On June 22, 2002, my sister sat at our parents’ kitchen table and recorded an audio interview she did with them about their lives, about life during the depression and World War 2. She asked other questions, and just like Terri Gross on Fresh Air, did a great job of bouncing off of their responses. She sent copies to my brother and me about five years ago, and when I sat to listen to them, a few things struck me. One, my father was precise in his responses, and my mother was hysterical in hers. He was 77 at the time, and Mom was 69. But what hit me hardest was hearing our father’s voice for the first time in half a decade. I can hear his voice in my mind, of course, but to actually hear his voice like he was sitting there made him young again. The last few years of his life I was around him all the time and his dementia grew worse and worse. So when I played the cd, I heard not just my father, but my father younger, still alert to everything. It was nice to push past the sound of his weak and confused voice that had filled the corners of my mind and hear him as he had been. Ironically, at the same time it makes it hard to listen.
About two years ago while out to lunch I randomly recorded a video of my mother talking about something. I don’t remember what and the video is gone, but the idea took hold, and for the last two years every couple of weeks when we were at lunch or getting coffee, I’d ask her a specific question, or I’d encourage her to remember a particular time in her life. Note that she is one of the funniest and smartest people I’ve ever known, and understand too that she has had quite the life from the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn, to Long Island, to Virginia Beach, and now in Williamsburg, Va. There are fifty plus videos here, but I recorded more than a hundred and deleted many. Some were redundant, and some in the past year or so I got rid of when Mom would struggle with a memory, or lose track of what she was talking about.
Still, this is decidedly not about Joan Catherine.
It is about time. This has everything to do with the brief flash of time we have to share with each other. Watch how a person can at once both change so much and still be themselves, who they are in their heart. The truth is at some point as we age we realize that we must set aside our anger and anxiety and arguments, and we seem to do so far too late in life. In the past year I’ve lost a half dozen people I loved very much who were my confidants and companions, and every one of them died relatively young, three of them in their early sixties. At the same time, my mother has nose-dived into a wall, fallen and slammed her head on a porcelain tub, fallen on the floor, faced cancer–again–had a pacemaker put in, battled neuropathy, and moved from her spacious condo where she lived with my dad, to an independent living apartment in Virginia Beach, to an assisted living apartment in Williamsburg, and she just keeps going. Last July she was in the hospital with pneumonia and sleeping eighteen hours a day, and the doctor did not think she would leave the hospital. Yesterday we went to lunch at an Italian restaurant and she woofed down a massive piece of tiramisu. She Just. Keeps. On. Going. And always with a sense of humor. She talks here about her move from Brooklyn to Long Island, from there to Virginia, and about how patient she can be. Or not. She sings the Banana Song, Woody Guthrie, a Shampoo commercial, and in one of my favorites when she had no idea I was taping from the cup holder of my car as we drove along, she sings “New York, New York.”
But this isn’t about Joan. This is about brevity. When we look ahead–when we anticipate–time can slow to a tragically slow pace. But when we look back, when we recall, we can transport our mind instantly to another era, as if it happened two seconds ago. This makes it seem like time goes by so fast. But it is the same now as it was when we were children. That’s the thing about time: it is dependable. Not one fat second will lose an ounce on my account. But the older we get, the more we recall instead of plan, so the clock can be deceptive. In these videos, Mom is full of energy, sitting up and laughing, with immediate recall of incidents an hour earlier as well as two generations ago; at the same time, here Mom is wearing oxygen, sometimes softly gasping for air, and her memory is nearly non-existent.
Time. It is the only measurement that matters. And we are endlessly distracted by the news and entertainment and the stress of finances and politics and health. But all of it slides away when we start to list what is essential. Then, the answer is easy: each other. That’s it. People leave us, sometimes slowly and sometimes with the swiftness of a cool, autumn morning that takes us by surprise. But they do, in fact, leave.
These videos are in no order, so one of Mom recently trying to remember her Uncle’s name might be followed by one of her looking stronger, heavier, talking about her favorite foods. I decided against a strict chronological order so that instead of watching a woman’s slow decline as age takes hold, we can see how life is, in the words of my friend poet Toni Wynn, “Paper thin.” I will add more to her page as time permits. Thanks for enjoying our mother’s beautiful sense of humor and simple take on what matters the most.
Note: There are some videos on the “Video” tab, but most of the videos are on the “Shorts” tab. Please check out both. And “follow” The Joanie Channel.
For the first time in fifty years—1974—I have no reason to go to Virginia Beach other than a Bloody Mary at the Beach Pub or breakfast at Ocean Eddies, and of course to visit my father’s resting place. 1974 was the year my parents purchased a house on the Lynnhaven River, and this year my mother left the Beach for Williamsburg. It’s odd, really, not needing to go to a place I needed to go for five decades. And while I’m the sort that never needs a reason to go somewhere, I’m painfully aware that Virginia Beach has permanently aligned itself with other towns of my past, such as Massapequa Park and Great River. Oakdale and Wellsville.
Forty-five years ago this past September I met two people that would change and influence me for years—Fr. Dan Riley, who would visit me every night late in the infirmary for a few weeks while I had the Russian flu, during which time we bonded and came up with the idea of a radio show—Inscape. And Dave Szymanski, who joined me many mornings every week in the campus radio station as we tried to figure our way through the gives and takes of that freshman year—him pulling news off the wire, me spinning albums, both of us talking, sharing, hoping. Both of them died this year, exactly forty-five years later, and I meet them sometimes in my mind when I need some advice or companionship.
Forty years ago I walked into a hotel room in Worcester, Massachusetts, thinking I was trying out for a part time job as an exercise instructor at some local health club, and walked out that day a member of the management staff of that club, working for Richard Simmons. It was a wild ride for a while, and the fall of ’84 found me moving into a beautiful yellow house near a reservoir, making a ton of money from America’s Favorite Exercise Guru, and having a blast while getting in shape. This year, forty years later, Richard died, reminding us all it doesn’t matter how full of life we are, how much joy we bring others, eventually we too pass all too quickly.
Thirty-five years ago this past summer my car broke down in the parking lot of Tidewater Community College. This was pre-cell phone of course, so I wandered into an office to use a phone to call AAA. While on hold, the dean—Bill DeWeese—said to his assistant—Eleanor Shannon—that he needed someone to teach Humanities on Wednesdays. I hung up and got the job. One week later I stood outside the door of my first class waiting for students and talking to a woman in an office across the hall. She had a heavy French accent and in those first five minutes we laughed more than I had the previous five months. Letty welcomed me to the college, and the next day we went for coffee. Eleanor passed away some years ago, Bill last year, and Letty this past July, nearly thirty-five years to the day after we met.
Thirty years ago this year I made my first of two and a half dozen trips to St. Petersburg Russia. Prior to that initial journey with my colleague and friend Joe Antinarella for a grant with the Commonwealth, it was much more difficult to travel there. But through the years I watched the city move from vacant streets without advertising or western influence, to restaurants and concerts, European clothing lines and shoe stores, American coffeeshops and fast-food joints, and we wandered freely throughout the backstreets of the Window to the West, knowing Peter the Great’s idea of a “New Amsterdam” had finally been fulfilled. And now, thirty years after that first month-long stay, the streets are again vacant of advertising and western influence, and I cannot go back, nor do I plan to go back.
Twenty-five years ago I made my first of many trips to Prague. It was a month-long stay as I taught at Charles University, was befriended by the great Czech writer, Arnost Lustig, and read all the works of one of the more influential writers in my life, Bohumil Hrabal. I also discovered Pilsner and Terezine, the Hunger Wall and 19 Nerudova Tea Room where I wrote an entire manuscript at night over apple strudel and Irish Crème tea in just over three weeks, and some years later published it as Penance. Since then I’ve come to know Prague as well as I know any city, though much there has changed. It seems change tends to happen.
We like round numbers, don’t we? We like even years, silver and golden anniversaries. More people showed up for the fiftieth anniversary of Victory Day in St Petersburg than the forty-ninth. More people observed a moment of silence on September 11th, 2021, than the same day a year earlier or a year later. We count in decades, we measure in leap years. You can buy birthday cards for someone’s 45th or 50th or 60th, but not their 64th, as if there is less reason to celebrate a life until they finish some imaginary five-year plan.
