When the Star Spangled Banner
ends . . . “o’er the la-and of the freee, and the home of the braaave,” I reflexively
say to myself “Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.” It was the nun at St. Michael’s, who invoked
us daily: “Praised be Jesus Christ,” and we, her third graders, who chanted in Pavlovian
response: “Now and forever, Amen.” 1961.
The things you learn from the other kids in the
neighborhood: step on a crack, break your mother’s back. But it was easy to not
step on a crack, the new sidewalks blocked off in large squares. Still, you had to concentrate, you had to
remember. Or you might easily step on a
crack. Taken to the extreme we now call
this OCD.
When I recited the Apostle’s
Creed I used to love saying that I believed “in all things visible and
invisible.” However, what the words are
supposed to mean is that we believe that God created all things visible and
invisible.
Sacred Heart occupied the
northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Miltary: a parish church, a couple of
school buildings, rectory, and convent.
These buildings housed the center of our lives for four or five years
and kept most of the rest of the world at arm’s length. We wore neckties, and plaid skirts to
knee-length.
In almost every classroom at
Sacred Heart a familiar print of Christ hung on the frontwall, one hand
appearing to bless the viewer, the other pointing to his heart floating visibly
in his chest, appearing to be on fire and wrapped in thorns. No one I knew there grew up to have a vocation, though it was generally agreed
on––but not examined too deeply—that going to mass was good thing.
We prayed before football games, knelt on the church steps of
Sacred Heart in our game uniforms, helmets in hand, eyeblack high on our
cheekbones. We were supposed to be
praying that no one got hurt, but we all knew we were praying to win. The other schools we played were all Catholic
as well; they were praying to win, too.
The walk from football
practice back to the locker room was about a mile. Tom Bailey and I believed
that if we did not walk this mile together after every single practice bad luck
would befall our team.
We lost only four games in
three seasons, so who’s to say it didn’t work?
Tommy passed away suddenly
and too soon. But without knowing more
of the facts I couldn’t say whether that had been a matter of luck one way or
the other. I know he’s gone, but it’s
hard to believe.
The Litany of the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus is rather unremarkable, though in my St. Joseph’s Daily Missal
the litany is prefaced by its spiritual
value (italics mine): “An indulgence of 7 years. A plenary indulgence once a month under the
usual conditions, if the entire Litany with its versicle and prayer is recited
daily for a month.” A drop in the bucket of eternity.
Stevie Wonder provides a pretty good definition of
superstition in his eponymous song from 1973: “When you believe in things you
don’t understand . . . .” But you have
to listen very carefully to catch the next two lines: “Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way.”
“The true mystery of the world is the
visible, not the invisible.” So observed Oscar Wilde.
In the Liard Hot Springs in
the Yukon my friend observes the red ribbon my girlfriend tied around my neck
for luck and to keep thoughts of her close.
We are on the Al-Can Highway on our way to the big unknown. 1977.
For many years I wore a yellow
plastic Livestrong wristband as a talisman against cancer, which I have survived,
so far, many times.
My cardiologist, profoundly
indifferent to the concept of bedside manner, has assured me that, although my
heart will require surgery, I will die of cancer. My heart problem, my cardiologist tells me,
is electrical. His actual title is Cardiac Electrophysiologist.
On an excursion to Long
Beach, Washington in the summer of 2015 to see Jake the Alligator Man I had my
fortune delivered to me by Zoltar, a glass-encased automaton: “As blessings of
health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end Everything rises but to fall . . . .”
Of the three medals I wear
around my neck only one did I choose myself: St Bernard, patron saint of
alpinists and skiers.
I take my friend John into St
George’s, a small church in Banff, to see its simple beauty, stained glass. You made the sign of the cross, he
observed, And, genuflected.
Yeah, I
said, barely conscious of having done either, or at least not conscious of him.
Yeah, I did.
After our climb we have an
early dinner at that Chinese restaurant on the road just past the bridge over
the Bow River in Banff. My fortune
reads: Be persistent in pursuing the
goals in your life. I have
been. Perhaps there is some question as
to whether I shall continue to do so.
John’s cookie has no fortune.
The third time I drive the
AlCan I am with my sons, their second trip up.
They are not eager to stop at the Liard Hot Springs. I fear perhaps they had heard that a woman
was mauled to death by a grizzly in the upper pool. No,
they say, we call that place the pools of
misery. I am baffled. Yeah,
they said, it’s all old people who are
miserable, complaining about their health and how the world has gone to
shit. The place is a drag.
The summer before my son Macklin died he attached the kayak
to the roof rack in a hurry and when it flew off, it shattered the car mirror
on the passenger side.
I have always picked up pennies, almost obsessively. I then
irrationally connect finding them to any good thing that happened that
day. And I sometimes knock on wood. Black cats, walking under ladders, Friday the
13th have no hold on me. Though,
walking under a ladder seems kind of stupid.
I see that mirror every time I drive that car. I’ll wish on a falling
star every chance I have.
