In a 1989 letter to Dr. Gould, my father says of his own research and discovery:
This supports the macro-evolutionary aspects of punctuated equilibrium theory. It is my current belief that all macro-evolutionary novelties arise from the mutations of regulatory genes that cause changes in developmental timing. These allometric changes in body proportions can either be localized or else generalized. The mutations occur randomly, of course, but they do not need to be immediately advantageous; they only need to be viable. They can be carried in the gene pool until such time as they are favored fortuitously by environmental selection pressures, at which time their frequencies will be increased in the gene pool because of differential reproduction rates.
In other words, the reason certain anatomical features of modern scorpions matter is because this evidence supports the theory of evolution—especially aspects of Darwin’s theory that have been the focus of dispute by evolution-oppositionists. So by providing evidence of scorpion evolution, my father aimed to fill in one small blank spot in Darwin’s argument.
Today’s discourse on evolution teeters betwixt and between the known and the unknown; consideration of either side of the debate, either creationist or evolutionist, invites you to temporarily occupy an intermediate position, a liminal space—linger on the damp Mexican shore that bisects land and sea. This gives me pause: If research yields no immediate answer to humankind’s inquiry of nature (or of God, for that matter), does that mean a particular person’s life’s work is for naught? Perhaps, then, his or her work has no value; or maybe the point, if not to solve an equation, is to take inventory of possibilities. Or better yet, speculate how today’s actions might influence a yet unviewed documentary—what if we could anticipate the fast forward? You’re still on the couch with your red, swollen ankle elevated on a tower of throw pillows; if you knew the convulsions would lead to paralysis, would you still hesitate to reach for the phone?
I imagine myself in this situation, pondering, hesitating. Who would I call? My father, perhaps.
When we returned from each desert trip, my father meticulously labeled each jar, either by placing a handwritten note inside or by taping a typewritten note to the outside.
Paruroctonus silvestrii: Las Estacas, Mexico—1971
Family Vejovidae—it stings but is not fatal. B. Firstman
At the height of his career he’d amassed at least a thousand jars, each containing from one to a dozen arachnid specimens. Inside transparent, circular tombs, each creature drifted in a sort of limbo—neither alive nor allowed to begin the process of decomposition that would make them part of the soil, contributing to the next cycle of life. Upon retirement, my father gave most of them to colleagues. Today only a few jars remain.
When he calls again to add more things to his list, I do not tell him I’ve taken his scorpion, the one that, for reasons unknown to me, he deemed worthy of saving. It floats in suspended animation just an arm’s reach from my desk.
“And my electric typewriter,” he says. “And ribbon cartridges. All of them.”
“Yes, I already packed those.”
“You’ll find them in my bottom desk drawer.”
“Already got ’em.”
“Pull the drawer fully open and look behind the metal divider.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, because I know he cannot stop. I reach for the scorpion and hold it eye level. Much of the formaldehyde has either leaked or evaporated.
“Are you writing all this down?”
“Yes, of course,” I say, and I wonder if the amount of liquid affects the preservation of the dead animal, if I should remove the cap and add more liquid. It would be a shame, after all these years, to let this particular scorpion dry up and crumble.
PART II
Scorpions, Snakes
Twelve
Visalia, California (2013)—
I recall a certain photo.
When I was a young child, maybe three or four years old, I pulled my mother’s bra from a basket of clean laundry and put it on. I remember standing in my underpants with the bra straps hanging from my bare shoulders, then calling out for someone to come see what I’d done. My mother ran into the room, told me not to move a muscle, and disappeared down the hall again. In a few seconds she returned, with my father this time. And a camera.
I just stumbled across that photo the other day. I hardly recognize myself as the potbellied little girl in that picture; it’s hard to believe that the twenty-two-ish young woman with shoulder-length hair and cat-eye glasses is my mother. Yes, I recognize our faces, but it’s hard to believe how quickly time has passed.
This evening I will visit my elderly mother in the assisted living place I just moved her to. I will tuck a pillow beneath her feeble legs, adjust her mechanized recliner so she can see the small table at her side, and we will resume our current project of transferring old photographs from a disintegrating album into a new, acid-free album. My mother’s neurologist says the photo album project is good cognitive therapy—it prompts her to speak, which helps with the aphasia, and it exercises her memory as well. Even if she can’t recall an event right away, perhaps a photo will tickle some remote crevice in her brain, stimulate a whisper of curiosity, motivate her to search for and pry open the sealed file folders in her prefrontal lobes. She can’t remember what she had for lunch an hour ago, but she can tell me all about what happened on a particular day forty-four years ago, when she and my father found me next to the laundry bin with a bra draped across my naked chest.
I was talking to a friend recently about the declining health of our parents and our increasing and ever-shifting responsibilities as adult children. As we reverse roles with our elderly parents, each party must inhabit a liminal space, the transitional terrain between past and future. For the aged parent, it’s a step toward the threshold separating life and death; for the middle-aged child, it’s a time for reconciliation, to settle on new terms of engagement—You raised me, now I’ll take care of you.
