Growing up*

Writers—like artists of other mediums—often say that no novel or short story is really ever finished until it’s read. As an old novelist friend of mine used to say, great fiction is always a C, never an O—that is, it leaves some open space for readers, space for us to bring our own lives and experience into the work and make it real or whole or alive.

I finished Peter De Vries’s Blood of the Lamb last night, for the second time. I read it initially sometime in the Sixties, four or five years after it was published, at a time in my life when I loved the irreverence he wields at his tribe—the Dutch Reformed people into which he and I were both born. De Vries mocked us but good, for our silliness and the sometime idiocy of our piety.

Peter De Vries was, in his time, among the most well read and beloved of American humorists, his novels—most of them at least—knee-slapping satires of American life. Google him sometime and read a few of his finest quotes; he can be absolutely hilarious.

There is humor in Blood of the Lamb too, Don Wanderhope and his father, aboard their garbage truck, slowly sinking like the Titanic into the primordial ooze of some Chicago-land refuse pit. Scared to death, they break out with--what else?--the doxology.

But far and away, Blood of the Lamb is not a funny novel--not at all, even though forty years ago, when I first read it, I thought it was a hoot. But then, I was a kid, a rebel chafing under the strictures of De Vries’s own ethnic and religious heritage, a heritage in process of cataclysmic change. It was the Sixties, after all, and little, if any of our lives were left untouched by the seismic cultural shifts of the era. At twenty, I read Peter De Vries’s Blood of the Lamb and laughed.

Forty years later, I almost cried.

I’m a different person today—not nearly so headstrong, far less sure of my opinions and will. Forty years later, I’ve got scars, even open wounds, from the fisticuffs me and the Lord have come to. Forty years later, I read an almost entirely different book. The novel didn’t change of course. Certainly, I did.

Peter De Vries died in 1993, but I wonder if he ever guessed that of all his books, Blood of the Lamb would be the one that just won't go away. My guess is, he did. He wrote it just a year after the death of his daughter, who died at age 11 of leukemia; and much of the book, that which gives it its immense emotional heft, is the near recitation of the prolonged agony that child faced before eventually, finally, succumbing.* This novel's great lines don't come from his wit, but from his soul.

Honestly, that whole story I had nearly forgotten because that theological fight simply didn’t hit me at twenty. I think it was William Hazlett who said something to the effect of no young man thinks he shall ever die; count me among 'em. But at sixty years old, Blood of the Lamb nearly took out the knees in my soul.

The story of Carol Wanderhope’s agonizing death is the big story of the novel. Through his daughter's suffering, Don Wanderhope goes to war with a fully sovereign God, the author of our faith and our only comfort, for putting her through the horrifying paces of such inhuman suffering.

The question to which De Vries demands an answer is the same question Elie Wiesel can’t help asking in Night and elsewhere, one of the most profound and difficult questions all believers can ever face: if God almighty loves us and his love is blankets the known world, then why on earth do people suffer such great horrors? Peter De Vries’s most memorable novel is not a book for the weak of heart—or soul.

But it was a blessing to me, at sixty. It will be, I’m sure, the best thing I will read this summer.

_____________________

For a fascinating medical study of the Carol Wanderhope’s leukemia—and the story’s relationship to De Vries’s own daughter's medical story, see Dr. David Steensma’s article on the novel in the Journal of Oncology, available on-line at http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/full/27/16/2729 . Spoiler alert: if you're going to read the novel, read it first.

*First published June 29, 2009.

Shell-less bird seed

So anyway, I'm watching TV last night when an ad comes on for shell-less birdseed, gets the birds up near your windows and doesn't leave behind a mess when our fine, feathered friends depart.

I like that. I'm thinking I'll buy some of that birdseed because what annoyed me last time we tried a bird feeder was that gaggle of weeds sprouting sinfully beneath the darn thing, or else the shards left in a mess on the deck. Birdseed that doesn't leave a mess?--I like that. 

I'd love to sit at our kitchen table and watch birds ten feet away on our desk. I know tons of people who've built a loyal and colorful and entertaining clientele just outside their windows.

And they're all old.

There may well be tons of folks who, at thirty, love bird feeders and the customers they attract, but I don't know many. Most of them are old--like me.

So I say to myself, what is about getting old that prompts people to love birds just outside their windows? Why is it that some nights, just staying home feels better than anything? How is it that, come late summer especially, a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich a little taste of heaven? I've always carried more weight around than I should, but how is it that only in the last several years have I come to a point where I can really say I love food--taste, texture, whatever? The food on your plate, my feet up in the easy chair, the birds just outside, even too much snow just outside the window?--they've all become far more precious than I ever thought such things could be now that I'm courting sixty.

