by Cheryl Peck
I have never come out to my father. I am forty-eight and he is seventy. He has changed remarkably, since I was fifteen: he has proven to be a man with a deliciously wry sense of humor, an almost Buddhist acceptance of the whims of fate and fortune, and an occasional aggravation with complications in his life which have, since my mother’s death, become my province. As it is his job, as my father, to lend me money and fix my tractors, it is my job, as his oldest daughter, to sort through his life for evidence of unresolved problems, which he stores for me like butterflies in a glass jar. I rarely actually solve them: more often than not I identify or define them, or tell him what agency deals with problems like that.
He knows. I know he knows.
We have a covenant of trust, my father and I. I do not present him with emotional, word-intensive problems he cannot solve. He does not make anti-gay remarks in my presence and sometimes he has this—mischievous—almost expectant—little smile on his face when someone else does.
She’ll get ’em—she’s good with words.
useless information acquired from men
A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO I was having dinner at a friend’s house and we were discussing my interest in photography. I babbled on at length about how my lifetime shot of a deer had been hampered solely by the deer’s reluctance to stand still—or even near my camera. My friend’s husband smiled and he said, “All you have to do is find out where they sleep and where they feed and settle in somewhere between the two.”
I remember smiling at him.
I glanced at my friend.
We both fell over laughing.
At the time I owned (or mortgaged) three-fifths of an acre about a quarter of a mile from the Jackson city limits. No deer slept in my yard. No deer ate there. I’d never seen a deer passing through looking hungry or sleepy. I assumed, at the time, that to follow my friend’s husband’s advice, I would have to first locate a deer, then figure out where this deer both ate and fed. I might as easily have been fascinated by the hope of shooting wild African elephants.
I may have originally filed this insight under the heading Useless Information Acquired from Men.
He was right.
He seriously overestimated my grasp of the task at hand— but he was right.
A few years after that conversation I was driving down Dalton Road through an area known in that county as Behind the Prison and I was testing out my new 50 X 10 field glasses when I espied several brown lumps on the hillside. I pulled off the road, focused my field glasses and studied … eleven sleeping deer. They were deer. They were asleep. I flashed back on my conversation with my friend’s husband and I thought:
I KNOW WHERE THEY SLEEP.
They were too far away to photograph and walking around on prison property has never been encouraged by anyone I know, so I let sleeping deer lie.
Perhaps two years ago Newsweek magazine carried an article about deer (calling them, among other things, “rats with antlers”) and my sister the Wee One read this article and (apparently) memorized it. She and I were driving somewhere one day and I said, “Look—a deer,” and she recited everything I now know about this article. Of deer Newsweek said, “They’re edge-feeders.”
We all know that, of course. We are driving down I-94 in the early evening, we glance out the window and there, at the edge of a field, quite near a small wood or at least a hedgerow, is a small herd of deer. They’re eating. We are not sufficiently sighted to see deer in the middle of the woods and we almost never see them in the middle of the field—they are always on the edge. Predators are always a factor, but this is also pretty much determined by what they eat—saplings, baby trees, fresh weeds (and as every gardener knows, corn, broccoli, cauliflower, and especially tomatoes. My father has found a tiny rogue herd of specialists who appear to dine solely on tulip blooms). An “edge-feeder” means an animal who feeds primarily on the sort of new growth most easily found on the outside edges of woods. Allegedly—according to Newsweek—if you wander into the deep woods the only deer you will find will be either very hungry or very sleepy or perhaps both.
The focus of that article was that deer have adapted remarkably well to coexistence with humankind—in fact, we create exactly the kind of environment where they thrive—and beyond the occasional highway collision, deer seem to be settling in for the long haul with humans, their oddly shod brothers. It appears that of the two, humankind seems to find more objections to this peace and tranquillity than deer do. On the overpopulated, suburbanized East Coast, where one is always on the edge of something, Bambi has lost some of his charm. It must be something he ate.
The more I learned about deer, the more I understood about what my friend’s husband had been trying to tell me. They are animals. To find one, you need to know (1) where they shelter and (2) where and what they eat. Once you have narrowed down the basic characteristics of these places, they will be easier and easier to find and—surprise—so will the deer who sleep and feed there.
Unfortunately I was never able to tell him that because I never did know where he ate and my friend kicked him out, so I don’t know where he sleeps.
a short treatise on brothers
OUR PARENTS CREATED three beautiful, sensitive, creative children and then, as an afterthought, they had two boys. We were not horribly impressed with their efforts. First of all, the UnWee and I had barely finished raising the Wee One. Whatever else her faults may have been, she never peed us square between the eyes while we were changing her dities. But above all else, no matter what we did to her, the Wee One hardly ever cried. She passed out fairly often—she bled like a sieve at the drop of a hat, and she was forever losing her balance while spinning, or bed-bouncing, or other expressly forbidden activities we had warned her against (Okay, but remember—if you get hurt doing this Mom is going to spank ALL our butts). She would more likely purse her little lips and start spluttering in blind rage whenever she felt misused. Our little brother (1) started crying hours after he came home from the hospital and he cried nonstop until he was fifteen. “What on earth have you done to that child now?” our mother would demand, as if we were responsible for his every passing mood.