Still, on this fiftieth anniversary, I understand that I have no real reason to return to the Beach anyway, other than see my Dad’s headstone and tell him about the Mets. I remember the city like it was last week, and what a time it was, managing the hotel those summers during college, attending gigs with my oldest friend, musician Jonmark Stone, and lounging on the beach or at Ocean Eddies back when the drinking age was eighteen. I’m not nostalgic—we had our day in the sun; a lot of them, and I’m lucky enough to carry those memories with me. When I talk to Jonmark on the phone we don’t reminisce, we talk about when we can make our next tee time or when I might get out to Indiana. No, looking back is fine, really, as there’s always going to be something there for me, but it’s not nearly as productive as looking ahead. Fr Dan and Letty would agree; Dave maybe not so much but I didn’t love him less because of his instinct to recall our Glory Days at the radio station.
Many of my habits ended this year, some for the better and some absolutely for the worse, but they ended just the same—they aren’t sitting just behind me in some fog. They’re done. No more weekly phone calls or thrice a week walks. No more late-night Bailey’s on Ice at a mountain on New York’s Southern Tier. That’s why I knew as fall slipped away that this New Year’s is going to be an important one; this is not going to be the same old lang syne.
This year I’m traveling again. First stop, the Netherlands. This year two books are slated for release, one about teaching college, Office Hours, and one I started more than forty years ago and which I finally completed, Curious Men, which tied me to the past for four decades, and which ironically enough is about a time in my life I learned to jump first and invent the parachute on the way down.Perhaps I was simply in denial back then, or a little too angry. For certain I was depressed. But if I understand psychology correctly, this is the acceptance part. And just in time, too. It’s nearly New Year’s.
I understand most people live between the two, comfortable in the daily life of here and now, glad for the past, at the same time they have prepared for their future. Their New Year’s Resolutions are practical and fulfilling, and while some are broken, a birthday is an inevitable chance for a reboot.
So this year, borrowing from Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, I have but one resolve. This year, after the loss of three people I spoke to nearly daily, the completion of a manuscript that on a daily basis brought me back to when I was nineteen-years-old, and a nearly complete amputation of a city that shaped my very existence, as my one resolution for 2025 I’ve decided to simply get out of my own way. In the words of John Denver, who has been there for me from the start,
It’s time to make mistakes again
It’s time to change the show
It’s time and time and time again to find another way
It’s time to gather forces and get out of yesterday.
Happy New Year everyone. Thank you for another year of reading my small entries here.
It has been a bad year, a year of great and significant loss, and I realize this evening the only way to approach Christmas this year is with love and much peace.
It is, after everything else departs us and closes the door, all we have left–that peace and such love, leaving us to realize, sometimes too late, it is all we ever had to begin with.
It’s almost Christmas now, and I can see some stars and what must be a planet in the west. Something about a clear sky on Christmas has always mystified me, captivated my attention and imagination, from the simple, fun thoughts of reindeer and sleighs to the philosophical digressive pondering of First Cause and the imaginative world of proof. I love Christmas morning with its tidings and anticipatory pay-off. But even more I love Christmas Eve, alone, when the sky is a narrative, and there remains enough room for us to fit in our own passages as we need to.
In the west the fading light, and I pull my collar up higher and remember so much love.
On Christmas morning before our parents were awake, my siblings and I would gather, usually in my sister’s room, to exchange gifts we had bought for each other, before we headed down for the beginning of Christmas Day. It would inevitably still be dark out, and I know we’d lay awake waiting to hear each other also awake in the other room. A tap on the door. A “come in.” And we’d sit on the floor and open our presents.
At some point, our mother would wake our father and he would exclaim, “I thought I said no one up before nine am!” and he couldn’t hide his smile to our laughter at the ludicrous suggestion we’d be up any later than five. It was always cold out during those Long Island years, and often snowy, but we weren’t going outside so it just added to the magic. Dad would be in his robe and slippers and he’d head to the living room as we gathered on the stairs and waited for him to plug in the multi-colored lights on the tree, and those on the rail, bringing to life the otherwise dark room. Mom had, of course, already organized whatever presents we would get into separate piles, and Dad would stand back and she directed us to the right area under the branches, though sometimes it was obvious if an unwrapped toy appeared, clearly already wished for by one of us. Dad would sit on the couch and watch in joy, even through the stream of “Wow, thank you Mom!” wishes continued.
It wouldn’t be long before the aromas of breakfast mixed with the onions and Bell Seasoning already underway for the stuffing, and eventually we’d need to get dressed, if not for church since we might have attended midnight mass, certainly for the droves of family who would soon fill the rooms. It was a beautiful way to grow up. I do not know the possible stresses, fears, and sacrifices that went on behind the scenes—that’s how good they were at it. Then, much later in the day, after everyone else had left and we had all settled into the routine of looking at our gifts again, Dad would emerge from some closet with his gifts for each of us—books he had personally picked out, bought, and wrapped. It remains one of my favorite memories of all of my memories of my dear father.
It’s in the twenties here tonight along the Chesapeake. This is one of those days each year where I’ve been up so long and have done so much that it feels like it should be six hours later than it is. My sister and brother and nieces and nephew are all off in various parts of the country with their families celebrating their Christmases, all of us with some common traditions, all of us with our individual touches to the holiday. Certainly all of us fortunate enough to be celebrating Christmas at all, laughing and telling stories, enjoying the food, the drinks, the sounds of football or Christmas music. We are, to be sure, at peace today. Anyone with family is engulfed in traditions which bring peace to our soul while providing some shared space not only with each other but with the idea of our ancestry and the hope of our posterity. It is a day like Christmas that helps ease the sense of loss and emptiness some have in their lives on this day when we normally would spend time laughing with others who have left us all too soon. Sometimes it takes a day like Christmas to turn that around and move forward again.
I miss the days before society took “nearby” and “not far away” and tossed them to the strong breezes of technology and One World. In that small house around that small table when I was a child were so many relatives it is crazy to conceive how we pulled it off. But no one cared—we were together. Everyone was close enough to “drive over,” and by the time the turkey came out of the oven, a small crowd was sitting and standing and outside and in, laughing and sharing serious moments, because it was Christmas.
I’m going inside again. I bought Michael a book at a local nautical shop and I need to wrap it. He will be gracious enough to act surprised, just as we did with our father when he would predictably surprise us with books forty and fifty years ago.I won’t be calling as many people this year to tell them Merry Christmas, so those that I can talk to, I will let them know how much they mean to me, how important they are to me in this brief flash of time we share.
It’s misty tonight but not raining, and all the lights have halos from the soft air. Today I slowed down after sixteen weeks of not, followed by a few days of noise–it was all in my mind, of course, but noisy just the same, so this evening I decided to slow down and after standing on the front lawn looking at the moon through the haze in the east, I drove down into town.
I put on some solo piano music from George Winston’s December and rolled slowly past the fish market to the real estate office where Steve and Randy Blue have the best lights I’ve seen. They have music synced with a radio station across the river, and the largest tree in the front keeps beat with the sounds, but I kept my windows rolled up and just listened to George’s deep rendition of Variations on Canon in D. Kids with parents ran through the paths between light displays, and I assume they were yelling, or calling out what they saw, but I heard nothing. Just George and Pachelbel.
I stopped next door at 711 and bought some hot chocolate, talked to Wayne a while in the parking lot, but families started moving past the Nutcracker display to the parking lot, so I drove off toward the bay, pausing in front of Hurd’s Hardware. Jack Hurd has the entire front window filled with illuminated Christmas trees in various colors, and on the left side the trees are several deep. This window against a black sky with no other stores around makes it more silent than it should be. I turned off the car and the radio and rolled the window down and still heard nothing but quiet, a faint spill of music from the light display at the realtors.
Behind Hurd’s and across the street is the village branch of the county library, and tonight my son worked while a local Y hosted kids who had entered their artwork to be hung in the library gallery in the back. I rolled down the street and looked back into the window. This, right here, is one of my favorite things to do in the dead of a cold night in December; to see kids and families laughing and warm inside a window, not able to hear them, but watching them play and talk while outside I can see my breath and my face is tight from the cold. At one table near the front Michael talked to a woman, while over near the door a few kids entered to head back to show their parents their work.
On the way home I rolled into the IGA and could see Kristin from the museum and one of her kids at the checkout, talking to the clerk, laughing. The lot was empty, mostly because it’s Monday but also the rain, and I headed to the river, rolled down the windows, and turned off the car and sat quietly. Out on the Norris Bridge I could hear the whining of truck wheels moving across to White Stone, and the light at the airfield was circling, indicating someone will land at some point tonight, probably Mike in his PT-13 headed back from some weekend show. All of this going on yet all I can hear is the lapping of the Rap on the sand and the slow movement of a heron about fifty feet away in the marsh. To my right in the windows of the yellow house across the reeds is a blue light of a computer or television flashing on the walls.
I like the peace I find when I am outside looking in at Christmastime, and some rebirth of familiar connections take hold of everyone. It is fleeting of course, but present for now. I enjoy watching these flashes of life around me. I try not to be creepy and prefer only to look in public spaces like convenience and hardware stores, but it is nice to catch a place like the library where so much activity is going on behind my music, like shadows on some cave wall. But this year is different than last. Some of the people I used to talk to every day have gone silent, somewhere beyond the ideas and anticipations of those still here. So my world in general has gone mostly silent in the past several months for the first time in three decades.
So tonight I decided a drive made perfect sense; not only because it fills me with some sort of hope to see life being lived, but also because I’ve always been just outside looking in.
This happens to a lot of people, especially this time of year; we have a sense that we’re better off a step back, perhaps a small part of the conversation but not participating as much as others, preferring instead the safety of the next row back instead of the circle of talkers; we are more comfortable on the patio bench quietly watching the stars until someone else who feels awkward comes out and quips about needing some air. That’s where I am, away from the small talk, and I turn around, place my elbows on some wrought iron fence behind me, and look in a everyone laughing. I am okay a step back.
But at the river I sat in silence and thought about why this distance works for me.
It is safely consistent. I know blindfolded how to walk through most of the Blue’s Brother’s light display, and I know Wayne and Maria will be at 711 at this hour. Monday nights Michael always works the library, and Jack’s trees make everyone smile for a few weeks. They make me smile anyway, and I appreciate that. It is predictable and consistent at the end of a year that has been anything but either.
So I drove around listening to Winston’s version of Bach’s Joy and felt completely and literally at peace. Life is out there, through the windows, in the market and the front steps of the convenience store. The kids in the library laugh like Michael used to when I brought him in to sit at those same tables two and a half decades ago. This is what we can count on when we are running out of things to rely upon; that Christmas will bring out people with lights and once dark window displays are somehow almost personified, the trees in Jack’s window display appear more like watermen at the cafe standing around talking about the coming snow.
I slowly rolled down my long, winding driveway until I reached the lamppost near the lawn at the house. The porch is lit with white lights, as usual, and the wreathes illuminate the walls and windows. I had one other significant loss this past year; the Penguin, affectionately known as Pengy, died last January. His wires were shredded from years of moisture and his skin simply popped. Sad really, because I liked seeing him for twenty years at the corner of the porch.
But things change. I have new light displays now someone sent me, and after tonight’s Chocolate Bailey’s on ice I’m not going to care so much anyway. But I do have a suggestion: Turn off the music except for something peaceful, and stay outside for a bit–watch life for a while from the outside, observe it’s consistent laugher and predictable love. Watch others enjoy the moments they have together while they still have those moments.
But don’t stay out there too long. The love is inside.
I was nineteen, Dave Szymanski eighteen, and Fr. Dan Riley thirty-six years old. I met Dave because I simply met him; I’m not sure where or when but we were both J majors and worked for both the campus newspaper and radio station, WSBU, 88.3 FM. I met Fr. Dan when just weeks into my freshman year I caught the Russian flu and ended up in the infirmary, and he’d come by every evening and sit bedside and we’d talk; instant friends.
Early that fall we started a radio show. Dave and Fr. Dan were hosts and I was the producer and engineer. “Inscape” aired every Saturday morning for an hour, with open discussion about spiritual matters, a deeper conversation with a new guest each week, and a musical artist for interludes. The guests included Fr. Mathias Doyle, college president, Charles Osgood, CBS newsman and St. Bonaventure favorite, author Fr. Roy Gasnick, an expert on St. Francis of Assisi, and Fr. Irenaeus Herscher, campus librarian and archivist, close friend of the late Thomas Merton, and namesake of what would become Mt. Irenaeus (yes, named after the good priest, not the saint himself).
One fall day in 1979, Fr. Dan and I met early for breakfast at Mary’s in Allegany, and we walked in the chilly air for an hour and talked about hopes and fears, about friendships and families, and we continued that conversation consistently until July 23rd, 2024—two days ago, and the day before he died. We talked, we texted, we emailed, snail mailed, shared writing—he sent copies of my book Penance to a dozen friends of his, I sent copies of his book Franciscan Lectio to a dozen friends of mine. I have piles of letters from Dan spanning four decades. We consulted each other. When Dave died a few months ago, his widow asked me to call Fr. Dan. When he answered the phone before I could speak, he said, “Bobby! I’m glad you called! I don’t like you anymore and I don’t want to be friends with you!” and despite his eighty-one-year-old frailty, he laughed the laugh he is known for by tens of thousands of students across five decades. He added, “Brother Kevin is sitting right here, and I want to tell him something. Kevin, it’s Bob. We don’t like him anymore,” and they both laughed. Then I said, “I’m not calling you for a good reason” and he slipped right into Franciscan-priest mode, his voice going deeper and more serious, and I gave him the news of Dave’s death. For some time we remembered those innocent days in the Fall of ’79.
Jimmy Carter was president, the Iranian hostage crisis (kids, watch Argo to understand) was underway, and Inscape—a Merton term for escaping within—was on the air, and one of our early guests was Fr. Irenaeus, the featured music was from James Taylor. The theme music for the radio show which lasted for two years was by Dan’s fellow Rochester native, Chuck Mangione’s “Hills Where the Lord Hides.” Reference: This was forty-five years ago this fall. Dan, Dave, and I with a dozen others were about to go on a retreat to a place called “Vic’s Cabin,” and it would be the first of many retreats in various mountain areas over the next four years while he looked for a permanent location for spiritual retreats for students.
On that show, the three of them talked about retreats as Fr. Irenaeus spoke softly and with such kindness about how his friend Fr. Louis—Thomas Merton—thought retreats were essential to the human soul, and the same of St. Francis. He said he personally believed a true retreat, however, was about community as well, where people can be alone, yet with others, in silent prayer but in living gospel. Fr. Dan smiled wide, his brown mustache stretching to his ears, him nodding, repeating, “Yes, exactly.” After the show we walked Fr. Irenaeus back to the friary. A few days later he was hospitalized for several months and died not long after that. Fr. Dan and I walked back to the dorm we both lived in and sat in his apartment on the fourth floor and talked about the retreat scheduled for early November.
I graduated. I moved about: Arizona, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, all the while exchanging letters with Fr. Dan, and in early May of 1989 I drove to what had become Mt. Irenaeus near West Clarksville, New York, to spend the weekend talking to him, helping out around the two-hundred or so acres. Construction on the Holy Peace Chapel had begun, but only the frame was standing at that time, and Dan and I worked on a small stone edging of a path to run through the woods to the chapel entrance. It was in the upper sixties and we laughed and talked for hours, noting the beautiful spring day and the budding trees. On Saturday morning I woke to his bellowing laughter and walked into the small hallway of the original house of peace for the mountain. He walked me to the door and pointed—it had snowed six inches overnight.
Everyone left over the course of the next few hours, but I stayed by his insistence to enjoy the weekend and write—I did, and the journal by my side now is called “These Days: The Weekend Alone at Mt. Irenaeus” but I’ve never published it. Still, I noted many of our conversations from the previous day, including Dan’s fear the Mount would become too big to handle; too popular to remain personal.
No one was there and they had not stocked the pantry yet except for cereal, so I spent the next two days eating Captain Crunch and walking through the pines in snow, surrounded by absolute peace, taking advantage of the chance to inscape.
But everyone who knew him, which was everyone who went to St. Bonaventure University since the mid-seventies, has stories about time with Fr. Dan Riley. The first time I met his family, they kept calling him Billy (Fr. Dan’s birth name is William) and I joked “I’m going to start calling you Fr Billy from now on,” and he quipped—with his dark eyes peering across his glasses at me to demonstrate his seriousness, “No. You’re not.”
When my son had a solo show of his abstract art at the Quick Center for the Arts on campus, Fr. Dan let Michael know his old friend, Tony Bannon, former director of the George Eastman Museum of Photography and the oldest photography museum in the world, thought Michael’s work was one of the best and most unique catalogs of photography he had ever seen. Fr. Dan seemed so proud, and so energetic about all people and the moments we shared. Not long ago on the phone he recalled how he enjoyed telling Michael what Tony had said.
But listen, everyone who knew him has stories. It is what raises Fr. Dan up from the status of “friend” to the realm of mentor, truly, without equal, the seeming recurrence of St. Francis of Assisi himself in virtually every way, for Fr. Dan’s influence on students, community, and faculty of the university helped him almost single-handedly, like Francis, rebuild the church in the hearts and souls of us all.
Late one night a couple of years ago he and I sat in the House of Peace drinking Baileys and he nodded toward a poster on the cabinet entering the kitchen. It says, “Ending World Hunger Starts Here: Please Don’t Waste Food.” “I remember when you had those posters made,” he told me, “and when you started the World Hunger Committee on campus your sophomore year.”
“Yes,” I said. “I told one of the Wintermantels—I think Dan—what I wanted it to look like and we made thirty of them. I’m glad one survived to be here at the mountain.”
“Whenever I look at that or think of the outreach programs for the hungry, I think of you,” he told me, and I realized how far I had strayed from those days. It was then I understood why Dan and the mountain remained a place that I needed to return to from time to time to understand who I am at the core.
***
My mother is very ill as I write this, and a few days ago we learned we would be setting her up with Hospice care, and I texted Fr. Dan. He called me and we talked awhile, laughing of course, and he said he would pray for her, naturally. I told him I had a reading up North the end of September and planned to come by the mountain to visit if he would be there.
He said, “Yes, Bobby, I’ll be here. I’ll always be here for you.” When I hung up, I received this text: “I certainly will be remembering your mother in prayer. Probably Kevin is coming by and I’ll ask him to have the community hold her in prayers as well. Your memory of her certainly will bring you comfort even though eventually when someone you love dies there is great pain. Peace, and all good my dearest friend. Dan.”
Yes, memories bring comfort despite the great pain. I wonder often why we lose our innocence to such a damaging degree that we need to go back to find it. At retreats back then–particularly that first one at Vic’s Cabin, we talked about how to carry that peace with us instead of looking for it out in the world. One night not long later I was depressed for what could have been a dozen reasons, and I wandered to Dan’s room where three of four guys were hanging out talking, and I joined them. Eventually, they left, and I told Fr. Dan how much better I felt just sitting and talking, and I wondered why. Dan smiled and said. “Bobby. You brought the peace with you this time.”
Amen.
I imagine now Dan is off in the hills where the Lord hides.
At Mt. Irenaeus the day we worked on the path to the chapel
At Mt Irenaeus House of Peace the night we drank Baileys and remembered
The poster at Mt Irenaeus, originally hung in the campus ministry in 1980.
Note: The following essay was originally titled “Carry That Weight” and published in the collection Borderline Crazy, as well as reproduced in several anthologies. Some years ago I received a call from Richard to whom I had mailed the essay. He loved it, and he bought several hundred copies of Borderline Crazy to give out to everyone at his club in LA, “Slimmons.” Not recorded in this essay is the crazy coincidence of me meeting Richard at St Bonaventure University where I was a senior and ran sound for the college two years before I went to work for him. He came to do a show, and during rehearsals he asked how loud I could get the music. When I said as loud as he wanted, he called me a smartass and walked away. I didn’t think I was, since I really could turn it up; we had equipment used by Springsteen. I cranked the music and the room shook. He gave me a dirty look. When I got to know him well, I recounted the incident and of course he had no recollection. “But I was so arrogant then,” he said. Some lessons we learn too late.
When Richard died today, my oldest friend, Jonmark Stone, gave me the news, and while I was just guessing that he was probably on his way out, it still shocked me. I think because he was so full of life. That always seems the be the case.
For those who know me, the publication here of this essay is absolutely predictable, but I’m happy to say it comes with the imprimatur of Richard himself, may he finally, finally rest in much peace.
Carry That Weight
I managed a health club in Worcester, Massachusetts. Before it opened, we trained at another club in Natick, Massachusetts, thirty minutes away. I went to as many classes as I could, sometimes just to get exercise, and sometimes to lead the session for practice. Once, after the lower body workout, the instructor, Ellen, asked me to do the arm isometrics.
“You want me to work their arms?” I asked, prodding Ellen for an “Oh, never mind.”
“Yes, Bob. Come on.” She looked in the mirror and pulled at the skin under her chin.
“Just do what Richard Simmons would do,” she said and smiled wide. Ellen was in perfect shape, and the break was not to give her a rest but to offer me experience. Ellen swept the hair back behind her ear, not a drop of perspiration on her.
“And what would Richard Simmons do?” I asked, sarcastically.
“Well, okay. But do what you want to keep them going for about eight minutes. Let them rest whenever they want. Smile. Sing. Scream. I don’t care,” she said, and kneeled on the platform behind me, seemingly praying to Our Lady of Vanity.
I swallowed hard and put my arms up in an appropriate crucified position, palms pointed out. I moved them to the beat, slowly gliding about the room trying to get everyone’s arms higher than their hips. Ellen whispered for me to take it easy, but I couldn’t. I moved about and got their arms tottering to Wham and called about the studio for everyone to think of their favorite thing and yell it out:
“Spaghetti! Discount stores! Discount food stores! Malted Milk Shakes and French Fries!”
I laughed and switched to pushing the palms toward the ceiling, walking about to keep them from turning isometrics into jumping jacks.
I needed to keep their minds occupied. “What are you holding?” I screamed.
“A Plate of Spaghetti and French Fries!” “Two Pizzas!”
“Seven Snickers Bars!” called one woman, Betty, and I moved over to her.
A few weeks earlier, the regional supervisor, Niki, had asked me to sign people up at a trailer near the construction site in Webster Square when I wasn’t training or attending classes in Natick. Sure, I thought. More money–I’d be paid per signature. And since the average woman in Worcester wanted to lose weight, this would be easy. Cars pulled up and women came in, signed up. Fourteen dollars down, fourteen a month for the lowest plan. Three hundred sixty five a year for the highest. For that, they got classes from nine till eight, six days a week, exercise bikes, showers, a nursery, and nutritional counseling.
When Betty came to the trailer, she signed for the complete package, and immediately recounted her caloric intake so far that day. I stopped her when she got to the ten Snickers bars. I laughed, thinking she was joking. She got quiet and the silence weighed heavy for a moment. I told her I’d like to see her down to about seven Snickers bars a day by the time the club opened.
She notified her friends and two days later I signed up eighteen people in one hour, setting a record. Oh, some were in fine shape, fine in every way, and probably didn’t need to be there. But winter in Worcester is brutal, and they wanted a fun, indoor setting to work out with friends and meet people. They came with questions: How long will it take to lose 135 pounds? “About two years.” Can I still eat at Papa Gino’s once a week? “Salad, yes, with water, not Diet Pepsi.” Will exercising make my breasts smaller? “Sure.” Or sometimes, “absolutely not,” depending upon who asked. They came with doubts. They came with their defenses high, ready to quit. We built the club and they came. I was quickly designated a manager along with a slender woman named Andrea, and we kept the clients coming. I got my pitch down to a minute before they wrote the check. I hated to leave each day; the money was coming in already and I hadn’t taught a class yet.
And sometimes these new members summoned the nerve to attend classes at the other clubs as well while waiting for the new one to open. Betty found her way to Natick, along with some of her friends, and stood before me, arms stretched out, longingly imagining seven Snickers bars in her palms. We laughed and I slapped her hands as they went up and down, calling for her to keep them going. I heard moans and sighs, grunts and “Oh God” and it was then I knew I’d never see opening day. I had no business being there. I mocked and ridiculed these people in my mind while hypocritically encouraging them. For God’s sake I was only twenty-four and deeply arrogant, mostly from absolute insecurity. I didn’t fit in. I had trouble relating to the women and difficulty justifying a job not remotely close to comfortable for me. At twenty-four I had other plans. I was going to do something with my life. I was going to make a difference, not schlep my time to some small city women wanting to look better.