And what on earth is High School Musical? I don't know. My granddaughter is really into it, my daughter says, and I don't even know exactly what she's talking about. I suppose I should, but I'm not going to chase it down. And what's the big deal about what David Beckham's wearing anyway? And why should I care what kind of weirdness they display?

Just give me that shell-less birdseed, and I'll be happy, I swear--a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and I'll be rich.

My bones are creaking this morning, as always, but I think--old as I am, old as I'm getting--that aging offers an occasional blessing. After all, I don't have to know stuff.

Or at least that's why I'd like to think.

Besides, they'll be here soon enough, once it gets light outside these windows. And this too--did I mention this cup of coffee beside me this morning?--good night, what a blessing.
________________

Posted August 1, 2007. Still true. More true.

(museum piece*) Morning Thanks--Freedom

Some local governor in Chile banned the mini, it seems. Not for long. He simply wanted to "put things in order" or something, someone there said, by telling women to pull down their skirts (that didn't come out right) and cover up their shoulders. When the whole idea was laughed out of town, the gov's spokesmen claimed it was just a joke from the get go. If he'd actually meant it, he would have got trounced come election time. More mini-skirts would have showed up on the streets of Santiago overnight, I'm sure. And sure as anything he'd have lost the male vote.

If I could grow hair, I might just go blue. Apparently, it's all the rage, the new blonde--at least that's what I've read. Blue hair--I can't imagine what I'd look like, but it sounds good. When school starts next week, we'll probably have a few.

Once, in Tokyo, I sat on a commuter train like Moby Dick, the great white whale, the only non-Japanese, one of only two or three men, and a whole generation older than the bevy of schoolgirls that filled that car, each of those young ladies in matching skirts and sweaters, holding matching cell phones and school bags, a hall of mirrors.

Community is a big deal to the Japanese, I think--looking and acting in a fashion that doesn't bring attention to the individual but satisfies clearly established standards of dress and conduct. But that day in Tokyo--and on that train especially--it felt strange to an American.

A bit later that afternoon, our friends took us to an international neighborhood, where I saw a guy--a Japanese guy, in fact--with blue hair. Right then, something about the guy made me breathe easier, if you can believe it. For the first time that day, I felt as if I was home; people just didn't look so much alike.

I've got a Puritan streak in me; after all, I'm a Calvinist. I'm for law and order. I'm glad my daughter never donned apparel like the one above, and I'd rather my granddaughter didn't either.

But this morning, what I'm thinking is freedom is a blessing, even if it means tattoos.

This morning, like that afternoon in Tokyo, I'm happy to see a guy with blue hair.
_______________________ 
*occasional returns to posts from yesteryear, this one from July 20, 2010.

From the museum--The Book on Uncle Edgar

["From the museum"--11/11/10. Occasional old posts from yesteryear. Life has changed; some stories endure.]

I was never formally introduced to my great uncle Edgar Hartman. He was dead long before I was born, even before my mother was born, in fact. But I knew of him by way of his only sibling, my grandmother, who used to tell me the same story, over and over, whenever I, as a boy, mowed her lawn.

A single ice-cube floated around at the top of a glass of lemonade she’d always bring out when I’d finish the grass on the north side of her house. She’d set that lemonade out, wave me to the porch beside her, then push that glass at me with a warning.

“You drink that slowly now,” she’d say. “Years ago, I brought my brother Edgar a quart jar of lemonade when he was working in the canning factory–one of those hot summer nights.” Her head would rise slightly, her eyes lose focus as she’d bring back the incident. “Edgar drank it in one gulp–never even brought it down,” she’d say, not without some admiration. “When he was finished he took one look at that empty jar and passed out–right then and there, flat on the floor.” She’d point at the lemonade. “Not so fast now.”

That was just about all I knew of this great uncle Edgar. I knew he was dead, of course, and that the local American Legion Post was named after him–Hartman-Lammers Post–and that he’d died in the Great War, World War I.

I was a kid then–maybe ten–and a half a century had passed since Uncle Edgar took leave from this vale of tears. He died somewhere in France, maybe in a scene like this—I don’t know—but for years the only story I knew about him featured a bout of heavy lemonade chugging and a quick trip to the cement floor at Oostburg Canning Factory, circa 1910.

Years later, my grandma passed along fistfulls of old scrapbook stuff to me, thinking, I suppose, that of her grandchildren, I seemed most fascinated by her stories of the past. Those old pictures and documents continued to yellow in a box I’d come heir to, each dutifully described in her chicken-scratch writing so I’d remember who was who and what was what.

