UNCLE NEIL

            I have been going through a box of family memorabilia—photographs, invoices, paid and unpaid, documents, certificates… and letters. Lots of letters. Some insignificant, many illegible, many whose relevance has been lost in the intervening years. And here and there I find letters that startle or shock, that move me for their sincerity, urgency, compassion. 

            I found a letter written in 1960 to my parents from my favorite uncle Neil, Harry's youngest brother. It was written from what was then Rhodesia, where he had made his home. He still identified himself as a “European” while his children, he wrote, were Rhodesian in every way. It was their home. They could not imagine any other. My uncle Neil was a handsome, carefree chap, as I knew him. He was reputed in the family to be a bit of a rogue. Perhaps this was why he was the favorite uncle of a boy growing up in the restrained circumstance of an English country village and a boy’s boarding school. He was—gasp!—divorced from his first wife, and had remarried. When he came home to England to visit on occasion, he stood out from the rest of us pale islanders with a face tanned by the African sun and a big, sunny grin that was a rare sight in the crowd of English faces rendered dour not only by the proximity of war but also the inclement weather. He seemed, to this little boy, a joyful, liberated as well as a libertine presence in our midst.

            Here’s my favorite memory of my favorite uncle. I was at “prep” school—a boarding school for boys between seven and twelve years old. Always a bit shy, never a good mixer, I felt like a prisoner in that big old Victorian mansion that housed us. I was did not know, I’m sure, what I longed for, but in retrospect I’m pretty sure it was freedom. We were there for three terms every year, autumn, spring and summer, and those terms seemed, well… interminable. If we were lucky, our parents might come down at half term to “take us out.” My own parents, Mummy and Daddy, would come down once in a very rare while and take a room at a little local hotel, and fetch me from school to spend an afternoon with them there in the hotel’s green garden. If the sun shone, we could sit outside and indulge in the rarest of treats, strawberries and cream. With a dash of white sugar for crunch on the top. I can taste them still.

            Imagine my delight, then, to hear that my favorite uncle was stopping by to “take me out”! Imagine the awe, the sheer joy of this little boy in his gray school uniform, when his favorite uncle sped up the long drive in a sporty convertible. (And imagine the envy he knew would be inspired in the heart of every other little boy!) I climbed into the car beside him, prouder than I had ever been in all my young years, and together we drove off, just the two of us, top down, in bright Sussex sunshine. We meandered for a while along country roads, as I recalls, with the gentle slopes of the Downs rising on either side. We may have stopped somewhere for tea and biscuits or cake. But the best still awaited…

            Long before motorways were even dreamed of, there was the new-fangled miracle, here and there in England, of the “dual carriageway”—modeled, surely, though it pains me to say it, on the “Autobahns” built in Germany in the 1930s—wide open roads with one-way traffic headed in opposite directions on each side, with a grass border in between. It happened there was one near my school, just a few spanking new miles with virtually no other vehicle to be seen. My uncle Neil’s blue eyes gleamed. He put his foot down on the accelerator and the convertible sped up. He turned and gave me a big grin (am I wrong in remembering a colorful scarf at his neck, flying out in the wind?) and shoved his foot down still further. Pretty soon we were going faster than I’d ever driven before, faster than my father had ever dared to drive, faster than I ever thought possible. Seventy, eighty miles an hour… Thrilled, terrified (there were no seat belts in those days) I watch the needle on the speedometer. Ninety, ninety-five, a hundred miles an hour! A hundred miles an hour! And my uncle grinning in triumph, showing off, yes, but enjoying the thrill he was giving his little nephew. Pretty soon, he had to ease off the accelerator, slow down, and drive more sedately as we approached the end of that short stretch of road.

            So, yes, here was an uncle I could be proud of! Here was a story I could take back to everyone at school, to amaze and rouse their envy.

            I read that letter he wrote to my parents. It was written, of course, at a time when the old British colonies were increasingly under pressure from the rebellion of African nationalists. Old colonials, like my uncle, were rooted in old notions—like the inferiority of black people to the Europeans come to elevate them from their savagery and respect and political power to which they were entitled. His letter—a long and impassioned one—expressed his outrage at the British government for abandoning its responsibility to support the old Empire; and his understanding, even love for the African people who, he wrote, must be assured that a promise—be it a thrashing (his word, my favorite uncle’s) or a gift—must be kept. The indigenous Rhodesians, in this widely-held view, were simple-minded children who, if given their freedom, would soon resort to the barbarity of their nature. He looked to the Congo, then in great turmoil, for evidence for his fears. 

