day or so, perhaps Saint Marty needs to reread Mr. Ives' Christmas to refill his well of hope.

Confessions of Saint Marty