“The Past Ain't What It Used To Be”

I overheard a very enlightening conversation between two six-year olds the other day.

“I knew what 11 plus 11 was when I was even in my Mommy’s belly,” said the girl.

“Well, I did, too,” retorted the boy.

“So? What is it?” challenged the girl.

After a moment of not so subtle calculation, the inevitable reply was made.

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

These kinds of conversations are happening all the time. They are like the barely audible hum of crickets and grasshoppers on a hot September day. You have to be in a certain frame of mind to hear them, otherwise they are simply background noise, filtered out by busy-ness and the need to be somewhere else.

My eight-year old son, Sam, has an extraordinarily lovely relationship with his friend, H.J. They were both born in the same hospital, several months apart, and were both delivered by the ob/gyn.

Because of this, and the tremendous value they place on their friendship- they still hug when they see each other, and will often hook arms when they are walking together- they have their own creation myth.

They have agreed that before they were born, they were floating together out in space, playing just as they do know. When it was Sam's turn to be born, he told H.J. which hospital he was going to be born in, and who the doctor was; H.J. took note of this, and when the next opportunity came along, took the delivery shuttle down to Beverly Hospital, where, three years later, these two old souls connived to reconnect and continue their lifetime playdate.

Between the insistent progress of science and boundless urgency of metaphysical inquiry, I can’t say for sure that these memories aren’t real. They are for these six-year olds, my son and H.J.

I can’t remember much of my time spent in utero, but I’m sure that’s just because it was during the fifties, and there wasn’t all that much worth remembering. I’ve always had an affinity for jazz and rock and roll, and assumed that is because it was music I was exposed to before my public debut.

Actually, these days, I spend more time worrying about my post-uterine memories than trying to channel any possible exposure I might have had to “Your Show of Shows” before I was born.

These kids give me hope.

I think we all get simply saturated with all the stuff there is to remember. It isn’t like you can zero out the old memory account, and start adding new ones. Perhaps that is why I can remember my phone number from 1959 (Ludlow 3 9395) but can’t for the life of me remember the phone number in the office next to the classroom I teach in.

I can sit watching the sunset on a summer day in the Catskills, somewhere around 1962, and watch the deer slowly emerge from the woods and blend into the field we played in all day (this was, of course, before the invention of deer ticks), and smile as the last rays of the sun touch my face. But when someone catches me on the street and praises the column I wrote last week, I can’t remember what the topic was. I’m stuffed full of memories.

I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation, but I find it hard to believe that my brain has storage space for more than one lifetime of recollections. Then again, in a previous life, perhaps I was a snake. Snakes probably don’t have a lot of actual memories.

“Well, I can remember eating that warthog back in ‘97. Took me six months to digest him. Oh, and I could never forget that reticulated python, the one with the great curves.” Ya think?

But you see that’s just the point. These wonderful, creative kids don’t have to think about it- they imagine it, and it just is. It appears to them as if cut out of whole cloth, real and tangible. Truth is relative when you imagine in full color.

I can remember when one of the only TV shows that broadcast in color was, of course, Walt Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color.” And I remember sucking up to a kid in school I didn’t really like, just hoping to get invited to his house to see something, anything on a color television. He was the only kid in the neighborhood whose parents had one. And they didn’t even keep it in their bedroom.

I didn’t know that “The Wizard of Oz” even had a color sequence in it until I was 14. But it didn’t matter, because then, like know, I was lucky enough to imagine in all the hues of the rainbow.

Math facts in utero. I would have thought that biology would be a more logical subject. Then again, try talking logic with a seven-year old.

A Mighty Wind

Well, my newly-minted five-year old son Sammy floored me with a question the other day. Usually, I can be pretty unflappable about his relentless quest for knowledge and understanding but this one about knocked me flat.

“Dad,” he asked. “Does God break wind?” That isn’t exactly how he asked me, but you get the idea. After pausing to regain my balance, I responded by telling him that if we were made in the image of God, then I suppose you could say that breaking wind was invented by God. And I might have mentioned something about thunderstorms, I just don’t remember. You can laugh, but how many of you would have done any better?

Sammy has been really exploring the idea of a higher power, and doing so in that delightful combination of seriousness and absurdity so characteristic of fiver year olds. The other day, lugging his birthday-present-new, monogrammed & overstuffed pilot’s case up the stairs, he was calling out for assistance; “help me, God, help me!” Not for Dad, but for God.

He wants to know about God’s family. “Does God have any sisters or brothers?” then he looks at his eight-year bold sister Lily, and I suspect he’s hoping the answer is no. He wants to know some of the specifics of God’s working day. “Is God everywhere at once? Even in Florida? Even at Montessori?”

The wife and I come two different spiritual persuasions. But that doesn’t seem to matter to Sammy, who is really all about understanding what he has in common with God. Do they like the same foods? The same baseball teams (Red Sox and the Marlins)? The same kind of candy?

I think the boy is onto something. Me, I worry that mankind has gone too far around the bend to warrant divine intervention anymore. We kill in the name of God, hate in the name of the higher power. We thank God for the ability to make obscene profits and don’t feel called to share our good fortune with others. We believe that God has made us stewards of the environment, so we turn up the heat like the climate was a global hotpot. We really believe that there is a line drawn in the cosmos by God where the love between two human beings can be parsed and parceled out based on gender and preference. But not Sammy. He knows love when he sees it, and love is what counts to him. I know, because a half-dozen times a day, he grabs me and hugs me and tells me he loves me.

His construct of God allows for the leaving of treasures on the sidewalk for him to find as we walk home from school. Sammy’s God is part buddy, part ever-present, and can be found in the dancing greeting of his dog Rufous when we get home. Sammy knows Rufous is getting a little older, and can conceive of a time when Rufous will “go to God.”

“I will be very sad that day, very sad,” he tells me. He pauses, shaking his head sadly at the thought of the loss. And then, he tugs on my sweater and says “Dad, after that happens, can we get another dog and a hamster?” He doesn’t sweat it; he knows the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, and can therefore be expected to giveth again. As an adult, I do sweat it, because I never know if at any part of the deal I will deserveth.

Sammy is teaching me about God. He teaches me to find the joy in each new discovery, to find the newness in each experience. He teaches me to listen, to play, to respect the process of learning and growing. Above all, Sammy teaches me about the sanctity of questions, of faith.
And for my wife and I, we have come to realize that Sammy and Lily are both our prayers, and God’s response to our prayers.

So here we are, the 21st century family, all under one roof. Christian and Jew, neo-pagan and Buddhist student, spiritual explorers and meditators, participants in men’s and women’s spirituality groups; trying to find out what the rules are and live them fully.

Did I just hear thunder?