This particular town, our town, is the kind of town that has an immeasurable kind of beauty associated with it, the likes of which our youth never realize until it becomes time for them to leave their home for the sake of education. The cycle goes in such a way that they become inflamed of their new surroundings but remain unconscious of the fact that they have not yet reached the point in life in which things stop being sensuous. But let's say that perhaps they fall in love with travel. And so they travel the world over, if they are so socially and financially inclined, and if you asked them what they were searching for, they would say “beauty” or “truth,” and perhaps they would obscure their response in such a way as to make no division between the physical and the metaphysical. But lets not assume that they've gotten there yet. They're searching for beauty, and they discover it in unfamiliar mountains and plains, cities and towns, rural areas and urban, people as well as earth, and they relish in it. Their travel yields perspective. They experience that tickling sense of foreign immersion in color, the color of their skin and the color of the dirt. And this is what reminds them. And if they happen to have a companion on their journey, so much the better, but the lack of one does not yet prevent them from having this cathartic experience.
But in all of this, mountains and plains, cities and towns, rural and urban, people and landscapes, I have overlooked the trees. For upon returning this young person encounters a sense of beauty that seems to immediately supercede those that he encountered on his journey. Perhaps he says to himself, “I've seen beautiful mountains, fertile plains and dry deserts, but there is a subtle degree to which I still feel unsatisfied, as if I were searching for something that the conscious part of me was unaware of.” But if the answer to our conundrum is simply “trees,” are there not trees in mountains? Are there no forests apart from those of our little town? Surely in all his journeys he must have come across some lush forests, forests far more dense and diverse than those of our town. Why is it, then, that he experiences such keen catharsis upon examining the trees of his own neighborhood while taking a simple stroll around the block?
“There is something different about these trees,” he says. He cannot help it; he eventually succumbs to the conclusion that the trees of his own neighborhood are simply more beautiful than any he ever saw during the course of his travels. “Perhaps it is their tallness,” he wonders. And yet, he begins to think whether that in all of his attempts to witness so many far-off places, the kind of beauty that he may actually have been looking for was the kind found in those trees that grow right there in his own neighborhood. “For,” he wonders, “why was it that when I was in the desert all I could think about was how I wanted to see trees, but when I was in the forest or the mountains, all I could think about was how these trees were not our trees.”
And so we find that the trees of our town lend to it a particular sort of cultural nostalgia. Perhaps it is the way in which they overshadow the quiet country roads. Perhaps their foliage is actually broader and more beautiful than any other place in the entire world. Perhaps, most of all, it is the sense of contrast they give to this temperate town.
Our town is a place of growth, where man and nature are co-witnesses of each other's maturity. And let me tell you, our friend was right, there really are no other trees like these in the entire world. For these are the great hardwood trees of the northeastern United States. In the space between the equinox, they are the reason the entire world fixes its eyes upon this small corner of the earth. To a child, they are limitless. To an adult, they embody the very essence of shalom. They are tall trees, taller than almost any other trees in the entire world, and in the summer the children of our town would play under the shadow of their leaves.
These particular trees, however, were not located in that small corner of the world. They were west of the beautiful Northeast- in the Midwest. This was what constituted a large part of their unusual appeal. They were rare. When you’re looking at fields, you see trees. The grass is brown, but the leaves are always green.
It was among these trees that the mother of our family brought her newborn son.
The mother, with her back bent over against the sky, asked the child if he could see the trees, and with a quiet gesture reminiscent of some disturbed peace, gently unfolded the flap of the stroller, exposing the infant’s eyes to the light of the May afternoon. Then slowly, with the air of a human being utterly conscious of intent, she exhaled deeply, and gracefully returned her hand to its normal resting place.
Around the two was a small lake, the shores of which slanted gradually upward in this part of the world not known for geographical variances. On these small hills the rich people of our town built their houses with wooden doors and large glass windows looking out onto the lake. They were always present, but never home. On the opposing side, the side on which the mother stood over her stroller, was a large grove of those amazing trees I was telling you about.
The child, with legs exposed, lay on his back facing the sky. Underneath him was a thin white blanket the mother had purchased at the department store. It did not cling to his skin (as fabric does on the days of hopeless humidity in the summers of our town), but provided his legs with the rare feeling of a dry and perfect cool. Such days come only several times a year, when nature proclaims death to its extremes, and its raucous poles, for a short time, relinquish their polarization.
