November 11: Burst into Tears, Linus, Sign of Humanness

These two horse pitiers moved back along the wagon to where they could gaze in patronizing reproach at Billy--at Billy Pilgrim, who was so long and weak, so ridiculous in his azure toga and silver shoes.  They weren't afraid of him.  They weren't afraid of anything.  They were doctors, both obstetricians.  They had been delivering babies until the hospitals were all burned down.  Now they were picnicking near where their apartment used to be.

The woman was softly beautiful, translucent from having eaten potatoes for so long.  The man wore a business suit, necktie and all.  Potatoes had made him gaunt.  He was as tall as Billy, wore steel-rimmed trifocals.  This couple, so involved with babies, had never reproduced themselves, though they could have.  This was an interesting comment on the whole idea of reproduction.

 They had nine languages between them.  They tried Polish on Billy Pilgrim first, since he was dressed so clownishly, since the wretched Poles were the involuntary clowns of the Second World War.

Billy asked them in English what it was they wanted, and they at once scolded him in English for the condition of the horses.  They made Billy get out of the wagon and come look at the horses.  When Billy saw the condition of his means of transportation, he burst into tears.  He hadn't cried about anything else in the war.  

Unlike Billy Pilgrim, I cry a lot.  I cry over poems and novels.  I cry at movies and Christmas specials.  Sometimes, given the right mood and the correct amount of alcohol, I will cry when Linus tells Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Just this week, I read a short story by Alice Munro and ended up a blubbering mess.

I have always had this penchant for crying.  I think it aids me in my writing.  I am able to tap the kind of deep emotional well that poetry requires more easily than most people.  Of course, I've been teased a lot for this quality.  My wife frequently tells me that I'm a teenage girl when I read a birthday card and get choked up.  I can't help it.

Of course, at times, I'm able to control myself.  On the day my sister died, I had a few moments of complete grief, but I needed to be a little stronger since the rest of my family was a complete train wreck.  I went to the funeral home and helped finalize the plans that morning.  I planned the funeral service with our pastor, picked out the music.  The week before, I'd located the cemetery and helped order the cremation stone.  I think that I finally let loose at about 9 p.m. that evening, when I got home and one of my best friends from downstate Michigan called me.  I completely lost it.

I don't think this is necessarily a weakness on my part.  My emotional makeup allows me to be much more empathetic than most people.  That's a good thing.  It allows me to be kinder with my kids, more loving to my wife.  And, when things go terribly wrong, it allows me to be stronger, to think more clearly.

Crying isn't a sign of weakness.  Crying is a sign of humanness.  

So, Saint Marty is thankful that he's a teenage girl inside. 

September 12: Share Secrets, Poet Dad, Judith Minty, "Celebrating the Mass," Confessions of Saint Marty

When Caroline was in college Annie would spend hours with her on the telephone, and they would talk like sisters.  They would often share secrets...

Annie Ives tries to remain close to her daughter.  Ives has drifted into a pattern of grief:  overwhelming sadness, dark brooding evenings, outbursts of anger followed by immediate remorse.  Annie has become estranged from her long-suffering husband, and she feels her family slowly drifting away.  Caroline is the lighthouse in the turbulent sea of her life.

Last night, my wife and I attended a football game at my daughter's high school.  I am not a fan of sports.  I can count on one hand the number of live football games I've attended in my life.  My daughter, however, is part of the school pep band.  So I went to hear and see her play. 

It was a really cold evening, and, when the sun dipped below the horizon, it was hot chocolate time.  People were screaming and laughing and talking.  Every once in a while, I'd look over at my daughter in the band.  She was purposely not looking for my wife and me.  It was all about her friends and classmates.

I have noticed that my daughter has been pulling away from me a little bit.  She no longer kisses me hello or goodbye or goodnight.  If prodded, she will present her forehead for me to venerate.  I understand why she's doing this.  She's a high school freshman, trying to become her own person.  I'm no longer the cool dad.  I'm the poet dad.  Dance fan dad.  Musician dad.  Embarrassing dad.

When we're together and nobody else is around, she is her old self.  Funny.  Affectionate.  Loving.  This afternoon, we're going to a dance store to purchase a new pair of pointe shoes.  Then we're going to do a little more school clothes shopping for her.  It will be a good afternoon, once she fully wakes up.  Maybe we'll even go to Dairy Queen for ice cream on the way home.  A daddy-daughter day.

I know moments like these are going to be fewer and farther between in the upcoming years.  Soon, I will be the man who doesn't know anything and doesn't understand.  Then, I will be the banker.  Transporter.  Car-provider.  Birthday- and Christmas-present giver.  Curfew enforcer.  Hopefully, I won't have to be the ranter or worrier or reality-checker too much.

I love my daughter and son.  Being a parent has been one of the great joys of my life.  I'm entering a new phase in my parenthood.  I have a received a promotion to father/manager of a teenage girl.

God help Saint Marty.

Celebrating the Mass

by:  Judith Minty

In this hospital room, lacking the hands
of a nurse, I braid my daughter's hair
into corn rows.  She is nineteen now.
When did I stop touching my child?
We have eaten sandwiches brought in and picked
at food on her tray, then turned to the mirror.
Helpless in these weeks of testing, waiting,
we want to alter her life in some way.

I think of those other mothers who have done this,
their backs aching, their hands tightening.
I think of them standing long hours
on porches of farm shacks maybe, or in tenement rooms.
I think of them weaving dark strands
to make their daughters beautiful
after the meals were served, after
the mending, the washing hung, the fields hoed.

Here, a comb sets our boundaries.
Fingers separate and part, we begin
another row:  blond hair lifted, pulled,
the pattern worked in.  I sculpt to the shape of bone.
Now six braids done.  Now an hour.  Now nineteen years.
We learn each other again.  Hands to head,
fingers knitting a cap, we begin
at the temple, around the ear, crown to nape.

Confessions of Saint Marty