This all bantered about my brain while Wham slammed against the studio walls. Women toppled fast. And just then, before anyone else could see him, Richard Simmons entered the studio from behind, put his arms out to join into the rhythm, and then, at the top of his red-afro lungs, squealed “Come on! Keep it up!”
Let me back up:
Several years after college I moved to central Massachusetts. I read the papers and the bulletin boards, perusing them for good paying, low effort jobs. I found one advertisement for a job as a sound engineer for a radio station in Winchester, a town toward the New Hampshire border.
Then I saw this:
“Wanted: Exercise Instructors at new health club in Webster Square, Worcester. No experience necessary, will train. $12 an hour per class taught. Tryouts at Quality Inn, Worcester.”
Cool. I was in shape.
About one hundred people showed for fifteen positions. Not many guys were there, maybe six.Most of them were a bit chunky, with waxed hair and wavy voices. They wore leg-warmers outside their neon Adidas suits and hummed dance re-mixes to themselves. One guy weighed about 200 pounds standing five four. He wore tan slacks, a white shirt buttoned past the neck, and brown socks lazy about his sneakers. I peered at the women. They ranged from athletic to asthmatic. Most were in their late teens and early twenties, though a few former Chorus Line looking ladies showed up, late forties, too much make-up, too little sense, sporting matching headbands and leg warmers, car keys on twirly, neon wires about their upper arms. Most of them flocked in front of the one mirror in the room, plucking the skin under their chin trying to shape it.
A woman wearing a red warm-up suit entered carrying a clip board and gave us simple instructions. We were to line up like an exercise class. Then one at a time we had to take turns motivating each other to move; the training would come later. When advanced to the lead, some screamed in faces, micro-managing us into twisted pretzel-like contortions. A few sweet-talked us to bend and fold and tuck and turn, teaching while tugging on their skin. The brown sock guy got up and, during some arm isometrics, yelled for us to “Keep it up! Keep It Up! KEEP IT UP!” and then collapsed, barely breathing, spent. He lay on the floor till all his body parts stopped twitching.
After three days they picked the team: Fourteen girls and me. A few of those chosen were quite rotund, while others had no reading on the fat scale. One small girl, Susan, was transparent. Our instructions were clear: The club would open in seven weeks, during which time we would train seven hours a day, five days a week. We would learn to warm up, work the neck and arms, the waist and thighs. We would know the butt, the abdomen, and the names and purposes of the muscles; how to measure, motivate, choose music, and tender nutritional counseling. We trained in a large hotel room and when not training were told to attend classes at the other clubs. We showed up to the hotel the first Monday at eight to meet the directors. Maureen, or Mo, was the ring leader–the one who got us mobilized during tryouts, and she brought with her some California-type women, carrying mats and hair clips and red sweatshirts.
I almost left. This was not my scene, and I was clearly the focal point from the outset since I was the token male. Clearly, I’d be the one to maintain gender balance, bring in the male population of Worcester. Ferry in the overweight, brown-socked guys.
We gathered and sat cross-legged, ready to embark on the grueling two-month march toward hard-bodies and well-balanced diets. To start though, we briefly met the owner of the club. Turns out this was his sixth club in New England after expanding from L.A.
And in he pranced. Red shorts, stripped tank-top shirt, orange afro and deep tan. He came in calling, “Come on and move those tuschees!” his arms flailing about, his mouth somewhere between a pout and a pucker. With no escape, with no warning I found myself with fourteen female trainees, three female trainers, and Richard Simmons in a sweaty hotel room. I watched him ricochet about in his tight red shorts and tank top.
At the hotel in Massachusetts, we primed from the top down. The neck, bending and rolling it, had to be loose, and the waist and the arms and the legs, thighs, butts, calves, abdomens, again and again, rolling and stretching and challenging them, from the top down until they were limber or taught and firm or loose. For a while I burned, then I ached, then I could not move at all. Finally, I was relaxed and ready, but the club was still a few weeks from completion. They were adding the grey carpet with red stripes, the grey, red and white walls, and the “Richard Simmons Anatomy Asylum” sign. Women waded into the trailer after that sign went up, and membership increased to the thousands.
So at the Natick club, when Richard sprayed into the studio, I prayed it didn’t turn into a rumble. Betty dropped her hands and started to cry. Women wailed. Walls vibrated. Richard slid behind Betty and slapped her hands from behind, calling out, me in front, him behind, and Betty separating us by a good three feet.
“Come on!” he called. “Keep them up!”
“You’re doing great, Betty” I said, with as much gusto as I could gather. She grew pale and distant, her eyes watering.
“Come on Betty! Keep it going!” Richard screamed, and the women flapped their arms again hoping he’d move near them. But he stayed with Betty and me. “Keep it up! Keep It Up! KEEP IT UP!” he kept howling.
“Keep it up, please!” he yelled, and I retreated toward the platform, allowing him the floor. Ellen smiled at me, coming out of her trance.
“You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?” I whispered to her. Richard sat everyone down and they panted. Some continued to walk about, getting their breath. He sat and crossed his legs, straightening his back and looking at each person, slowly, smiling.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked. Some laughed and said “no,” and a few kept panting. “It isn’t to lose weight.” Everyone laughed. Even I laughed, perhaps too loudly.
“You’re here because you want to feel good about yourself again.” He nodded, getting everyone else to nod. Soon the whole room was nodding. Even I nodded. “You want to feel good about yourself again,” he repeated, as if it didn’t make sense the first time. Actually, it didn’t Now, however, people stopped breathing heavily. They stopped walking around. They listened now.
“Just being here shows me that you already are feeling good about yourself. Do you remember how depressed you used to get?!” he asked, laughing at the same time, brilliantly moving their problems immediately to their past. “Do you remember when food was kinder to you than your husbands? When the only thing that calmed you down was eating? Sitting around, watching “General Hospital” and eating?” Everyone clapped, acknowledging the show upon which Richard spent four years early in his career.
“I KNOW girls! I was you!!! I really really really was!” He was. He tipped the scales at weights never revealed but well over the size of anyone in the studio. He grew up in New Orleans, and after overcoming some of his weight problem, he moved to LA where he could not find a single health club for anyone not yet in great shape. It all started then.
“It’s about feeling good, girls! Be proud of who you are and remember you have two choices! Not one! TWO! Say it with me,” and the whole studio chanted with Richard “I’VE GOT TWO CHOICES!”
They grew quiet. “You can let the simplest thing depress you. Or you can let the simplest thing make you laugh, make you say “I am too good to feel bad!”
They cheered and Ellen put on Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” as everyone followed Richard’s cue to start bouncing about the studio.
I left and went to the shower. There was a men’s bath and shower by law, but it might as well have said, “Bob” on the door. I don’t recall having ever seen another male inside.
I sat on the bench in the locker room for awhile, and then showered. When I came out, Richard came into the cramped quarters.
“You had them going beautifully!” he said. “Oh, isn’t it so exciting when they laugh and move around so much! It makes me shake to think about it!” he said, his arms to his chest in a self-hugging hold. His left eye was tearing.
“Yes, very exciting,” I agreed. I sat on the bench staring at the red and grey cinder blocks, counting them.
“Niki tells me you are going to help manage the club!” he said. He hadn’t heard a thing. His grey roots were barely visible past the red strands of live electrical wire flaring from his scalp.
“Yes. Manage, yes.”
“You’ll help them loose weight, sure, but oh how they’re going to love you for making them feel better!” He held my hands. “Do you realize what can happen if they don’t feel better about themselves and don’t lose some of their weight?”
He told me:
Hypertension. Cerebrovascular accidents. Myocardial infarction. Congestive heart failures. Prostate cancer. Colon cancer. Rectum cancer. Gall bladder disease. Gouty arthritis. Osteoarthritis. Sleep apnea. Richard pushed his head forward with each disease, to accentuate the seriousness of it all. “And Pickwickian syndrome.”
Pickwickian syndrome. That can’t be real, I thought. You’re making this up. I’m living in a bad Dicken’s novel, I thought.
But it’s real. Obesity, red face, under-ventilation, and drowsiness. Pickwickian syndrome.
“But we can help them feel good about themselves and then they’ll lose the weight. They’re not heavy simply because they eat too much. They eat too much because they are depressed,” he said. Husbands belittle them; strangers make fun of them. They eat to gain immediate sensory pleasure, which depresses them, which causes them to eat. It is a bloody cycle.
I nodded. “Well,” I said, “I’ll do what I can to change that.”