Nor was he made of particularly sturdy stuff for a child. We tried to teach him to play backlot softball; he wandered across home plate at the wrong time, caught a hearty swing at a pitch, and had to wobble off into the weeds and take a nap. Years later he jumped up to catch a fly ball and slammed nose-to-forehead into a slightly taller boy and broke nine bones in his face. We know how many bones he broke because the doctor X-rayed his head and counted them, and then, conversationally, he asked my mother, “How did he get that fracture to the back of his head?” As usual, our mother failed to appreciate the humor of the situation.
He was a tiny child. For years he was the smallest child in his class and his only escape from terrorization from his classmates was to come home and be terrorized by us. We are probably fortunate he did not join the Neo-Nazis or the NRA. He gradually developed a wicked sense of humor with which he slices and dices all who wander into his sights, but what he did, apparently in sheer self-defense, was grow. When I left for college he was nine years old, seven inches tall and barely cast a shadow: the next time I paid much attention to him he was six feet one inch, built like a football player and there was that whole neighborhood legend about beer parties in the gravel pit behind our house. It can be disconcerting, but it is best never to flinch when you find yourself looking that far up at someone you have deliberately tortured most of his life.
By the time our baby brother (2) came along, we had given up. None of this encouraging old, repetitive skills like learning to walk or talk. We had busy lives by then; we did not have time to stand around and wait for him to learn what the rest of us all knew. We carried him around like a sack of potatoes for years and taught him to point at anything he wanted.
My baby brother (2) was lucky to reach his first birthday, because every now and then he would be left in the care of our father, a won
derful man, but not necessarily the world’s best baby-sitter. I particularly remember the afternoon my mother went shopping and left my baby brother napping in his buggy in the dining room. This was the same afternoon my father decided to knock out the wall between the living room and dining room with his trusty sledgehammer. Our baby brother never woke up during all of this pounding, but when he did our mother had to dig him out from under a pile of lath and plaster. I remember our mother said, “What were you thinking?” And our father said “what … ?” eloquently, I thought.
As a small child he learned to fearlessly toddle out in front of us with his arms up to indicate he wanted our attention. As often as not, I would be riding my bike, and rather than running over him (which always put our mother in a bad mood) I would hang him by the backs of his knees over the handlebars and cradle his body with my arms like the edges of a hammock, and ride him this way around the “P” (shaped) drive for hours. As an adult several thoughts occur to me: the bike that I rode had handbrakes, which I could not reach when he was in my arms; it can be hard to balance a bike with an unpredictable thirty-five-pound weight on the handlebars; the “P” drive was new gravel and therefore hard to navigate and not particularly good landing; I wonder exactly where our mother was. To the best of my recollection, I never did drop him or throw him over the handlebars.
Over time we have all grown into substantial adults. At five feet seven inches I—the oldest—am also the shortest and the widest. The Wee One is five feet ten inches and the UnWee is five feet eleven inches. Our little brother (1) is six feet one inch. Our baby brother (2) is six feet two inches. We are like a human strain of redwood: not only are we tall, we are burly and thick of trunk. To wander slightly off track with the same analogy, a few who have tried to love us have come to admire the thickness of our bark and the steadfastness of our stance, but that is another story. Not many people (besides us) go out of their way to argue with our little brothers. Big Men carry a certain mantle of automatic respect. If nothing else, the Wee One has observed, there is always the danger that one of them will fall on you.
a meat-lover’s biased look at vegetarians
THERE HAS BEEN a rampant outbreak of vegetarianism in the past few years. They have always walked among us, of course, but their numbers are growing and they are fast becoming the Militant Minority that nonsmokers were ten years ago. Years ago, when I was young and occasionally slept on the ground, I was lured to the Michigan Womyn’s Festival where, as I wandered like Alice through an amazing Wonderland of semi-naked, self-embracing women, I heard the first trill of vegetarianism:
Oh, YUUUK—the smell of burning flesh …
My response was not supportive.
The other day a woman called me out of the blue to tell me she had decided to expand her personal circle of friends and she wanted to include me in it, and would it be possible for us to meet, perhaps for dinner? (I make note of this because it’s never happened to me before in my life. Nor, actually, have I ever seized such initiative. I personally am a lay-back-in-the-weeds-and-bat-at-her-ankles sort of flirt.) Where we might eat, precisely, became somewhat problematic, however, because she is a vegetarian relying on a confirmed carnivore to pick her restaurant.
I have nothing against vegetarians except they are hard to eat with. I personally could find everything I have ever wanted to eat at Baskin-Robbins, so of course all of my potential dinner companions except one are nutrition experts. First they gave up fat (flavor) and now they have given up meat (food.) In another year or so I suspect we’ll give up going out to eat at all and just wander from cabbage patch to beet bed. And, since I am, in my own way, as devoted to my diet as they are to theirs, I will be forced to pre-eat. I am so well-known for my eating habits that I called in to work sick one day and my desk partner suggested I must have accidentally ingested a lettuce leaf.