I keep telling myself that if I had been raised by June and Ward Cleaver my transition would be less difficult. Obviously, my father was no Ward Cleaver, but my mother was no June, either. I imagine that if I’d had a Beaver Cleaver childhood (if I’d been Beaver’s unrealized twin sister, Betty) I’d be so indebted to both my doting parents—for their constant love and support, for the fatherly advice over home-cooked meals, for their concern over my general well-being and their occasional intervention in regard to my grades, my friends, my social faux pas—that I’d happily accept my new responsibilities. I’d never complain about taking my mother to physical therapy or the fact that she resists all my attempts to help her regain bits of her independence. And as for Old Man Ward, I’d embrace him with every grateful fiber of my being, tend every aspect of his growing needs. With a smile on my face I’d drive him to every doctor’s appointment, nurse him back to health after every surgery, manage his finances, buy his groceries, shuttle him to astronomy night at the senior center every Tuesday, walk five doors down the street each afternoon for a glass of iced tea. That’s how I imagine it. But I’m not Beaver (or Betty). I wasn’t raised by June and Ward. The Cleaver family does not exist, never did—not for you, not for me, not ever.
What is real, though, for real people grappling with real lives, is a spectrum of emotional reconciliation. This spectrum doesn’t measure what the adult child does or how thoroughly the child cares for the aged parent in terms of tasks carried out; rather, it indicates the degree of enthusiasm or resentment the adult child feels about the situation. At one end of the spectrum, the adult child eagerly cares for the aged parent, and at the other end, bitterness, perhaps grief. You didn’t raise me one iota, dear father, so why must I take care of you now? I’m not sure where on the spectrum I stand.
But I am certain of this: things are shifting. A few years ago my once-estranged father moved across the state and into my neighborhood so I could look after him; although he’s living in Mexico for the time being, he stil
l owns his home down the street from me—and if he were to return (and he very well might), he would again become my responsibility. After he moved to Mexico, my mother suffered a massive stroke. Her illness triggered a series of other catastrophic health complications, all unexpected, all life-engulfing; she’s now an invalid who resists rehabilitation, and I’m her caregiver, responsible for practically every aspect of her life—all things logistical, medical, financial and social. Over the last year my mother has been my full-time job, and even though she no longer lives with me, since I moved her into the assisted living facility a month ago, I am overwhelmed with responsibilities I had never before fathomed.
(There’s a cruel sort of irony in my mom’s involuntary absence now and my father’s choice to be absent for most of my life. I need you to know that although my mother and I often didn’t get along while I was growing up, at least she was there, if not emotionally, at least physically. She didn’t seem to enjoy being a parent, but at least she provided the basics. I want you to know that even though this book is mostly about my relationship with my father, my mother did raise my brother and me—she put in her time, worked pretty damn hard to provide a stable life for us. My point is this: I recognize the literary injustice here, how the absent parent—my father—gets the most page time.)
But here I am, middle-aged and steeped in the newfound responsibilities that come with having elderly parents. As I try to reconcile my resentment with my sense of duty, I find myself examining the nature of my relationship with each parent. Why is this so difficult? I ask myself over and over, and, If I were a better person, if I weren’t such a self-centered ingrate, would this transition be easier? I wonder if there is an intellectual or psychological shift I can make, a way I can enlighten my own thinking process so that I can consciously shape and settle into my evolving role more gracefully. If I change the lens through which I view my parents, myself, our respective situations, our collective situation, will I be better able to cope with these changes? And by extension, could I then help them with their transitions, too?
Child to adult.
Adult back to child.
Life to death.
Sometimes, in my more dramatic moments, I feel like I’ve just stepped into the mouth of a dark cave: blinding sunlight to my right, utter blackness to my left; I lean into the grey zone, where granite stone walls shadow the shifting rocks beneath my feet. Where do I stand?
Perhaps I shouldn’t take my position or myself so seriously. The little girl in the photo, the me wearing her mother’s bra, felt no sense of obligation—she lived in the moment, in that sliver of time captured on film, the time between the opening and closing of the aperture, right before the click. Presence: when time stands independent of past or future; a moment captured on film; an ever-shifting point on the continuum of existence; what liquid prolongs for a pickled scorpion, still moist; where curiosity leads; a grain of sand so fine, so small, it settles, sinks beneath your feet unnoticed, unheard.
Thirteen
Cataviña, Mexico (1994)—
The problem with sidewinder rattlesnakes, I came to realize during a hike with my father in the Mexican desert a number of years back, is that they often bury themselves beneath the loose sand, making them difficult to spot—and easy to accidentally step on. Had I known beforehand that the sands were infested with snakes, I probably wouldn’t have gone on the hike in the first place. But we’d already walked about half an hour beyond the end of the dirt road where we’d parked the car, and past the point where the gravel-crusted hardpan had gradually disappeared beneath deep shifts of fine-grain sand, when my father paused mid-stride, his brown leather boots ankle-deep in the sand, and said, rather off-handedly, “Oh, by the way, one must be careful of sidewinders.”