Staring upward helplessly, the child’s pupils glistened in the afternoon light, reflecting in them the broad canopy of leaves under which he lay. And what a canopy it was! The broad leaves of the maple trees filtered the light so that, when he looked up, the child witnessed a particularly golden type of light, the purest of the pure, not unlike witnessing the sunset though it was still mid-afternoon. The infant, whose mother named him Lucas, was seeing the purest of the pure.
This pureness also saw him. The leaves, too, shaded him. And the mother loved him, absent yet of many of his inclinations. His legs, bubbled with fat, twitched, and his face contorted. All of his body moved in the new medium of air. Lucas was never born into a vacuum.
The mother, with back bent over against the sky, asked her child if he could see the trees. But the infant’s legs just twitched, and his face swung.
Our mother, whose name was Angela, found herself increasingly irritated at the tepid movements of her child. She was angry at his inability to feel guilt. This was because, if Angela were honest with herself, she was a little bit envious of her child’s lack of consciousness. This, however, was not the good kind of envy, the kind that gives you a healthy dose of holy admiration. No, Angela’s envy of her child was more of a jealous poison, and both she and God cultivated the root.
For Angela Erma, these frustrations bubbled over that day underneath the trees beside the lake. What we must understand is that this woman had been through a little bit more physical and psychological stress than, say, your average person. As to the exact causes of her emotional instability I cannot say, for I have to tell you that I do not know. What I can tell you is that she was a scrawny woman with blotchy pale skin and sunken eyes. The second daughter of Earl Blonski, a cattle rancher from Laramie, Wyoming, she was born on the family ranch in 1935. She grew up with somewhat of a peculiar and introverted psychological disposition, divulging into obscure subjects at school and home. Moreover, she suffered from Hemophilia.
When you, the reader, understand this fact, you may actually find that it is easier for you to dig deeper into your soul in search of that atom-sized kernel of grace that you know is still there. I know, it’s hard. It’s difficult to give grace to this woman when you do not know her story. And truly what I’m asking you to do is a little bit ridiculous. When I say, “I do not know her story,” it’s perfectly possible that you may choose to disbelieve me. I’m asking you to give her grace while at the same time telling you, “I do not know why you should give her grace.” But men must act irrationally every once in a while, if only to buck the trend. Soon, very soon, I will ask you to cultivate a feeling of hatred for an innocent child. So there you have it.
Angela Erma knew a thing or two about irrational behavior. Indeed, this behavior did not go unnoticed by the citizens of our town. One particular story involves an incident that happened at the Laundromat on Delancey Street, near the center of town. It was an old Laundromat, one of the oldest buildings in town, and one of the few that had not been renovated to reflect the charming architecture of the rest of the town. The story originated with Susan Carter, but spread like boredom through the trees of our town. She told the story to her neighbor, Lisa Campbell, that evening after dinner in her living room. The two mothers had begun talking in the street in the cool of the evening. Susan invited her inside, and the two sat together in the living room drinking tea.
“I had dropped off my laundry earlier in the day, see. I dropped it off, so that I could come back to it later. I dropped it off so that I could take Liza to the store. Well, I took Liza to the store, then I came back, and there was Angela Erma, wearing that white-old polka dot dress she always does. And, well, what would you say’in is to be so strange about that? Well, I’ll tell ya. She was just sitting there. All the other ladies is folding and talking and smiling to each other, she was just sitting there, dumb as a bag of hammers, staring at the washing machine going round and round and round agin. Sitting there with that white-old polka dot dress coming down over her knobby-old knees. And it warn’t like she didn’t have nothing to do! There was a pile o’ cleans next her that she could ha’ been folding, but she just sat there staring off at that old washing machine. Staring into the circle, that’s what she was doing. Staring into the circle with those blotchy white knees hanging out.”
“Well, what happened?” Lisa asked.
“Well, I finally got up some courage to go an talk to her, I mean, to go talk to her, you know, like say hullo and all that. Well, I says ‘hullo’ and she says ‘hullo.’ I start asking about how things are with her little boy. You know she had a little boy? She had a little boy bout three weeks ago. Well, I was asking about her little boy, when outta nowhere, outta nowhere she starts blabbing off bout her hemophilia, see, bout how she’s scared of being touched. Said she almost died giving birth to that boy… Lucas, his name is, and how that cousin of theirs, Sima, got so angry at her the other day that he almost tried to make her bleed. And how Lucas was watching right there in his stroller, all the while crying his little head off! Then I asked her, where’s that boy now? She left him with Sima! Lisa, the travesty of it! Imagine that crazy little devil taking care of her newborn!”
“Well, suppose it was necessary somehow.”
