A fair day in September is worth at least three in July and we were given one Thursday. Any perfect one pre-Memorial or post-Labor feels like bonus, and I experienced what life was like for the retiree (Mom) and a semi-retiree (my uncle).
Took the half-day off and rode the truck to Xenia under the bluest September sky since that sad 9/11. It was a day made for riding and we took full advantage even if we did stop overly long at the Ye Olde Trail Tavern in Yellow Springs, the college town of Antioch. Expecting a moribund village in the wake of the closing of the college, instead we saw the vibrancy of the liberal. All around us were primary colors in the shop windows, with sweet naive sayings like “What goes around, comes around!”. I think: in the next world, yes. In this world Stalin died peacefully in his sleep.
The trail itself was bowl-like with a slight incline in the early miles, followed by a decline, followed by a long, slow incline leading to the city. The trail itself was disappointingly leafy, by which I mean it was somewhat unvarying in its lack of vistas. To ride through the shady tunnelled paths is too cave-like, too office-like. There is much to be said for a trail with a view, something a bit more like Mackinaw Island albeit without the lake. But that is small potatoes. The asphalt trail was not much-populated with “diehards”, the term Mom uses for fast cyclists wearing lycra.
It’s always funny how in a town the size of a thumbnail we could miss our tavern. When my uncle began questing out a second time in an unpromisingly northerly direction, I asked for directions -- not realizing I could’ve hit the tavern with a stone. Once inside the smell of the old boards hit us, built as it was around the time of the Irish famine. We sat in the charming front window and I enjoyed a pint of Guinness of unparalleled flavor (it was on tap) but poor Mom couldn’t eat or drink due to various digestive problems. Age is limiting such that if you don’t choose to be a monk at 40, you’ll be one not by choice at 90. I realized I must drink now, both for Mom & uncle, and so I ordered two 16 oz. Guinnesses despite not having any money. But then I was drinking for them so there’s a rough justice in their paying for me.
The bar area was made up of old black wood fronted by aging whiskeys and colorful taps. I look on with jealousy at the two or three others who, at this very small digit in the afternoon, feel care-free enough to mount a bar stool and drink a beer and more. That which is a vacation afternoon for me is a normal day for these.
My uncle's brother's ordination comes up. I recall it like it was yesterday. I was susceptible to beautiful liturgies and that was one. It feels ironic that the refrain that day stuck out the most was: “You are a priest forever, by the order of Melchizedek.” I’d never heard it before and it resonated in my 12-year old mind and I recall being comforted by it, by its permanence. We are only comforted by permanence, by the eternal, since we live in the temporal. And I say it was ironic but it really isn’t, because he’s still a priest in God’s eyes.
It was a September day when my biking companion came home from work and found my uncle priest and Grandma sitting on the back porch. They were unusually quiet. We read of the differences between the dutiful-to-the-point-of-stoic WWII generation and the Baby Boomers, but here was the clash of generational difference laid painfully bare, not something abstract as in a McInerney book but personal, touching not even on marriage, sacred as that is, but on the greatest calling of all. How it must’ve humbled her! Surely if anyone felt tempted to think “my kids are not like those other kids” she must’ve til then.
We re-enter the bike path and it’s all downhill for awhile at least. The sky slowly begins to take on that familiar late afternoon slant and eventually becomes the kind of light I see when I come home from work. We remind ourselves not to meet at the train station in Xenia but at the park with a pond next to a gothic Spanish-style courthouse, the one with gargolyes jutting out like stone leopards.
At work, the big word thrown about lately is “engagement”. I’m not sure, but I think it’s a sit-in for “enthusiasm” which evidentally is too dated. (Who knew that words so quickly lose their flavor, like chewing gum on the bedpost over night?)
Our engagement scores are low and there’s hell to pay. Expect strenuous meetings and lots of one-on-one’s until the pestilent source of this disengagement can be identified and defeated. I tell my bosses’ bosses’ boss that most people are happy only when they’re complaining and so he shouldn’t take it so personally. Good Lord! I tell him it’s in the water since we’re living in decent economic times by historical standards but you’d think it’s the Great Depression. Of course, the real problem is that disengagement, to paraphrase the late Solzhenitsyn, goes right down the middle of every working heart.
I find myself disengaged in a positive way, that is I feel detached. I feel a healthy non-curiosity in the latest epochal crisis, such as whether a particular output Excel spreadsheet should have an extra column or not. “Whatever,” as the kids say. Let’s just say I was for the extra column before I was against it. I’ve decided that the secret of success in anything is to be enthused over minutiae. (Did I spell “minutiae” right?)
Having a half-day off on Thursday went a long way towards a faux feeling of control. I love my job because I think it’s proof that God never gives us more than we can handle, and yet at the same time I yearn for the sort of imaginary, romantic job that others search for in a far more active, incarnational way. I’m vaguely in favor of a high-paying 20-hour a week job that involves beer-drinking but haven’t updated my curriculum vitae accordingly yet.
O’er the ever shortening cube walls towers the resident Mormon whose height was no doubt abetted by lots of sleep during his growing years. It’s totally unfair, but I tend to think it helps his engagement that he never drink alcohol or caffeine since an extra column in an Excel spreadsheet takes on more significance when you know that’s the biggest high you’re going to have that day. He’s a nice, aw-shucks sort of guy and I have nothing against him other than he makes more work for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment