My father, my uncles, my
grandfather, adult male cousins—I have an image that has remained with me since
a young boy.
It is Christmas, and the morning joy
has been replaced with anticipation of the afternoon family gathering. We are at Grandfather’s house in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
My pacifist grandmother has been
kind enough to give me two shiny cap pistols and a double holster because—I was
always a salesman, even from the first, ready to address the objections of my
customer—because I assured her I would only shoot people who are already
dead. It seemed to me a perfect
compromise, and, by charming my grandmother, it worked.
Things are going very well today.
So,
it is early afternoon, and the uncles begin to arrive, complete with my aunts
and my cousins. My mother’s brother Charlie
is one of the uncles, along with my Aunt Aggie, and their two daughters, Kate
and Susan, who are my pals. (Cousin
Susan went on to distinguish herself athletically—she won the Iditerod sled dog
race four times.)
I stand in the vestibule, wearing my
guns. One after another, these tall men come through the outer door, smelling
of cold snow and winter wind, their faces red.
They all wear overcoats, which they doff as they trade greetings with my
father and with Grandfather. The overcoats smell of the outdoors and swirl a
cold air as they are swung off shoulders and hung among others already
there. The uncles are well dressed,
good-looking, competent. They chat with
one another as though they are all members of that enviable club—the club of
adult maleness.
They notice me; they greet me.
More than anything on earth, I long
for membership in their club. I would
give up my guns to be a man in an overcoat arriving out of the snow from
a world in which I know how to make things happen.
If you are a woman, you will have
had much to consider about men. We men,
I can tell you, mull a lot over women.
But first, when we are six or eight—and at later times, too—we mull a
lot over men.
As we boys come up, we encounter the lives of our
fathers. Most of us, we encounter the well-lived
lives of our fathers. Our fathers are
decent men, who tried, and who succeeded.
Along the way, our fathers made their mistakes of course. Eventually, all fathers display their
weaknesses to their sons. However we sons
already know what those weaknesses are.
When I was six or eight, I imagined I knew Dad’s weaknesses because
of visceral sympathy between the generations.
I felt soulful accord with Dad. Here’s
what I thought. I know Dad (comforting and cozy); he knows me (sometimes, not so comforting and cozy).
Anyway, we know one another’s weaknesses because we are
father and son
There’s a sager explanation of this communion—sin.
At six or eight—even at ten or
twelve—I probably knew that word, but it had no context for me. In our family, we were Episcopalians, after
all, as high as could be. More to the
point, my father was a poet, worshipping, really, the muse. Sin had nothing to do with anything that had
to do with us—or with me, for that matter.
Yes, a shaft of jabbing
badness cut at my guts and made me keep secrets. But—I crouched inside myself in confusion—perhaps
keeping secrets is just the way things are.
Jabbing badness could not be in my uncles
in their Christmas overcoats, nor in Grandfather and Dad. How could there be jabbing badness in
Grandfather, who was so kind to me, or in Dad, who was Dad, or in Charlie, who
knew how to play, or in any of the others who swooped through the door?
I was the only one who kept secrets,
and I would stop doing that soon.
After all, now I had my guns.
After all, I was strong enough to stop keeping secrets.
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