“Good. I will see you at the opening! Good work today! Keep an eye on Betty!” He took my hands in his. “Really, please keep an eye on her,” he said, and he left, a wave of screams and “Oh Richards” washed into the room as the door gently closed. I stared at the wall and thought of Snickers Bars. I thought of Richard and how he really moved those women. Then I thought of the money, and repeated what had become my mantra: “The money is great and I’m getting in shape…the money is great and I’m getting in shape…the money…”
Money. “You whore,” I thought. Yeah, whatever. I was 24.
On opening day in Worcester, between the classes and autographs with Richard, and pictures and parties, Andrea and I met with women in our cubicles down a short hallway. We left the doors open to the small boxes called our offices.
“I love the smell of new carpet,” she said from her office to mine.
“Uh-huh,” I replied. I picked up papers available at the desk about obesity and depression and had been reading them. “Andrea,” I called across the wall, “check this out.”
“The average American woman weighs 140 and stands 5,4. The average model weighs 115 and stands 5,10. Fashion models are thinner than 98% of American women. 91% of college going women attempt a diet. 22% are always dieting. Between 5-10% of women will have an eating disorder as a result of dieting. That’s between 5-10 million women. Shit. 50,000 of them will die from an eating disorder. 95% of dieters will gain back the weight within one year.”
She walked to the door and leaned against it, listening more closely.
“45% of American women are on a diet at any given time and spend over 50 billion dollars a year on diet-related products.” I looked up. “That’s more than the gross national product for Ethiopia, Somalia, and Mozambique combined! And everyone there is starving to death! Don’t you see the irony? And the money is all being spent on diet related products!”
“Like health clubs,” Andrea said, reminding me of why I was there to begin with: to make some of that money. We walked to the lobby to greet more members.
We met women for sign ups, weigh-ins, and nutritional counseling. Some ate more for breakfast than I would the entire day. Others refused to eat thinking that will be a smart weight-loss program. Some signed just to meet Richard. Some were too embarrassed to come alone. Some hid if they recognized someone else. After teaching one of the advanced classes, I sat recovering in my office, signing up some Pickwickian chick from Auburn, Massachusetts, who left her family at Papa Gino’s pizza place a few doors down and she had to get back before dessert. As she left, Betty walked in, crying.
“Are you hurt? Betty? Are you alright?” I asked. Andrea came in quickly, asking if she should call someone.
Betty looked up. “No, thank you. I’m fine. I just need to talk to Bob.”
Andrea left and closed the door, cutting off the last remaining source of oxygen.
I sat for a moment while Betty amassed herself.
“Bob, I need to quit. I cannot continue,” Betty said. She was serious, staring right at me, confident in her decision.
“What happened, Betty? Was class tough? You hung in alright in Natick. What’s going on?”
“I am fat,” she said. “I will always be fat. Have you looked at those people out there?”
Okay, now, I had this empathy problem. I had no problem sympathizing with these women because that is an intelligently charged reaction. I could think through their problem and understand why they felt bad, depressed, why they felt like quitting. But empathy is an emotionally charged reaction. To empathize is to identify with their situation because I could so easily stand in their shoes. Sympathy is the generalization; that is, it is to understand the big picture and comprehend the difficulties involved. But empathy demands a more specific reaction. It is to target a specific individual, that person’s circumstances, and truly understand.
I really wanted to empathize, but I already knew I didn’t belong.
“I see them Betty, I do. And I somehow can sympathize with you.”
Betty got excited. “But I can never be like them! To be around the thin ones reminds me of what will never be! To be around the fat ones reminds me of who I am, and I don’t like me!” She started to cry again. She opened her purse pulled out a Snickers Bar, looked at my disapproving smile, and put the bar on the desk.
“Bob,” she said, after a long sigh to gather the guts to ask this, “Do you notice how fat I am?”
Wow. How do I answer that one? Yes, and she cries, affirmed of what the world has already grasped; No, and she loses trust in me, who is to counsel her in nutrition, exercise, and motivation. Andrea called out for me to come to her office, and I dismissed myself before I had to answer.
“Would you excuse me for a minute, Betty? Promise you won’t go anywhere, right?”
“I’ll be here. I am not leaving till after everyone else does,” she said.
I moved into Andrea’s office. “Geez, Andrea, she’s suicidal in there.”
“Richard has to go and we are getting our picture taken with him in the nursery,” Andrea said.
When we got to the nursery, Richard was talking to the parents and the kids and other workers. The room was quiet, and he stood perfectly still, rubbing his hands together. Everyone listened while he talked, and he made eye contact with every single person in the room. He touched those close to him. He stared hard at those across the room. When we entered, he waved, but kept on talking. The crowd was enormous. People had come from Worcester to Boston. And they all listened to Richard:
He put his hand on a child’s head, a little girl about eight. “How you feel about yourselves is how they will feel about themselves. How you act is how they will act” He choked up a bit. From this close, however, I noticed something quite revealing: he meant it. Pure empathy. “What you do is what they will do. Love them, but don’t forget to love yourselves. Truly, love yourselves.”
I recalled the fact sheet in my office: More than half of the children in this country only feel good about themselves if they are on a diet. And almost half of first to third graders want to be thinner.
Richard looked across the room and whispered. He whispered because his voice broke when he spoke loud. He whispered so he could get through. His eyes caught those of everyone else’s. “YOU are important! And when YOU believe it, she will believe it!” Then everyone talked and moved about and hugged Richard and each other and hugged the kids. And Richard hugged the kids.
We did the picture thing, fluffy ballooned wallpaper surrounding our heads, Richard between us, smiling, his hair tickling our faces.
“What do you want from working here?” Richard asked Andrea. He held her hands between his.
“To have fun,” she said. “And make money,” she added
I knew it was coming. “To pay my rent,” I returned, smiling.
“Oh but you are going to help people so much!” he said. “Think of all the people you will help!” We moved to a quiet corner, and he asked if we had any questions.
“Richard,” I asked. “How long is it going to take some of these people to lose, say 135 pounds?”
Without hesitation: It doesn’t matter.
“Is it okay to tell them places like Papa Gino’s Pizza are okay to go to?”
For salad, yes, with water, but not Diet Pepsi.
“Will exercising make their breasts smaller?” Andrea took me by the arm and escorted me out of the nursery before I got an answer. We headed for the door and Andrea reminded me Betty was waiting.
“Betty?” Richard asked. “Our Betty?” He stared at my eyes trying to read me, trying to understand me. Completely intense. Completely honest.
I nodded. Our Betty, I thought. I started to feel shallow, and that feeling began to weigh heavy.
“What’s the matter? Is she alright?” He became serious; his hands rubbed each other in a nervous, compulsive manner. I rubbed my face and sighed.
“Richard, she’s doing seven to ten Snicker’s Bars a day, just asked if I notice how fat she is, and wants to quit because the thin people here make her realize she never will be and the…heavy…ones make her feel hopeless. She’s in my office,” I said, finally completely aware of my inability to relate to these people. I could never have the look and intensity Richard had at that moment. I headed back to tell her, yes, she is massive, but it is no big deal, and she should be proud of who she is inside and blah blah blah and yada yada yada, and no there is nothing wrong with that, and we worry too much about the superficial elements instead of the spiritual ones and on and on. Mr. Cliche. Dr. Trite. I turned down the short hallway to my office when Richard caught up, springing up next to me saying he’d like to join me with Betty.
I walked in first and Richard followed, sitting in the chair next to Betty. She screamed and cried. A crowd gathered outside and I closed the door and sat down.
“Betty, this, of course, is Richard Simmons. He asked if he could join us. I hope you don’t mind, but I told him what we were talking about and what you asked, if I thought you looked fat.”
“Oh my God, it is so great to meet you!” she said. They hugged and recounted the Natick club experience for a moment. “Well?” Betty asked, looking at me then to Richard.
Richard sat up, his torso seemingly in perpetual motion. “Can I answer you Betty?” he said, grasping her hands.
“Of course,” she answered. Thank God, I thought.
“Yes, people notice how fat you are. You are, and people will notice.”
“Oh God, I know,” she said, laughing and crying at once at the reality of it all.
“But who cares?” Richard said. “Who cares? Why do you care?”
“I want to be pretty. I want to feel good about myself,” Betty said.