            At some deep and conveniently hidden place in my consciousness, I am aware that I carry my share of this white man’s heritage. I know that this shameful and unjustified prejudice and fear of the “other” continues to pervade our culture here in America today, in forms subtle and not-so-subtle. The “great replacement” theory that drives some of the darkest behavior in our  social and political action today is nothing more than an expression of that prejudice, that fear. It is my work, and the work of everyone with anyone blessed with a human conscience and a sense of what is right, to put this inhumanity of the past behind us. I like to think that my favorite uncle, had he lived on until today, would have wished for no less.

  

EYES, REDUX

 Dear Harry,

I note that I last wrote to you about my eyes nearly a month ago, on April 5. I was beginning to celebrate the return of my vision following cataract surgery, complicated--my doctor then thought--by the goniotomy she had performed in both eyes at the time of the cataracts. It was subsequently revealed that the surgery had also caused swellings in both eyes--so-called macular edemas--that went from bed to worse. For weeks now I have been unable to read or write, except by dint of raising the text towards my eyes, whether book or computer, and tilting it so that I can catch a few words at a time

As you can imagine, this has upset the life of one who, like myself, spends most of his time reading and writing. I am on a regime of six separate eyedrops, three of them four times a day, in the effort to reduce the swelling. So far they seem to have had little effect. In a couple of weeks I have an appointment with a retina specialist who may give me injections through the eyeballs in a more radical attempt to solve the problem. E\While I have had these injections before--for a different reason--I do not look forward to the prospect of having them again. But still, to recover my eyesight I will certainly accept the necessity.

So this will perhaps explain my long silence. I had hoped to be a more regular poster, and even to increase my presence in the blogosphere. Until I get my eyes back, though, this is unlikely to happen.

Sending good thoughts your way... Peter

PETER

Dear Harry,

I think you'll like this Easter Day story, Did I ever thank you and Peggy for giving me my name?

So there was little Luka, 10 years old, our youngest grandson, sitting with us at the breakfast table on Easter Sunday. I have long since abandoned the Christian faith--I'm more of a Buddhist these days--but still it saddened me to see Easter reduced to a big bunny, egg coloring and searching, and of course chocolate eggs. I wanted to tell him something meaningful, something he might even remember my telling him in later years, sitting at the breakfast table in our Laguna Beach cottage here in California, so far from the village where my family celebrated Easter when I was his age.

So I told him the story of Peter, my namesake, because I was born on his Feast in the Anglican calendar and my parents deemed it proper for me to have his name. The story of Peter the "fisher of men", liberated by Jesus from his labors on the Sea of Galilee to become his faithful disciple; Peter who, on the night of Jesus's arrest, thrice denied knowing him or being his follower; Peter, who went on to preach the gospel in the pagan Roman Empire and was imprisoned for his pains--and released from his chains by the "angel of the lord"; Peter who wad persuaded to escape the dangers of early Christian Rome, was accosted on his way out of town on the Appian Way by Christ with his cross on his shoulder; who asked, famously, "Quo vadis, Domine?" (Where are you going, Lord?) and was shamed by the response: "I'm going to Rome to be crucified a second time"; and turned around to continue his dangerous work in the city; who was captured again and himself sentenced to crucifixion, but denied the honor of being executed in the same way as his Lord and asked to be crucified upside down (see that powerful painting by Caravaggio!); and who was chosen to become the first Bishop of Rome, into whose shoes every Pope has stepped ever since and crowned in St. Peter's Basilica.

That Peter. As I told my grandson, I'll admit it, tears came to my eyes without my quite knowing why, except that I'm now an old man, an old Peter, who was often reminded in the course of his life about the origin of his name--especially at those moments when he failed to live up to it: Peter, the Rock; and was reminded of the singular honor of being blessed with that name.

Remembered with love, Peter

"THE LEHMAN TRILOGY": A REVIEW

             A contrarian view... 

            We heard nothing but rave reviews before going to see “The Lehman Brothers” at the Ahmanson Theater yesterday. I beg to differ.