As a writer I have always adhered to Faulkner’s dicta from
his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that “the human heart in conflict with
itself’ is the only thing worth writing about.
The two people I prayed the hardest for died within six
weeks of each other. I don’t pray for
them any more. I pray for the living. I suppose I should have praying for their
souls all along. But let’s face it: I
was praying for their lives.
“When the gods wish to punish us they
answer our prayers.” Again, Oscar Wilde.
I used to take a “natural” supplement, glucosomine, for hip
pain. Now I take shark cartilage for
same. Neither has been shown
scientifically to be effective. My brother
who lives on Maui told me about this, although his hip has already been
replaced.
Every day I apply sunblock to my face, even though here in the
Alaskan winter we have about five hours of cloudy daylight. Most of my melanoma, was caused, I have been
told, by exposure to sunlight as a child.
So what does it matter what I do now?
It’s a ritual.
In his poem “I Believe” Jim Harrison admits mostly to things
of the world: used tires, brush fires, as well as memories: “the thunderstorm
across the lake in 1949.” But he ends by
expressing belief in “the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see/ from the
left corner of my blind eye, struggling/ to stay alive in a world that grinds
them underfoot.”
Thirty-five years later I am
on my way to Nepal, My wife, the young girlfriend of 1977, ties a small
medallion around my neck. An amulet, for
luck.
I was spinning every prayer wheel between Syange
and Tatopani. There were many. John is utterly indifferent. I explain that I need all the luck I can
get. My first cancer had 95% mortality
rate, and I survived. My next cancer,
just a year prior to the Nepal trip, the odds were 1000 to 1 that it would
spread to my lymph nodes. It did not
spread to my lymph nodes. There is not a day I don’t feel lucky to be
alive. I try to explain this good luck
to John. No way, he says, your luck is
bad, that’s how you got cancer in the first place. My good luck is a luck he wants no part
of. But I’ll take it.
Our base camp below Chulu East was at about
16,000 feet. After our first night there
I woke with all the signs of cerebral edema, fatal if unattended. We had to descend and abandon the climb. But, I was alive, and therefore very lucky,
right?
At a relatively young age I figured out that
prayer was just another way of saying I
want, I want, I want. Thereafter,
for many years, I did not pray.
I don’t want to visit a psychic, have my fortune
told, palms read, astrology charted. But
once I fell for the facebook algorithim that would figure out my cause and age
of death: I would drown in a river trying to save a dog. Okay, I thought. However, the fact that this would occur when
I was 103 years old rather dampened my expectations.
A few days before he died unexpectedly at 22, my
son asked me if I had an extra crucifix I could loan him. I gave him an old one on a string and ordered
a nicer one. He was alone when he
drowned. We put the crucifix in with
him. His brother added a spliff of marijuana
about the size of one of Castro’s cigars.
Accidental drowning.
Water enters the lungs, changing the chemistry
of the blood, causing it to become more concentrated. The heart cannot bear the extra weight. Thus to drown is to die from heart
failure. A broken heart.
When Macklin was child he nursed a tiny bunny to
health. The veterinarian had said that
the odds of successfully doing so were 1000 to 1 against. He considered the thriving bunny to be a
miracle.
Subsequently, he rescued a small hawk, that sat
on his shoulder but which, ultimately he could not save. Thus crushed his hope for the second miracle,
for sainthood. I like to think that he
found another road to sainthood. But why
it had to be such a tortuous, but nonetheless fast, path, I will never
understand.
When my heart’s electrical system overloaded I
was deep in the Talkeetna Mountains trying to ski home through three feet of
new snow. In the long night before the
helicopter appeared we clung to each other for warmth in a shallow snow cave.
Someone later would ask, What did you
talk about all night? The truth was that we didn’t talk much; we used all
of our powers of concentration to conserve warmth.
I suppose what those people may have meant by that
question was, Did you pray? The answer is the same: I had only one thing
on my mind: what could I do to not freeze to death?
My idea of prayer, to the extent that I believe
in it, is that it may be performed only with the intention of serving
others. In this way it’s like Aristotle’s
idea of courage: an act can be courageous only to the extent that it benefits
other people.
My son Dougal asks me if I remember the time we
found a hawk, dead in our backyard in the Midwest. This was not the same hawk his brother had
tried to save, but another. I remembered
that hawk vividly because its heart had been cored out of its body, very
precisely. And this was an eerie fact
that I hid from my sons. I had wanted to
consult a biologist as to the cause of this phenomenon, and considered preserving
the hawk in our freezer, although I ended up burying it at night, alone, in the
frozen earth. The other memorable fact
concerning this event was that it was Christmas day.
The crucifix I ordered for my son arrived the
day after his funeral service at St. Benedict.
I gave it to his brother.
Harrison was right, the world will grind us
underfoot, along with our fluttering
unknown gods. We must summon all our resources, real, and hoped for. I think God
help us all. I’m not sure it’s a prayer, exactly, but I will confess to you
I am sneaking myself into the all.
†††