“Necessary? Lisa, ain’t nothing this woman does is necessary. What’s a need anyway? ‘I gotta do my laundry, hand ‘im over!’ Now there’s sacrifice for ya! A regular Jesus Christ! Leave the kids to rot, I gotta do my laundry!”
“It happens,” Lisa said. “It might happen, sometime. All I’m saying is that somewhere there might be a time when we could excuse that particular action. I mean, let it go, we could choose to. The time would have to be right, and the place too. But, you know, I’m wearing her shoes here, I’m trying, and, well, I mean, I dunno Susan. What’s right? Well, what happened then?”
“Well, ain’t normal. S’all I know. Ain’t normal at all. Liza walked in, then, and I excused myself, you know, in a polite-like manner of course, polite as I know how. And she went back to staring into that machine, regular as breathin. More tea?”
This was the kind of argument going around in the living rooms of our town. Soon everyone heard about how Angela made a habit of leaving her newborn child at home to go to the Laundromat. And sure enough, people would go to the Laundromat themselves on Saturday mornings in the summer, and there she’d be, alone, sitting on that chair in her while polka-dot dress with her knobby knees hanging out, worried sick about bleeding to death. It got people thinking, at least.
But this all leads us up to what happened at the lake that day. The truth is that Angela had caught wind of her notoriety among the citizens of our town. This created in her a neurotic desire to justify her actions, which in turn drove her to the point of mental and emotional collapse. For some reason unknown to us all, Angela began attempting to convince herself that her three-week old son was worthless. No one knows why this happened, but everyone knew that Angela seemed to think that what she was doing was perfectly normal. In fact, it appeared to the citizens of our town that Angela acted as if her actions were the only logical actions given the particular situation. “How else could I act in this situation?” she seemed to be saying. Yes, she was a real moral woman, and she acted on her principles. Nothing demonstrates this more than the incident beside the lake that day. Looking into the stroller, into the face of her adorable little babe, Angela clenched her fists, and, foaming at the mouth, spoke with a loud voice that afternoon beside the lake:
“How am I to help my son? Should I hope for you? Would you involve me with you? In future times I plot your course, or scribble on the page? I am bending over you, then drawing back. Bending over, drawing back! Should I leave my child? Should I leave you? Fashion for me my expectations! Most of all tell me, what is virtue?
“How am I to help you? I could have great hopes for you, Lucas, wonderful expectations. Tell me, am I to believe that? I would spend on you, put the meaning of my life in you. What would you need? Money? Education? Status? You would have them. I would put you in a place of expectation. They would train you. ‘There’s something deep inside you,’ they would say, ‘like a parasite.’ Then they would place a small morsel on your tongue. You would be like a monk, Lucas, only you would have something important these monks don’t have. Do you know what that would be, Lucas? I’ll tell you. Human expectation. Everything in your life is based on an identified quantity of stored energy. The monks engage in the same habits without any premonition of worldly accomplishment. You would suffer for the sake of your potential. But all these things- they are based on investments. What is my return? Vicarious greatness, Lucas, in the immanent world.
“How am I to help my son? I’m bending over, then drawing back. I could surrender you to the map of Mother Earth. Relinquish. Tell me, would she care for you? I would set you down on the warm grass in a sheltered wood, and there I would leave you and these great expectations. Would you survive? Even if there were a shallow pool and the most accessible apple trees in the entire Midwest, you would not survive. But this is not the point. I would be helping you. She would swallow you up, but I would be free. No commitment, Lucas, I would have no commitment. In that moment I would make this grandiose speech about how I am surrendering up your life to the flustered broadcaster. He does the work, but he revises his plans. He is sitting at his desk, throwing the old copies over his shoulder.
“But even more than your life (I would say), I am surrendering my expectations. For when do men stop mourning for the loss of their child? After they have made peace with the fleeting pain the child may have suffered at the precise moment of their death? Perhaps, but surely this is but a small fraction of the whole. No, men mourn until their expectations are lowered. This is how boys become men and how men become old men. In the early stages of their grieving, they say things like ‘You could have been a great man,’ and they cry for the recognition their child will never receive. But it a curious thing to witness those who appear to abandon all hope. They are jokers, then, and they always succeed unless you can come up with a sound and legitimate reason for peace. When you have contrast, Lucas, life blooms. This is why I am hell-bent on making your childhood particularly shitty. Maybe you’ll get a cloudy day or two. A reflection, perhaps. How am I to help you? I’ll teach you curse words, and how to scream. Screaming in the streets, Lucas, there’s screaming in the streets.