            So… the set was ingenious—pretty much a minimalist revolving glass box with transparent, mostly rather nondescript office spaces through which we could watch the actors, three of them, one for each brother, as they perambulate leisurely from scene to scene. The props were no more than a couple of couches, a couple of desks and infinitely variable stacks of file boxes, used to keep the action glowing. A screen at the rear of the stage allowed for the projection of various land- or cityscapes and sometimes dramatic lighting as storms or battles rage in the background of the story. The acting, too, was excellent, with each actor rapidly exchanging roles to fill in for the characters—wives, children, colleagues—who do not themselves appear. The result can be funny, rapid-fire, poignant… (A small complaint: we had a hard time following the dialogue from the mezzanine; big theater, inconsistent projection.) 

The story, too, is an engaging one. Three German brothers arrive in succession in America in the mid-19th century in search of a new home, a place in the world, financial success; their business acumen serves them well, first in the purchasing and sale of cotton in the South (there are matters of conscience to be overcome in profiting from the labor of slaves, but they are, after all, just “middle men”; then in the expansion of their business north to New York, soon becoming the financial capital of the country, then the world; survival through two world wars and, between, the Great Depression; and the final disaster that follows the dissolution of the family and the shift from legitimate business to an abstract concept of money for the sake of money, and eventually sheer greed. In short, the American story.

            It’s also a story of Jewish immigration, Jewish customs and religion, Jewish survival, central to the narrative of the Lehman Brothers. Jewish humor, too. 

            But—and here’s where I find myself in disagreement with friends and theater critics alike—there is a fatal flaw to “The Lehman Brothers” as a theatrical production. There is an abundance of narrative—nearly two centuries of it—but no drama. I’m a traditionalist, even an Aristotelian when it comes to drama and narrative is not drama in that sense. It has no single, purposeful action, no “plot”. It is rather a progression of actions and events that lack the dramatic mainspring of a true plot. It may have many heroes and many heroic moments along the way, but no single hero, whose downfall is the necessary outcome of his actions and his character. It may have moments of conflict, but conflict is not the apex of plot whose resolution satisfies the expectations of an audience. In short, it lacks the suspense that, to me at least, is the necessary ingredient of drama. It is, as the saying goes (variously attributed to Churchill, Edna St, Vincent Millay and a number of other suspects) “just one damn thing after another.”

It's an interesting story, yes. Even an instructive one. It’s just not drama. It’s history. And maybe I’m just old-fashioned but when I go to the theater, it’s drama I’m looking for. Something to raise my expectations, get me engaged, cheer for the hero or hiss at the villain. Make me pick sides. No matter how visually impressive or "dramatic", great storms enacted on the backdrop don't cut it. Not do big bangs or pistol shots. Narrative—especially three hours’ worth of it—can get, um… boring when it’s talked out on a stage.

 

DOCTOR, MY EYES....

 Dear Harry,

You may be wondering why I have been so negligent of my usually more regular writing habits. The truth is that I have been experiencing some dark days. You'll understand what I mean by that because I think you experienced something of the same. We did not see much of each other in your latter days--very little, indeed, since I came to live in America some forty years before you died. But my sister Flora told me of those dark days, and I have no reason to doubt her word.

For me, it's a physical as well as an emotional sensation. It's distressing to feel so complete an absence of energy in the body. Yesterday I went back to sleep soon after waking up and slept for another hour. Then, right after breakfast, I dropped off to sleep again on the couch in front of the television news. And so it went all day. When I wasn't actually asleep, I felt like nothing but going off to sleep again. I went out for a walk in the park with Ellie and Jake and felt like I was dragging my body around with me. After a mere half mile, I'd had enough. 

I tried putting my meditation skills to work but all I could come up with was the observation of a body so heavy, so inert, that the mind could do nothing but wish to leave it behind. It felt already like a useless old carcass that imprisoned me. The mind felt trapped, the spirit weighted down. 

Is this something akin to what you experienced, Harry, in your dark days? I wonder how you handled it. You were taught to pray. That was your métier. I wonder, was it helpful? Did the good Lord reach down to uplift your soul? I don't mean to sound facetious about this, because I know you suffered. As you know by now, I don't particularly believe in the power of prayer, addressed to some omnipotent being. I do, however believe in the power of the mind to achieve a kind of distance from suffering, a dissociation that allows me, when I'm able to find the focus, to simply watch it happening rather than attach to it as "me" or "mine".

As far as that "me" is concerned, I'm sure the feeling can be attributed in part to the recent surgeries on both my eyes, the left a week later than the right. It has been a difficult recovery--more difficult than I expected. Each day my eyes see better, and by now my actual vision is immeasurably improved since before the surgery. For this I'm deeply appreciative. What's difficult is the physical discomfort of the eyes themselves. They ache, they sting, they scratch, they tear up after only a few minutes with a book or on the computer. To bring about some relief, I have to close and rest them for a while.