“They are not the same thing, Darling,” he said, shaking his finger at her. Richard picked up the Snickers Bar. “Does this make you feel good, Betty? Or does it make you feel bad?”
“Both,” she said.
“You can’t have it both ways, Betty. Come on. I love you Betty. I know what you are going through. You can not have it both ways. Feel good or feel bad?” Again he held the Snickers Bar, this time unwrapping it some.
“Bad,” Betty said, and Richard put the bar back down.
“Betty. Betty. Betty, Richard kept saying. He hugged her and kept staring into her eyes and hugged her again, holding her hands and then staring into her eyes. I hadn’t eaten since dawn, had taught an advanced workout, and focused on the Snickers Bar.
“Betty, don’t quit. You don’t have to come to the club, but you can’t quit on yourself. God is too great, Betty. You are part of it all. You can’t quit. And quitting is more than just leaving, it is abandoning yourself, inside. Don’t quit. I know it isn’t simple, Betty.”
They sat quietly for a moment, and Richard sat up, wiping some tears from his face.
I decided to give this advice thing a shot. “Betty,” I said, “It is simple. It really is. You going to stop on the way home and pour coke in your car?”
She laughed, “No,” she said.
“No, it won’t run, but we pour that filth in our body and can’t figure out why it won’t run. But we choose to pour it in. We do it to ourselves by choice! Are you going to consciously drive your car into a ditch on route 12 going home?”
Again she laughed. Richard sat nodding, a smile on his tanned face.
“But you’re going to do things that drive your body to its death. Sure you’re depressed, but you are more depressed because you make choices that are wrong. Don’t! Remember what Richard said in Natick–you have two choices!”
He spoke up. “You worry too much about what is superficial. You worry too much about what things look like and what you are looking at in the mirror. A person must seek refuge inside, and then work on the rest. Work on the inside, and then on the outside, okay? You are so beautiful, Betty.”
She nodded, standing with Richard, who took her by the arm and walked down the hallway to “Oh Richards,” and screams and wails. She hugged him. She hugged me. Richard hugged me. Richard hugged her. “Come and let Bob know all the time how you are. Go to classes and just walk around in the back whenever you want. You have a great attitude You will lose the weight someday, but first, weigh yourself inside” he said, touching his heart, tilting his head, tearing up. “Promise you’ll come?”
“I will,” she said, and he embraced her a long time. He turned and waved to everyone, standing on his toes and waving with his arm stretched up and his hand bent down. He blew kisses with both hands and I hedged back into my office and closed the door. “Your choice, Bob,” I said to myself, “I stared at the candy.” Andrea came in, took a bite of the snickers, and leaned against the desk.
“What do you think?” she asked. I shook my head. The club was relatively quiet, everyone moving to the parking lot to wave goodbye to Richard. A class continued in the rear studio, but no one was about the offices.
“This is serious. These people have some serious problems. He can really make these people feel good no matter what they look like. What a difference,” I said. “Shouldn’t we have a shrink on staff?”
“Nah,” Andrea said. “Just a refrigerator.”
“Oh don’t be a smart ass,” I quipped back.
Andrea laughed. “No, we work on the body, not the mind,” she said.I thought of Richard and knew that just wasn’t true. This place had less to do with weight loss than it did therapy. It was all about the mind, all about choices. Andrea handed me the Snickers Bar and left for the lobby. I tossed the candy in the can and walked out and watched Richard’s limo drive off. The women all turned toward the club, toward Andrea and I standing in the window, and I realized the burden we carried.
Afterward: To note Richard’s sincerity. About a month after the incident in this piece, Richard called the club and we talked a bit and then he asked for Betty’s phone number so he could call and check in with her. The woman who went home on Friday before the phone call came in to the club on Monday after the phone call with an entirely new outlook on life. It is safe to say he deeply touched the lives of millions of people, some of which he quite literally saved.
It’s Fourth of July week and I’m about to get older, and I’m in a café on the Bay thinking how I’d love for this place to be open at night, late, like 4am, and sit and have beers or wine and talk to strangers about where they’ve been, literally and figuratively. I’m sitting here thinking about the the past four or five decades. “Fortunate” doesn’t come close to describing this pilgrimage; but something is different lately. I’m just turning sixty-four and I’m outliving so many people I know. This makes me curious about what’s next, about this brief span before me. I thought I’d grow tired by now, start to unwind, but curiously I find myself gaining momentum.
Here’s a decidedly oversimplified explanation of what runs through my mind on an almost daily basis: We are going to die, of course, but we have no idea when, and even if I live to my mother’s age of ninety-one, that’s just twenty-seven years form now. That’s nothing. And after that we close the door behind us and slip into that nothingness of never being this way again, through the eternal and infinite future of all futures. My point is, to be trite, “Today is my moment; now is my story.”
And today while sipping a cappuccino and after talking to a couple who are sailing down the bay to cross back to the Netherlands, I felt awake, like that crystal-clear awake you have sometimes after it rains. Like all of my senses were cleansed and rebooted. Happy Birthday to me.
To be sure, I’ve had my share of everything: I’ve had a lot of chances to travel. I’ve walked across Spain, trained across Siberia, drove around North and Central America, stood in rivers from the Connetquot to the Congo, and I’ve followed a herd of moose through the woods in Northern Norway. But still it simply isn’t enough; not on this abbreviated timeline. There’s not enough time, never enough love, too much wasted energy, too many spoiled days and nights, not nearly enough love.
In looking back, the moments that stick out most in my mind are the ones where I stepped out of my comfort zone and risked being embarrassed, rejected, and humiliated. Sometimes those things happened, to be sure, but those times are still better and more memorable than sitting safely at home watching reruns of an old show, watching other people live still other people’s lives.
Oh there have been moments. And they all have one thing in common; my memories are of the people I was with completely engaged with each other. It might have been my son in Spain and Russia, or just us taking pictures down at the river. It could have been sitting on a beach in Florida or drinking champagne while watching a sunset on the Great Salt Lake.
Sitting around a club I ran in Massachusetts after hours and swapping stories, laughing, eating pizza from down the road after all the people left. It’s the one am stop at Ocean Eddies on the pier in Virginia Beach in the late ’70’s for a drink and a talk with someone from somewhere else, nothing but the sound of waves crashing under us.
One Fourth of July I was in Massachusetts and drove to Boston to watch the fireworks and I stopped at the Bull and Finch Pub, made famous for being the model for “Cheers.” I sat at the bar and had a beer and got talking to someone who was there to play music. I told him I had played and he asked me to play a short set during one of his breaks. Okay, so this is an example of knowing as sure as I’m sitting here that ten minutes after I said no I’d be absolutely pissed at myself, so I said yes. Rarely am I 100 percent in the moment, not distracted by next or was, but moments like that I am present, completely present–like on the Camino or the Train or the Lake or the river. I said yes and risked being myself. I even had the balls to play “Please Come to Boston.” When I got home to my house on the reservoir that night, I got out my guitar and played while my cat Huey sat on my knee and listened.
Alive. I was so freaking alive that night. The next day friends came by for my birthday and I told them about it and they were excited for me but like with most things in our lives, you absolutely had to be there. I was.
Geez I’ve been fortunate.
But there was one night in particular which stands out a bit more than most of the others. It took place in a bar which long ago burned down. We called it The Shack because it had no name.
This happened about twenty-five years ago.
Just off the Gulf of Finland not far from an exclusive hotel but well in the woods was one of this world’s coolest bars—a dive really—a place to drink and sing and meet people you’d never want mad at you. It was small, with broken-down shed-like walls and windows which barely kept out the storm blowing off the Baltic one May night in the nineties. It was well after midnight and we ordered a bottle of Georgian Merlot and several plates of shashleek, a Russian shish kabob dish. A gypsy band showed up, including a guitar and violin player I’d met before and had played with there along with a friend of theirs, a woman singer. Hours passed as we played and sang and drank. There were four others, three of them, a waitress, the owner and his cat, and we sang and drank while what must have been that hurricane from The Perfect Storm slammed to shore. This duck blind of a building sat amongst birch trees, but that simply made me more aware of the weather, wondering when one might topple through the roof. It was exhilarating, an adrenaline rush that had nothing to do with the wine. It was being alive, right then at 3 am, with total strangers, live gypsy music, Georgian wine, and shashleek, that kept us awake. It felt dangerous, subversive, but it was just a bar in the woods.