“Surely we must now consider suicide together. Haven’t you considered, Lucas, whether the best thing right now for the two of us wouldn’t be to drown ourselves here in this lake? Yes, I do believe the best possible scenario may be to ship you down the Nile, Lucas. Or tell me whether you would not honestly have me leave you in a trashcan somewhere to fester with your being? You always talk about dying, Lucas, and for that I am eternally grateful.
“There I go again, thinking that I care about you. But tell me Lucas, can I really desire anything bad? I mean, I’ve planted my little seed here (my little experiment!) and I’m trying really hard! I’ve watered it, and now I’m gonna see if it grows. It’s like throwing rocks at the little kid on his bicycle. Sooner or later you gotta bring on the test. The kids will cheer you on. They’re standing next to you on the sidewalk, yelling in your ear. ‘Do it!’ they say, over and over and over again. And in that moment you finally reach the point where you wonder whether you can really make him bleed. But even if you did, what would you say? ‘Serves him right, the bastard!’
“Maybe you actually know, Lucas, or maybe I do. Maybe I am the one who gives the definition! Ha Ha Ha! What if I’m the one who knows what the good things really are? What happens when I wake up one morning with a splendiferous appetite for suicide? We’ve gotta go, I’d say! To the trashcan, Lucas, prostrate!
“It’s inevitable, Lucas, the expectation. The clock only moves one way, but it’s always moving. Either life or death- things for which I can pray. And which is better? Binary, Lucas, my position is binary! I’m drawing a line, Lucas, but the broadcaster bends it to a circle! How am I to know? The wisest man says, ‘I am not wise. What is a definition?’ We do not possess the faculties. Where is love and hate, hope and abandon, belief and….what? What are they? What is the universal definition? You know it! Sitting there in the peak of your maturity, you know it, but you cannot speak! We’re cursed! Listen! The babe knows the secret, but he cannot speak!
“No, it’s not worth it. You will come to nothing, and I will have wasted my time. I will not hope; I will not be disappointed. And that is why I am telling you that you are already a failure at just three weeks old. You will wander with the fairies, Lucas, and you won’t get anything done. You have already reached the peak of your maturity and you have let me down. Yes, you are nothing and will become no one. I’m taking that weight off my back. I will be free of you, Lucas, free of your screaming and your loss of innocence. Can you promise me, Lucas, that you will fail in this life? I must make sure of it. What collateral can you give me to ensure that my efforts are not in vain?
“You are scaring me, Lucas. I am concerned about the nature of my investments. I am scared after all that I have said that you will become a great man. And what shall you think of me when you do? You will call for me, and I shall be held to account! Dammit, Lucas, can’t I control you? Look, there is an angel in the sky! ‘All’s hell that is not heaven!’ You’re doing this! Stop! Stop Lucas, I beg of you! The seed is wilting! I admit it; I have proclaimed the death of my child!
“Ouch! Ouch! I have looked at the sky, and now my own words hurt me! I have cursed, then seen the limits of outer space! It hurts me so! I have become perceptive again, seeing all things. How could I doubt the meaning of sacrifice? It’s meaning is to cry! If only I could cry perpetually! Now, finally, I feel it coming over the mountains like a great rushing river! Where is my violence? Send if off a cliff! Where is that torturous noise? Bludgeon me with silence! Come with me! I will show you a garden, a beautiful garden! It is a garden of the West, untouched, an oasis of love. Drink from the fountain, Lucas, and I will be forgiven! You know that it must end with love! You know that we will all fall down and weep before the tree of life! You know how we will be bludgeoned with beauty, and how it will hurt more than a bullet from a gun! You, now, are always convinced of its beauty.
“I see now that you will become great no matter what I say. It is as certain as the damnation of Faust! You will bathe in the black hole and worship the broadcaster! Look! Your knee is already bent! He will show you places that we cannot face yet. He’s going to tear you to pieces. You will cry, everyday, for humanity. All you will do is cry! It is you that will leave me in the woods! O what has come over me? I was running a good race…
“How am I…to help my son? I have told you you will fail. So you will become great. Ah, now you see that this was my plot all along! O how I love goodness! Die, child, die! I am the most loving of all mothers! Don’t you see, Lucas? I don’t control your fate, but I will still be held to account. How am I to help my son? What is love, and what is loving? I scribble mediums, Lucas, in order to live.”
At this point, Angela Erma broke down and cried. At three weeks old, Lucas did not yet know how to talk. But if he did, there is no doubt that he would have comforted his mother. He would have told her that things were not as bad as they seemed. He was, actually, a promising young child, despite his mother’s violent emotions.
