Mirroring Evolution, part one

Reflections  

I check my image against a restaurant window
slumped forward under a pack--
                   just another local character.

But I square my shoulders and walk home--
bad posture wants no witness.

Modern Man’s most difficult challenge--
To stand erect while carrying a heavy burden.

Mirroring Evolution, part 2

Whales

On any San Simeon beach between November and May, I can see spouts below the horizon.  If I remember binoculars, I might be additionally rewarded with the glimpse of a rising hump or an occasional tail fluke.   On such occasions, my book lies abandoned and I observe these creatures, always working toward some goal, pushing through the ocean along their seasonal path. 

The Anglo-Saxons had a word for this path, and it also served as a general term for the ocean: The Whale’s Road.  I like this metaphor.  An ancient seafaring people imagined themselves sharing a course with the largest of the sea’s denizens.  Like themselves, they believed whales were constricted to a path that lead to the conclusion of some business, whether breeding, feeding or--in the case of the Anglo-Saxons--doing both while invading their southern neighbors. 

My father didn’t know much about Anglo-Saxons or their ideas about whales;  he dropped out of high school and worked to support his family during the depression.  But he was a well-read man and seldom seen on weekends without a book in hand, often some tale of the sea.  And he had his own idea about the purpose of whales--simply to have fun. 

The secret life of whales, a phrase my father would have liked, was revealed to us during family dinners.  My brother and I made few comments while our father recounted how many times he had spotted whales during the course of his workday and how many he estimated in each group.  If our enthusiasm for the subject was subdued, understand that alway reeling from the family’s latest migration, in this case to the California coast where, once again, we would contend with new schools, new teachers and of course, new bullies. 

The boom in construction during those years was the building and expanding of universities and our father’s trade, brick-laying was putting food, not previously in great proportions, on our family’s table.

So we went wherever my father found work, and I learned over the years to cope with frequent moves and scholastic uprootings.  I found that most trouble, whether from bullies or authority figures, could be avoided simply by "staying below the radar".  This technique worked remarkably well for me until one dinner when my father interrupted his daily whale report and accused me of “sitting around the house all day.”  Probably for no other reason than my being the oldest son, I was judged derelict by virtue of my summer vacation.  The atonement for my sin was to spend a week with him on the job, learning "what it is like to work for a living".  I think he just wanted me to see the whales. 

But I was interested in the prospect of spending money at the time, even though intuition told me that indolent 15 year-old's weren’t exactly helpful (or desirable) on job sites.  But my father must have lobbied hard to extract a favor from his foreman, so I naturally agreed, sensing trouble down the line had I refused his efforts on my behalf. 

And that’s how I came to spend the final mornings of a summer vacation, enduring what I considered at the time to be brutal manual labor.  I mixed cement, moved wheelbarrows and equally heavy cinder blocks to locations where they could be transferred to scaffolds high above the Pacific coast. 

After the second day, I began to understand the rhythm, and actually mixed enough cement and stacked enough blocks, I believed, to deserve a break.

I sat down on a stack of pallets and considered whether my week’s pay would cover the new rod and reel combo my father and I had seen at the local sporting goods store.  I couldn’t wait to try it out in the Santa Ynez mountains and hoped this was one of those weekends when my father would have enough energy to take me there.  Then again, after a week of slave labor, I wasn’t sure I would have that kind of energy.  But I knew I could find whatever energy was needed--simply because there was nothing I enjoyed more than fishing with my father.

Upon arriving at our favorite trout stream, discipline and expectations evaporated:  we were just two friends, encouraging each other to catch fish, laughing and telling stories when we didn’t.  Only during those outings did I see that shy, crooked smile on his face, an expression I believed was his way of showing acceptance, perhaps even love. 

In the middle of these plans and daydreams, I looked up to where my father was working and was surprised to see him looking down at me.  And there was nothing resembling a smile on his face. 

Before long, somebody called lunch.  My father climbed down and directed me to take our lunch boxes to the pickup.

“Johnny, I saw you down here sitting on your butt.”

“Dad, I was caught up on the work and my feet hurt.”

“Doesn’t matter,” my father said, “you find something to do--anything to look busy.  If you absolutely have to sit down, go somewhere where nobody can see you.  NEVER let a your boss see you sitting down on the job.  Otherwise, you won’t have one.” 

The gravity of his voice told me this would be a good time to keep my “smart mouth” shut.  And I did my best look to busy the rest of the day, especially from angles visible to the upper scaffolds. 

As non-union help I wasn’t allowed to set foot on these lofty structures where in my adolescent mind, I imagined a Godly view.  On the third day, however, I heard the words, “Whale, Ho!” and “Two spouts, guys, just beyond that kelp!”  Men quit piling mud (cement) and ceased placing the ponderous blocks I had recently come to hate. 

The change in mood sent me rapidly up the scaffolds toward my father’s level.  I pulled myself up the last rung and faced him, expecting to be ordered down.  He put his arm around me, however, and turned toward the ocean.  The unexpected embrace reassured me on several levels, mostly because I had just learned that unsecured heights scared the Hell out of me.  And my terror at that moment may have etched his next words into my memory:  “There he is, Johnny. The biggest fish in the sea.  He’s got nothing to fear, everything he needs, and the ocean is his playground.” 

In the background I heard lusty comments about the proportions and sexual habits of male cetaceans, or “Moby’s Dick” as one worker put it.  But behind it all, I sensed an undertone of awe, as if we must pause to respect the passing of earth’s largest creature.  Maybe we were just grateful for this break from our afternoon's work.  But the foreman eventually made his presence known and reminded us that “the electricians were coming tomorrow and this section had better be up to the fourth floor by five o’clock.”  He glanced in my direction and gave me a look that basically said, “You better get your ass off this scaffold, boy, and NOW.” 

I was smart enough to take his hint and in the ensuing years learned that I was also smart enough to attend that same university, eventually visiting friends in the dormitory that, for a week, I ineffectually helped build.

During the first years I studied biology and still remember being hunched over in the library of that university, listening in headphones to the sounds of whales, always enthralled by their vague and indecipherable poetry.  But after a time, I came to believe that there might be more “life” in literature than in the life sciences.  So, I majored in English and especially enjoyed the literature of seafaring peoples--whether it was the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, a medieval sea tragedy like Sir Patrick Spence or Melville’s epic about a demonic white whale.  I worked hard, graduated toward the top of my class, and for more than three decades labored to share my enthusiasm for this subject with others. 

Now, in the summer of my 57th year, my life’s work is technically done.  My father retired from his work many years ago and has since passed away. 

Sometimes I gaze toward the water’s horizon and wonder if my father didn't have it completely wrong.  Perhaps we were being observed that day on the Santa Barbara cliffs.  Maybe, behind the ancient disk of a whale's eye, a mind pondered the strange pod of beings, so stationary on a firmament long abandoned long ago by his ancestors.  In his weariness, could he not have envied these wonderful creatures unencumbered by currents, free from the water’s relentless drag?

Out of love for a father who respected work but valued play, I hope not. 

10-19-09

I realized three months ago that I had to write this.  Putting away my binoculars after a trip to the beach, I saw myself in a mirror.  His smile was on my face.

I've struggled ever since with these words, trying to get them right.  My father will never read them, but I would have wanted him to be proud of my work.