by Brian Doyle
3. Crayons
I don’t even want to think about this ever again. Crayola. The big box—sixty-four crayons, all colors. Sure, he barfed later. Sure he did. Wouldn’t you?
4. Yellow Jacket Wasps
Every summer. Even though he gets stung again and again in the nether reaches of his mouth and throat and jumps up whirling around in such a manner that we laugh so hard we have to pee. He cannot resist snapping them out of the air as if they were bright bits of candy, then making high plaintive sounds like a country singer on laughing gas. I have to pee.
5. Jellyfish on the Shore of the Vast and Impacific Pacific
Why would you ever do such a thing? What could possibly look less appetizing than an oozing quivering deceased jellyfish? Yet he does. Sure, he barfs.
6. to 19. Some Nonorganic Highlights
Pencil nubs. Lacrosse balls. The cricket ball a friend sent me from Australia. Pennies. Postcards. Sports sections. Bathrobe belts. Kindling sticks. Kazoos. Most of a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Most of a cell-phone charger. Pen caps. Toothbrushes. One of two tiny sneakers that belonged to a child one month old, although to be fair it wasn’t like the kid was actually using the sneakers.
20. An Entire Red Squirrel, Called a Chickaree in These Parts
I think the squirrel was suicidal. If you were a squirrel the size of a banana, and you could evade a dog with the athletic gifts and predatory instinct of Michael Jordan, would you venture down to the grass for any reason whatsoever, knowing that the dog could change you from present to past tense in less than a second? Would you? Me neither. But the squirrel did. The skull appeared magically in the grass two days later. The dog declined to eat the skull a second time, probably for religious reasons, or maybe because he knew he would barf. Wouldn’t you?
The Daoine Sídhe
When our daughter, Lily, was little I left notes for her from the daoine sídhe, the small people, the people of peace, the hidden people, the people of the thickets. I left those notes everywhere on the path up to our house, on exposed rocks, gummed to the trunks of trees with sap, slipped into the clefts of bark, folded into the quadrants of the fence. The daoine sídhe are not easily seen but they are there in the bushes, in the mounds and hillocks of fields, flitting among the trees, smiling in the web and braid of branches. The notes were written on the shells and hulls of nuts and the flanks of leaves and the smooth bark of white walnut twigs. The daoine sídhe acknowledge that the world does not believe they are alive and well and adamant and elusive and interested in the doings of all beings of every sort and shape. I would try to leave a note every other day at least, and whenever I had to travel and miss a day or two of notes I felt a sag in my heart at the thought of our small Lily searching the porch and the fence and the walnut tree for notes and finding no notes and thinking perhaps the daoine sídhe were no longer her close and particular friends. There are many theories as to who the daoine sídhe are and one theory is that once they knew larger stronger crueler people were inarguably taking from them the places they loved they retreated to the shadows and the hidden places, under the ground and into the thickets, into all the half-seen half-noticed places all around us no matter where we live. We see so little. I would scrawl the notes with my left hand so that my handwriting could not be recognized and I was careful never to use a pen that she knew to be her father’s pen. I learned not to leave notes from the daoine sídhe exposed to the rain because then the message would be washed away leaving nothing but hints and intimations. Sometimes I would leave a message without words. Another theory of the daoine sídhe is that they are supernatural beings but I do not think this is so. I think they are as natural and organic and present as you and me. I think that mostly what people think is supernatural isn’t. I think there is much more going on than we are aware of and sensitive to and perceptive about, and the more we think we know what is possible and impossible the more we are foolish and arrogant and imprisoning ourselves in an idea. I think language is an attempt to drape words on things we sense but do not understand, like grace and the daoine sídhe. It is easy to say that the small people, the people of peace, the hidden people, do not exist, but you do not know that is so and neither do I, and Lily used to write back to the daoine sídhe on the shells and hulls of nuts and the flanks of leaves and the nubs of cedar cones and on chips of bark, and I kept every such note she ever wrote.
There came a time when I stopped writing the notes, because that time comes, and Lily stopped writing back, because that time comes, but there was a time when the daoine sídhe wrote to her, and she would rise from her bed, and run outside, and search the porch and the fence and the walnut tree for notes, and until the day I die I will remember the headlong eager way she ran, thrilled and anticipatory and delighted, with a warm secret in her face, because the people of peace were her friends, and wrote her name on the skins of this world, and left her little gifts and presents, and asked her questions about her people and her dreams, and the bushes and hedges and thickets and branches for her were alive with mystery and affection. And to those who would say I misled our daughter, I filled her head with airy nonsense, I soaked her in useless legend and fable and myth, I lied to her about what is present and absent in the world, I would answer, And how do you know what is possible and impossible in this world of wonders beyond our ken? Are you really so sure there is not far more than you can see, living in the half-seen half-noticed places all around us? And how is it a bad thing to fill a child’s heart with joy for any reason whatsoever, on any excuse whatsoever, for as long as howsoever possible, before the world builds fences and walls around her thrilled and fervid imagination, how is that a bad thing at all?
Angeline
In the last few years before my lovely bride’s aged mother died, she lived in a small apartment in a castle for elderly people in gently failing health, and I would visit her there almost every Saturday afternoon, not from a sense of duty but because I liked her wit and erudition and masterly passive aggression, which was so layered and subtle that I found myself enjoying it immensely as a form of verbal art. There are a lot of ways to be an artist and one way is to be brilliant at saying things that don’t mean what you said.
I would knock on her door, even if it was slightly ajar, as it usually was, for she loved to be aware of the passing parade, and she would weakly bid me to enter, and I would shuffle in and announce cheerfully that I could stay only a few minutes, which was my opening salvo, and then we would begin a sort of conversational chess game, during which I would ask after her health, and she would say she felt well, and I would say that means everything hurts, and she would say well not everything, and then we would happily discuss her lengthy litany of ills and aches, and compare notes on what parts of our ships were breaking down in the most shocking and offensive manner, such that if you had bought them at a store you would be entitled to triple your money back given the egregious rate of decomposition and shoddy workmanship.
As soon as she said the word workmanship I would pounce, and accuse her of insulting the Force that started the universe into being, and she would pretend to be shocked at my insinuation, and then she would ask me innocently about my Mass attendance, and I would ask her innocently about the various boyfriends she had before she met her beloved late husband, and how many times exactly had she kissed each one and where the nefarious deed was done, and she would giggle in the helpless infectious way a four-year-old giggles, and we would switch to literature, but not before she made the ritual offer to get up and make me tea, which I ritually declined, but knew to be a signal for me to get up and get her a cookie from the blue cookie jar, which I really ought not to have, she would say, because I am so fat, and I have decided that today is the day I will go for a long walk, definitely this will happen today, perhaps right after you leave so soon, you must be so very busy to have to rush off like this each time, I am so impressed at how you manage to find time to visit a poor old lady, how very kind of you.
/> She never went for that walk, of course; and it took me a few visits to realize that she did not really want me to stay longer, for that would reduce and dilute the pleasurable pitch of our brief amused play for two actors; so we talked books for a few minutes (and here she had me, for she was the sort of reader who had read all of Trollope and remembered it too, which is a remarkable sort of reader, but she had a weakness for lesser poetry, which I exploited if I felt she had me on the ropes, she would be questioning me closely about Edward Gibbon and I would innocently mention Ella Wheeler Wilcox or Alfred Marmaduke Hobby and ask why her beloved 19th-century poets had to have three names, what was the deal there? and she would giggle that great giggle again), and then it was time for me to go.
I would rise and she would not, for she was old and she lived in that soft throne of a reading chair, and I would reach down and cup her face for an instant, as a form of hug or kiss, and then I would go, and we would banter as I went, for banter was our language, a way to say things without saying them; and this Saturday morning, like many other Saturday mornings since she died, I miss that. As I got to the door I would ask if she wanted another cookie and she would say I am so fat! and every once in a while now I really want to hear her voice in the next room, saying just exactly that.
The Way We Do Not Say What We Mean When We Say What We Say
Of late I have been ever more absorbed by the way we do not say what we mean when we say what we say; we use all sorts of codes and keys, hints and intimations, signs and signals, to such a degree that even the most blunt and terse remarks, such as yes and no, quite often do not at all mean affirmation or negation, but rather suggest routes of negotiation, or carry loaded messages having to do with past events and discussions, or are comments on matters of a wholly different import than the one at hand; so that, for example, a quiet no means one thing and a loud one another, and a muttered yes one thing and a whispered one another, and so on in that vein; and this is not even to enter into conversation about body language, and facial expression, and eyebrow elevation, and percentage of pique, and amount of amusement, or the way that some men, and it seems to be mostly men who do this, pretend to be hard of hearing when they hear something they do not want to hear or respond to or be lured into; so that pretending to be hard of hearing turns out to sometimes be a way of saying something without having to use words, which are so often misconstrued, misapprehended, misused, or miserable altogether.
We say yes when we mean I would rather not. We say no when we mean I would say yes except for all the times yes has proven to be a terrible idea. We say no thank you when every fiber in our bodies is moaning o yes please. We say you cannot when what we mean is actually you can but you sure by God ought not to. We say no by staring directly at the questioner and not saying anything whatsoever. We ask questions that way also.
I am fascinated by how language is a verb and not a noun. I am riveted by how language is a process and not a preserve. I am absorbed by the way that we all speak one language but use different tones and shades and volumes and timbres and pronunciations and emphases in order to bend the language in as many ways as there are speakers of the language. Perhaps every one of us speaks a slightly different language even as we seem to be using the same words to one another. Perhaps all languages are like this although I know only this one, and this one not so well even after swimming and thrashing and singing in it since I was two and three, and learning to make sounds that turned people around in the kitchen and made them laugh or occasioned sandwiches and kisses or sent me to my room ever since I was four and five, and learning to pick out letters and gather them in gaggles and march them in parades and enjoy them spilling down pages and into my fervent dreams.
Perhaps languages use us in ways that we are not especially aware of; perhaps languages are aware that they need us to speak them, or else they go flailing into the dark to be forgotten except by stones and the oldest of trees. Perhaps languages invent themselves and then have to hunt for speakers. Perhaps all languages began from the music of insects and animals and wind through vegetative creatures. Perhaps languages began with the sound of creeks and rivers and crash of surf and whisper of tides, so that even now, eons later, when we open our mouths to speak, out comes not so much meaning and sense and reason and clarity but something of the wild world beyond understanding. Perhaps much of the reason we so often do not say what we mean to say is because we cannot; there is wild in us yet, and in every word and sentence and speech the seethe of the sea whence we came, unto which we will return, which cannot be trammeled or corralled or parsed, no matter how hard we try to mean just what we say.
On Not “Beating” Cancer
Finally, this morning, enough—one too many journalistic references to someone’s “beating” cancer, as if cancer was an opponent to be defeated, an enemy to be conquered, a battle in which courage often wins the day.
It’s a lie. Cancer is to be endured, that’s all. The best you can hope for is to fend it off, like a savage dog, but cancer isn’t defeated, it only retreats, is held at bay, retires, bides its time, changes form, regroups.
It may well be that the boy who survives an early cancer lives a long and lovely life, without ever enduring that species of illness again, but the snarl of it never leaves his heart, and you’ll never hear that boy say he defeated the dark force in his bones.
Use real words. Real words matter. False words are lies. Lies sooner or later are crimes against the body or the soul. I know men, women, and children who have cancer, had cancer, died from cancer, lived after their cancer retreated, and not one of them ever used military or sporting metaphors that I remember.
All of them spoke of endurance, survival, the mad insistence of hope, the irrepressibility of grace, the love and affection and laughter and holy hands of their families and friends and churches and clans and tribes. All of them were utterly lacking in any sort of cockiness or arrogance. All of them developed a worn, ashen look born of pain and patience. And all of them spoke not of winning but of waiting.
There is a great and awful lesson there, something that speaks powerfully of human character and possibility. For all that we speak, as a culture and a people, of victory and defeat, of good and evil, of hero and coward, it is none of it quite true. The truth is that the greatest victory is to endure with grace and humor, to stay in the game, to achieve humility.
I know a boy with brain cancer. He’s 16 years old. He isn’t battling his cancer. It’s not something to defeat. He is enduring it with the most energy and creativity and patience he can muster. He says the first year he had cancer was awful because of the fear and vomiting and surgery and radiation and chemotherapy and utter exhaustion. But he says that first year was also wonderful, because he learned to savor every moment of his days, and because he met amazing people he would never have met, and because his family and friends rallied behind him with ferocious relentless humor, and because he learned that he was a deeper and stronger and more inventive and more patient soul than he had ever imagined.
He also learned about fear, he says, because he was terrified and remains so, but he learned that he can sometimes channel his fear and turn it into the energy he needs to raise money for cancer research. Since he was diagnosed with cancer he has helped raise nearly $100,000, which is a remarkable sentence.
I met a tiny frail nun once, in Australia, while walking along a harbor, and we got to talking, and she said no one defeats cancer, cancer is a dance partner you don’t want and don’t like, but you have to dance, and either you die or the cancer fades back into the darkness at the other end of the ballroom.
I never forgot what she said, and think she is right, and the words we use about cancers and wars matter more than we know.
Maybe if we celebrate grace under duress rather than the illusion of total victory we will be less surprised and more prepared when illness and evil lurch into our lives, as they always will; and maybe we will be a braver and better people if we know we cannot oblitera
te such things, but only wield oceans of humor and patience and creativity against them. We have an untold supply of those extraordinary weapons, don’t you think?
The Hawk
Recently a man took up residence on my town’s football field, sleeping in a small tent in the northwestern corner, near the copse of cedars. He had been a terrific football player some years ago for our high school, and then had played in college, and then a couple of years in the nether reaches of the professional ranks, where a man might get paid a hundred bucks a game plus bonuses for touchdowns and sacks. Then he had entered into several business ventures, but these had not gone so well, and he had married and had children, but that had not gone so well either, and finally he’d taken up residence on the football field, because, he said, that was where things had gone well, and he sort of needed to get balanced again, and there was something about the field that was working for him, as far as he could tell. So, with all due respect to people who thought he was a nutcase, he decided he would stay there until someone made him leave. He had already spoken with the cops, and it was a mark of the general decency of our town that he was told he could stay as long as he didn’t interfere with use of the field, which of course he would never think of doing, and it was summer, anyway, so the field wasn’t in use much.