I had been in my hotel room, ready to call it a night since the next day we were all going on a river cruise, but I got dressed to head back up the beach to The Shack and have some wine. I didn’t want to wake up the next morning and wished I had gone. The storm hadn’t yet kicked up. But it was coming; you could see it in the haziness of the midnight sun.
The band took a break and came to our table and we spoke in broken Russian and English about the storm and how we hoped it wasn’t high tide soon since the water was just a hundred feet west, maybe less. Then Alexi, a two hundred eighty pound drunk Russian who hated Americans started screaming at us like he had the first time I ever met him, the first time I walked in the place a few years earlier. He had kept to himself mostly since then, sometimes talking to me, mostly not, but this night something got under his skin and he screamed at me like he did that first time, “I hate Fucking Americans.” He startled me, but he had a drink in front of him, and another regular customer, a friend of the gypsy band, was sitting with him and told him to quiet down so he did.
But then I saw his eyes. They were deep and vacant, like he’d seen a ghost, and when he saw me watching him he stood up and said, “I hate fucking Americans!” and he tossed his beer at me. Sasha, the guitar player, stood up and yelled at him in Russian. But just then thunder, with a sound like the sky opening up and dropping two tons of hard earth on our shack, rattled the walls and ceiling and we all cringed. I thought for sure one of the birch trees cracked and was going to kill us all. I went down on the floor with my friends and the gypsy band, and Alexi cursed and fell against the back of his chair. He suddenly looked so small, and the thunderclap crashed on us again, this time blowing open one of the windows, and rain and wind sheered a path across our booth and against the other wall. Dima put his violin under his coat and our shasleek flew off the table onto the floor. The shack cat went for it but the wind and rain chased him back under the bar and into his bed.
Another flash of light lit up the shack and Alexi was trying to hide under his table but he was too big, and just as he glanced out the window on his way to the floor, he stopped and stared. I was watching him, and he looked out the window for some time, then looked at me, and with a nod he said, “Horosho. Horosho” which means, “okay. It’s okay.” And he looked out the window again when the window slammed back and forth. He grabbed it before it hit him and he held it a second, staring out over the Gulf. He looked at me as if to ask me to come see but he didn’t know how. Instead he closed the window and latched it again and turned and sat down. He nodded to me, “Horosho. Edeesuda.” It’s okay, come here. A few of us gathered and sat at his table, and Dima took out his violin. Alexi smiled at me, looked out the window and peered with a stoic face, then turned and smiled again. He looked at the waitress and said “pivo,” beer, and he motioned to us all so she brought us all beer. The rest of the night we laughed and sang songs. I asked Alexi what he saw outside but he just nodded at me and said, “I hate fucking Americans,” and we laughed and toasted and Dima played, then Sasha joined in and then the woman singer, and the beer tasted good. Alexi sat quietly the rest of the night.
The storm passed and the sky quieted down. I almost had stayed at the hotel that evening, turned in early, read in bed. Those are all good things, quiet ambitions which keep me grounded and invested in whatever happens next. But that night I didn’t. Like the time we went Ghost Hunting at midnight at the Saint Augustine Lighthouse, or when my son and I sat up all night in the town square of Portomarin, Spain, because we couldn’t find a place to stay. One time a friend of mine and I hitchhiked to Niagara Falls and it took no longer than it would have to drive, but coming back we walked for eight hours along dark roads through small towns. But if we had been given a ride right away, I’m not so sure I’d remember we even made the trip to begin with. We talked a lot that night, and I wish I could walk like that with more people, and talk, and just walk quietly too.
Sometimes you have to stay up until dawn to understand what’s hiding behind the night. It’s the rest stop at three am with two truckers talking about the next town; or the sound of wildlife in the desert brush, or tall pines scraping together in winter in the woods with no light but the moon. It’s walking up an Arctic path at four am in snow-deep March with Northern Lights bouncing past like a bull whip; or lying on my back on a cot in a compound in Africa beneath more stars than could possibly exist, the distant sound of someone chanting the Koran. It’s walking out of a shack in the woods after a storm passed, the sun just lifting over the raised bridges, ears buzzing from loud live music. It’s the perfect silence on a salt bed and the music of family talking about old times, talking about now. My new year needs to start not just remembering the beautiful path it has been so far, but what made it beautiful to begin with. Its enjoying the passing of time, as JT wrote.
On that night on the gulf after the storm, after the music and the wine, when I stood in the quiet light of morning and shook hands with Alexi as we went separate ways, most likely for good, I began to understand that this crudely brief life of ours is best punctuated with those we love.
It’s foggy across the river and bay this morning, and out on the bridge a heavy mist blanketed the area so that even seeing the sky-blue girders above us was difficult. A foghorn sounded from the mouth of the river, presumably menhaden boats out on the Chesapeake, perhaps an oyster workboat. It’s chilly, but not too bad. That could be a description of my head, but it’s not. It’s outside my head I’m pretty certain.
The view from this desk is only slightly better. The woods are misty, but the fog lifted. I can see pretty deep into the trees, and the skylight above my head is wet.
Sitting before me is a to-do list. I need to record a few art lectures for a university in Ohio, send edits of a piece to a journal, read proposals from capstone writing students in West Virginia, make a topic list for my writing students down in Norfolk, rewrite twenty pages of the monster—twenty pages about a time in my life when absolutely nothing happened, but something should have happened and that is the point of nothing happening, so that the reader will feel like something should have happened all the while nothing happens at all. Wow. That sounds like a metaphor for life. But it’s not. It was life, once.
And I need to send emails to a bunch of people who I was supposed to send emails to a few weeks ago but then college happened. And deadlines. And basic malaise. Luckly, the Kahlua bottle behind me is still full.
Alternate plan: Sail down to the Gulf of Mexico, teach online from the aft cabin, grab the guitar, play someFogelberg and Cat and Van around a beach bonfire with friends and Malibu rum. Forget finally that social mediahad ever been invented. Go back to wondering how everyone is instead of knowing constantly. I miss wondering, I miss “catchingup,” telling stories about things that others don’t know about yet. But we don’t. We value our homes and the lives we built; we asses and measure in terms of security and balance instead of whim and ideals. Of course. It’s called being mature, something I have rarely been, I suppose. I don’t know why; a design flaw, perhaps? Too much daydreaming when I was young? Not enough classical music?
So naturally I’ll need to stick with Plan A for a while. I wonder why, of course. Not enough nerve? Gummies? Too many responsibilities?
First, though, I need to complete a self-evaluation for the college. It’s a once-a-year thing, not difficult, which includes understanding what I did right, what I might change, how I respond to criticism of others, particularly students, what I’m going to include or exclude in the future, and some sort of game plan. It sounds more involved than it is, and it won’t take long. And after thirty five years of these things, I can clearly see how they have helped fine-tune my work.
Yet recently I realized I should have been doing one of these self-evaluations about my life all along. Five pages about the year, perhaps. Five written pages about what worked, what didn’t, what I need to do differently and proposals of how I might get there. This time five pages might not do it; I messed up in some big ways simply by not doing things, which should be part of any evaluation: what didn’t I do that I should or could have?
Do you do this? Maybe schedule a drink with a significant other or close friend next to a fire, talk a bit, then do self-evals with each other. It’s what I like about the assignment: At least a few other people are going to read it, so I need to be clear, concise, constructive. And so the “life-evals” should be too, whether oral or written. In both cases, honesty is essential. In both cases, brevity is dangerous. The college assignment is two or three pages of actual written self-analysis. That’s just short enough to bullshit with the best of them, which is why I believe it should be five pages; then I’d have to come up with some serious details and examples to maintain info about the man in the mirror for that long. Plus my writing is foggy and misty for the first two pages, even in rewrites, but by the time I’m moving into page four, everything is clearer, and you can see even my metaphorical trees far into the woods.
She’s a 41’ Morgan Out Island, spacy aft cabin with a queen size bed, long and wide main cabin with a navigator’s table which converted makes an excellent writing desk, another two cabins up front and two heads, one forward and one aft. The stove is a good size, and the refrigerator holds more than a few bottles of Kahlua.
What would you do?How do you write this into your self-evaluation? Truthfully.
I guess we’re not always so honest with ourselves after all, are we? I need to finish preparing the week’s lectures, send in the rewrites to the journal, and clean up the monster, clarify I wasn’t doing anything when I was hoping to be doing something.
a view from this wilderness 