When Grandma died, I dug into that box and found a bunch of things having to do with her brother Edgar. Odd. I was 500 miles from the Oostburg Canning Company and American Legion hall, but here I was, fated to be the sole caretaker of a life most everyone else had forgotten.

Edgar Hartman was not married when he was killed instantly by what his commanding officer called a German “one-pounder.” He was just one of millions killed in the endless horror of trench warfare that came to define the military madness of World War I. My mother never knew him; she’d been born a month and a half after his death. As far as I knew, no one alive knew my uncle Edgar.

I suppose that’s why I put all those Uncle Edgar documents, photographs, and letters my grandmother had given me into a scrapbook with “Photo Album” embossed in gold across a non-descript, tan cover. There’s no picture of him sprawled out on the floor of the Oostburg Canning Company here, but there is, quite frankly, everything else anyone on earth knows of him. I’ve got all of that here in this scrapbook, so when I hold it, as I am now, I have in my hands every last shred of the life of a real human being, a man who happened to be my great uncle. You might say, I’ve got the book on Uncle Edgar.

Had I known him, I suppose I would feel slightly different than I do. Had I known him, grief would certainly play a role in way I feel when I sit here, paging through the photographs. Honestly, I don’t feel the grief my grandma certainly must have when he didn’t come back from France. For years, my mother says, our family’s attendance at the Oostburg Memorial Day cemetary “doings,” as Grandma herself used to call them, was mandatory. After all, her only brother had died in “the war to end all wars.”

In fact, my grandmother’s anguish is here vividly here in the Uncle Edgar scrapbook. You can feel it. You can see it in an old envelope that never got through to her brother, and the letter it holds, dated March 14, 1919 (four months after Armistice Day, November 7, 1918), and written on her husband’s stationary–“Harry H. Dirkse, Village Clerk,” it says; that note, written in a much livelier hand than the scratchings on the back of the photos, is signed “Your sister, Mabel.” That’s my grandma.

Here’s what it says: “Dearest Brother, Am making another attempt to have you hear from us. I have now had eleven of my letters returned to me but none the last month so will send another in search of you. We have been unable to find any trace of you up to now, nor received anything from you since your field service card reached us on August 7th. We are all well and have a fine baby girl 3 mos. old awaiting your return. Will write more when I learn whether or not this reaches you. With Love.”

The “fine baby girl” is my mother.

The field service card she refers to is here too, in my hands. “Y * M * C * A,” it says at the top, with the words “With American Expeditionary Force” beneath it. The message is terse: “Dear Sister M, Just arrived safely in England will write again as soon as I have an address. Edgar.” It is not difficult for me to imagine how closely my grandmother must have guarded that postcard over the ensuing months.

And there’s more. My Uncle Edgar scrapbook has a childhood picture of the two of them, brother and sister. There’s even a baby picture, as well what seems to be an eighth grade graduation picture taken about 1910 or so—that’s him, back row, second from the tallest. There are five pictures of him in his military uniform. In one, he’s saluting; in another, a fat cigar juts from the corner of his mouth, while he stands beside his brother-in-law, my grandfather, behind him Oostburg’s Main Street as it must have looked in the early years of the century, a horse rail clearly recognizable out front of my grandfather’s blacksmith shop in the very middle of town.

The scrapbook also includes other things—a stampless post card from Basic Training in North Carolina, which mentions having to hike fifteen miles, a number of letters, the only historical record of what was on his mind in those last years of his life–amazement at the unending length of army chow lines, news of the mumps that kept him from sailing overseas with his company in April of 1918, joy on having run into Jim De Munck, another Oostburg boy–“good to see someone from home,” he writes.

And I have here in my scrapbook the official letter from the War Department, The Adjutant General’s Office, Washington, deeply-stained and dated August 23, 1919, more than a year after his death, and almost a year after the war’s end. It’s addressed to Mrs. Harry Dirkse, Oostburg, Wisconsin, and concerns a man the army noted as “201 (Hartman, Edgar J.) CD.”

“Madam,” it begins, and then, “It is with profound regret that I confirm. . .” You can guess the news.

On the next page is another document, equally official. “Army of the United States of America,” it says in a headline that tents over the top of the page and includes the official symbol of American government, an eagle with palm leaves in one grand claw, arrows in the other. “This is to certify that Edgar J. Hartman, Private, Machine Gun Company, 58th Infantry died with honor in the service of his country on the sixth day of August, 1918.”