At first I thought he joking. “You never said anything about snakes,” I said.
“You probably should have worn long pants,” he said.
He wore Levis, which rode high above his waist due to the clamp-on elastic suspenders beneath his untucked polo shirt. Low on his forehead perched a brimmed driver’s cap made of tightly woven straw, the kind you might see in a 1940s black-and-white photo. Directly overhead, the high-noon sun pounded down relentlessly, but the cap’s visor cast a sliver of shadow across his wire-framed bifocals and the crow’s feet spreading from his temples. He tugged the visor down to his eyebrows, leaned deeply forward at the waist, and with his feet anchored shoulder-width apart, reached for a dried cactus-branch-looking thing on the ground. He stood upright, waved the stick as if he were an orchestra conductor, and told me that from here on out I should watch for S-shaped patterns in the sand, the telltale mark of a snake’s recent aboveground movement across the terrain. He also warned me about sleeping snakes that might be buried beneath the surface, and said that I should periodically test the ground. He demonstrated with a stick, pricking and sweeping the gravel near his feet several times. “Sidewinders cover themselves to keep cool,” he said, “so don’t step on or near any suspicious-looking mounds until you’ve checked.” With that, he focused his gaze farther out, turned his head side to side several times, and pointed to an uneven, slightly elevated patch of sand several yards away. “Definitely stay away from that,” he said. He handed me the stick and marched a wide berth around the mound and the potential foe hidden beneath.
I gripped the poking stick and stepped slowly, wishing I’d worn jeans instead of shorts. A layer of denim might prevent a snake’s fangs from puncturing the skin, I thought. I followed cautiously behind my father, pausing to evaluate the safety of each foot placement: Step right. Look around. Step left. Scan, scan, keep the eyes moving, scan. Should I poke? Yes, poke. Poke again. Sweep. Nothing there, thank God. Step right.
In a matter of minutes I’d fallen considerably behind. “Slow down,” I called out.
He did not answer, but continued on, knees raised high in stride, arms swinging furiously back and forth.
When my father and I had set out on a two-week road trip with no particular destination in mind other than “somewhere” in Baja, Mexico, the purpose of our journey was to reconnect after a lifetime of spotty interaction, get to know each other as adults. We’d started with no preset itinerary other than a crinkled roadmap courtesy of AAA and my father’s catchphrase, Let’s play it by ear. Midway through the trip, three hundred miles south of the American-Mexican border, he suggested a hike he’d heard about, which was rumored to lead to a remote site of minor, yet impressive, ancient cave paintings in a respaldo overhanging rock shelter in the middle of the desert.
To reach the trailhead: From Tijuana you take the toll highway south, which parallels the western coast for quite some distance before it veers inland and narrows to a two-lane strip down the center of a thin peninsula that straddles the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. Nearly dead center in the middle of the peninsula, you’ll cross a stretch of wasteland flats flanked by heat-gnawed mountains. As you descend, the arrow-straight road lances a forbiddingly jagged sprawl of wind-polished, building-sized boulders that perch upon one another in the center of 33,000 desolate square miles, where millions of scorpions and rattlesnakes populate a vast region nearly devoid of people. About a mile outside the 140-person town of Cataviña, you turn off the highway and follow a dirt road until it dead ends; from there, a two-mile walk drops into a boiling hot arroyo. Welcome to the middle of nowhere. Now follow the dry gulch until you locate a makeshift sign indicating where to begin your climb through and up the boulders to a high cave.
My father was a couple hundred yards ahead of me when he found the painted plywood sign. A stenciled arrow pointed away from the wide-open dry gulch and toward a maze of gigantic rock pilings. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “This way!”
I waved the stick overhead and shouted back a triumphant “Woohoo!”
This would have been a logical place for him to wait for me to catch up. But instead, he picked up his pace. He zigzagged uphill, childlike, through spindly boojum trunks
and ten-foot-tall cardón cacti, then darted behind a massive mound of rocks, out of sight.
Still down in the gulch, I s-l-o-w-l-y followed my father’s trail, vigorously scanning for suspicious mounds. I carefully matched my stride to his shallow boot-shaped divots, sunken little patches of pre-tested safety.
Then, just as I lifted my right leg, I heard it: a rustle, somewhere off to the left. I froze mid-step. I balanced for a moment on one foot, perfectly poised, one leg still raised in arched stride, knee bent. I held my breath and looked around. Every grain of sand popped with bionic clarity. Stagnant air tickled my fingertips, and the collective exhale of cactus and sage pierced the oxygen around my palms. I still don’t know what made that particular sound at that particular moment. Perhaps it was a harmless kangaroo rat, or a lizard, or maybe it was indeed a snake—but after a thorough session of poking and sweeping and more poking, I ascertained that I stood in at least a four-foot snake-free circle, which included the upcoming two or three divots.
Origins of the Universe and What It All Means Page 4