Is all this normal? I don't know. I don't hear similar complaints from other people who have had cataract surgery. True, mine was complicated by a second minor procedure in each eye, but still... I keep wondering if my eyes are unusually sensitive? Or is it that I am less than usually tolerant of discomfort? Am I just a chronic complainer? Perhaps.

In any event, I was truly grateful to wake up this morning with the realization that the gloom had lifted significantly from the day before! And here I am, typing out this letter with only the occasional time out to rest the eyes! I have an appointment with my eye doctor tomorrow and will have the opportunity to discuss all this with her. Meantime, I'll stick with gratitude and the good intention to allow my eyes the time they need to heal.

With love, Peter

THE BIG HUG

 I suppose doctors need to maintain that glass wall of professionalism between themselves and their patients. Maybe it's a part of their training. It sustains their image as people in possession of special, arcane, almost mystical knowledge and gives them a protective screen behind which to pursue the science--and the art--upon the rest of us so greatly depend.

Or is it we, the patients, who create it? It's always "Doctor This", "Doctor That," never a first name, which feels peculiar to a person of my age when most of their fraternity and sorority are half my age of less. Especially in a culture where first names are thrown around without a second thought.

My own Kaiser doctor is just back from maternity leave. She is a lovely woman, smart, knowledgable, caring and--dare I say this?--quite beautiful too. It occurs to me, not for the first time, how strange it is to have so formal a relationship with a woman who has such intimate, sometimes even embarrassing encounters with my body. So when she stepped into the examination room yesterday morning to see me for the first time in months, I could not help myself. I said, "It seems like so long since I saw you, I feel like giving you a big hug."

I forget what she said. "Why not"? "It's allowed"? "I'd be delighted"? So I stood up with great delight and put my arms around her and gave her a big hug--which she quite comfortably returned.

I was enjoying this lovely moment more than I can say when the telephone rang in my pocket. My doctor stepped back with a laugh and said, "Go ahead. You can answer it." I looked at the screen. It was Kaiser. A nurse, with a follow-up inquiry after my eye surgery last week. Then my doctor's phone rang. That was Kaiser, too.

So the professional world won out, as I suppose I should have expected. The magic was gone, the spell broken. I'm left wondering if I'll ever find the moment to give--and receive!--another such hug. And I wonder if I'll ever dare to call her by her first name...

OLD CODGERS

            Is a month already? Our “conscious aging” group of old codgers met again yesterday for our monthly Zoom session. It warms the heart to see these faces of men, some of whom I have known for 30 years. The bonds between us have been strengthened by the common experience of sitting together in similar circles of men, no holds barred, feet to the fire, unafraid to confront the dark side of our natures. At a moment in the history of humankind when so much masculine energy is misdirected along hideously destructive—and self-destructive—paths, it is good to remind ourselves that it can be healthy, strong, compassionate, loving and creative.

            Our conversation turned, last evening, to children and grandchildren. How much joy the latter bring into our lives! How we love their energy, the freshness of their imagination, the unquestioning openness with which they receive our love and send theirs back to us! We spoil them, of course, because that’s our job. But they spoil us in equal measure in return.

            We have a more complex relationship with our children. They can be the source of infinite pride, but also of great anxiety and grief. In today’s deeply troubled world, the self medication of addiction of all kinds—drugs, alcohol, work—can bring great suffering into their lives, as well as those around them. What loving parent can avoid entanglement in their child’s suffering? Our deepest wish is for them to find happiness in their lives, to embrace the infinite possibilities of independence, to fulfill the immeasurable potential we saw glowing in their eyes as children. And yet so many of them—am I right to say “these days”? Is it any different from the way it always was?—end up deeply troubled, unable to take responsibility for their lives, losing the battle against the chaos that invades them from all sides. 

            The difficulty is to let them go. They are no longer our children. We are unable to take care of them even if every parental instinct tells us that we can, and must. Sometimes we must even take the most painful path of all and, yes, abandon them…

            I had not meant to get so serious and gloomy with this post. I had meant to celebrate friendship, mutual love and admiration, gratitude. I had meant to celebrate the fortitude and compassion of my friends. Which I do. With apologies for my detour into the dark side… 

            But then no, no apologies; we can take this into our hearts; we can deepen our lives; we can learn and yes, even at our age, grow from the community of lived experience; we can share the love.