“It’s a long climb up Fool’s Hill,” my grandmother used to say about life, but Tiddy, Frannie and I made it to the top.
This book, an outpouring of what was long contained, has been my declaration of liberty. I finally feel free and don’t give a damn anymore what people think about me. At seventy, I’m also having more fun than ever before. The smallest details bring me joy—building or inventing something, being with my children or playing with my dog, Tim, laughing with my friends or watching an ant crawl on his way in my bathroom. Thanks to Dr. Harrington, my own efforts and the simple passage of time, I can finally be the child I never had a chance to be.
Recently I saw Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, and midway through it I started crying. I didn’t know why. Then the image of the young Indian boy on the screen gave me the answer: it was like a homecoming, because I realized that in the past few years I have rediscovered a part of me that was clean, pure and straight and had been hidden since I was a child. Somehow I had come full circle, and I felt free.
I also finally realized that I had to forgive my father or I would be entrapped by my hatred and anguish for the rest of my life. If I didn’t forgive him for the things he had done to all of us, I would never be able to forgive myself for the things I have done and felt guilty about and responsible for. Now I have forgiven him and myself, though I realize that to forgive with your mind is not always to forgive in your heart.
There isn’t any end to this story. I’d be happy to tell it to you if I knew it. Just as I cannot imagine where I was before I sat under that elm tree at the end of Thirty-second Street with my hand stretched wide for those magical pods, so I continue to be an enigma to myself in a world that still bewilders me. While life itself remains incomprehensible, there is no point in wondering where I will be in the “never-to-be-known after-time,” but I am certain that when my breathing comes to an end, the change will find me no more astonished than I was back on Thirty-second Street.
My mind is always soothed when I imagine myself sitting on my South Sea island at night in a gentle chiffon wind, with my mouth open and my head way back, watching those twinkling points of light, waiting for that eerie, silent streak to spread across the black sky and stun me again. I don’t stretch my hand out anymore, but I never get tired of waiting for the next magic.
ABOUT THE COAUTHOR
ROBERT LINDSEY, former chief West Coast correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of The Falcon and the Snowman, A Gathering of Saints and other books, and also collaborated with Ronald Reagan on his autobiography, An American Life.
Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me Page 39