From a purely outsider’s point of view, vegetarians are a confusing lot. I have vegetarian friends who eat fish. I have vegetarian friends who eschew beef bouillon but who eat chicken. I have vegetarian friends (not many) who become indignant when it becomes clear I do not appreciate the purity of their diet: they do not drink milk, eat cheese, eggs or bird’s nests, and only wear the hides of freshly slaughtered polyesters. Like all non-Catholics who are only too aware of the convenience of Catholicism (eat, drink and be merry, for Friday we have only to confess) I tend to sniff at the hypocrisy of vegetarianism without needing to seriously evaluate the philosophy. Being free of contradictory behavior myself, I feel quite comfortable judging my friends.
I have actually gotten into the habit of perusing the menus of new restaurants for vegetarian dishes so I won’t be caught breathless in the quest for places to take my friends. I can adapt.
And I understand that accepting a particular discipline that is outside the norm—whatever that discipline may be— requires a certain determined immunity to the many obstacles nonbelievers feel compelled to observe and embrace. It takes guts to buck the system. And I appreciate the camaraderie of kindred spirits.
I also appreciate meat. I was born and raised in the middle of a herd of cows, my horizons broadened by the silhouettes of chicken coops, my senses heightened by the gentle eau de pig. I can appreciate more enlightened attitudes about the right to life of animals, the ecological inefficiencies of a cattle-dependent diet … But I like meat. I want it. I crave it. It would take just a bunch of Portobello mushrooms to get me through a meat-free meal with a smile.
It is entirely possible, I suppose, that meat-eaters will eventually go the way of smokers. We will be allowed to eat meat only in special sections of the restaurant. We will have to leave all public buildings and sneak our hot dogs and hamburgers twenty-five feet or more from the front doors. We will no longer be allowed to bolt down Whoppers while riding in someone else’s car. Massive lawsuits will be filed against the American Beef Growers Association for primary and secondhand coronary damage done by the deliberate repression of the known side effects of cholesterol.
Anything is possible.
Twenty years ago no one could have convinced me the tide of public opinion could have swung from the occasional malcontent and hyperallergic whiner to a nationwide movement to clean up the air we breathe and the toxins we/those near us stuff into our lungs. I have read, in more than one article, that eventually the human race will learn to eat grains or starve.
I quit smoking. More because I had come to the point (for the third time) when I could either smoke or breathe—but not both—than because it was politically incorrect, but I did quit. I fear, however, you can have my steak when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.
And, just for the record, regarding all of those cutesy we’re-going-to-live-forever-while-being-good-to-the-planet/you’re-going-to-keel-over-and-die-horribly-before-your-time remarks that seem to flower among the lovers of vegetables: I’m still not supportive. Eat whatever you feel you need to and feel good about it, certainly. But if you don’t like what is on my plate, fork it.
of cats and men
I’VE HAD A BACKACHE, of late. I move much more slowly than I once did. I think about things, like angles and degrees of slant and how to pull on my left sock. My goal in life, for about the last two weeks, has been to avoid unnecessary pain. Everything else goes somewhere behind that.
I inched my way downstairs a few mornings ago to find my housemate and Babycakes having breakfast together at the dining room table. I acquired this housemate because he was in transition between his old house and his new house. He and Babycakes are still becoming friends. Bob was peering through the half-lens of reading glasses at the paper while he steadily spooned cereal out of his bowl. Babycakes, who was spread out across the table top like a fine gold rug, was watching every spoonful go slowly up, sink slowly down, go slowly up, sink slowly down, go slowly up …
Being something of a curmudgeon—it’s probably the pain— I observed that only one of them was truly supposed to be using the table at a time.
“W
e’ve worked this out,” my housemate said, and flipped a page of his paper.
And—being racked with pain and attacked by assorted random muscular spasms and contractions—I temporarily forgot exactly what was wrong with that alleged treaty.
In Skinnerian psychology, the flaw is called “successive approximation.” (You may quietly applaud. Four years of college and this is pretty much what I remember.) Successive approximation is a term describing the methods by which someone who wishes someone else to do something arranges for that person to actually do that very deed. As an example let us choose as the expectant do-ee, oh, say … the cat. The cat—we can call him Babycakes— would like something to be done. To continue our example, we need a doer. Let us just randomly choose, oh, say … Bob, my housemate. Babycakes would like Bob to do something for him. We could just recklessly assume this “something” Babycakes would like to have done involves, oh, say … food.
Skinnerian psychology is a behavioral philosophy that assumes that for every behavior there is a reward and for every reward there is a behavior. An example springs to mind. A man is eating food. A cat jumps on the table. The cat wants the food. The man has the food. The cat wants the man to give the food to the cat. The man wants to keep his food. The cat must think to himself, “What does this man want, and how would this help me get his food?” The man wants peace. The man wants the cat to sit quietly on the table. The cat says, “Ahhh … step one. I have gained the table. I shall reward this man.”
The man turns smugly to his housemate and he says, with just a trace of superiority, “We’ve worked this out.” The man has been morally justified. The man has his reward.