The date for the certificate is itself profoundly sad. “Given at Washington D. C., office of The Adjutant General of the Army, this eleventh day of June, one thousand nine hundred and twenty.”

What exactly happened to this man, shown here with two little children, one of them my uncle, the other the great-grandmother of several Dordt students, this man standing across the street from Wykhuis Store, which is now the Pizza Ranch in Oostburg, Wisconsin?

Well, his story is here too, at least what one man claims is Edgar Hartman’s story. My grandmother’s documents include a two-page, hand-written note from a man named Leo B. Zastrow, who described doughboy Edgar.

“He was a member of my platoon but was in another squad about 300 yds to the left of my squad of which I had command in a sunken road leading to Ville-Savoy they were dug in the banks of the road. We had just finished a barrage of 15000 rounds for a covering of our infantry’s advance across the Vesle River. They were fired upon by German one-pounders immediately after our barrage and according the Corporal’s information to me he was instantly killed.. . .I later seen the body when relief came to my Division on my way from the front and recognized the body only by identification tags.”

As to any last words or message, Zastrow says he has none, but he wishes to assure Mr. Hartman’s folks that “he was my most trustworthy man.. . .I can assure them that he died a ‘Hero’ [capital H]. And then, strikingly, “Hoping this information will be of value to you.”

My scrapbook also includes an impressive obituary from the Sheboygan Press, June 18, presumable 1920, which tells much of the story I’ve already related, and adds this: “In the village he was regarded as one of the most prominent young men. He was of a quiet disposition and was well liked by his friends.”

On the final page of this scrapbook is the solitary picture of a solitary cross in a sprawling military cemetery, somewhere in France, I suppose. In very light letters on the cross piece, the words “Edgar Hartman,” and the number “178.”

Edgar Hartman was one of 126,000 American doughboys who didn’t return from the French killing fields or oceanic cemeteries. He was 28 years old when he died, single, and had been employed at the local lumber yard when duty called. He left behind a girlfriend, who later married and had her own life.

It’s entirely possible that no one at Hartman-Lammers American Legion Post knows anything about Edgar Hartman, so think of this: if next June some prairie monster tornado would lift Sioux Center, Iowa, off the gently rolling plains of the American midwest, scattering the household goods of the James Schaap family hither and yon, and this scrapbook of all there is to know about Edgar Hartman were to disappear from the face of the earth, then no one could ever know much at all about the man. His story would be gone, his life as indistinguishable as his body the day that one-pounder killed him in a French ditch.

To hold this scrapbook in my hands has always been a profoundly humbling experience, not only because what’s here is all there is left of this man Edgar Hartman, but also because one can’t help realize how many others–my ancestors and yours, hundreds of millions of earthlings–have vanished from this world without leaving even a trace of themselves. My Edgar Hartman scrapbook, placed on a shelf above my desk, has become my own momento mori, an memento of death’s reality; because what’s truly humbling about having everything anyone on earth knows about Edgar Hartman between two covers of a Wal-Mart scrapbook is the nearly inescapable perception that someday each one of us will also be less than a memory.

But there’s really no big news here, is there? “Dust to dust, the mortal dies,” we used to sing, “both the foolish and the wise.” Later the old song says, “Yet within their hearts they say, that their houses are for aye; that their dwelling places grand shall for generations stand.”

I need Edgar Hartman. We all do. “No young man believes he shall ever die,” wrote William Hazlitt, long ago, and I don’t think he was discriminating.

But now, this Veteran’s Day, it’s good for me to think of the anguish in these letters, months after the Armisitice was signed at five a.m., in a railway carriage in France, November 11, 1918. It’s good for me to think of what my grandma went through, not knowing. It’s good for me to think of that anguish repeated 125,000 times in one year here in this country during and after World War I; 8,500,000 times, worldwide by the end of that war.

On this Veteran's Day, it’s good for me to remember the cost of freedom.

That’s the book on Edgar Hartman, an old story that, like the other worthwhile old stories in its genre, needs to be told over and over again until each of us recognizes it as our own.

That’s my addition—and his, this Great Uncle Edgar—to the story of Veteran’s Day.

From the museum--To be (cool) or not to be

[From the museum--4/5/10. Occasional old posts from yesteryear. Life has changed, truth endures.]

I'm still suffering, big-time, from a little moonlighting I'm doing. The job's been fun, but it's just about killing me. What I do have is some spare pocket change jangling like sweet Christmas bells; and this weekend, the iPad stepped out from months and months of marketing fanfare. Steve Jobs' newest fandangle. How cool is that--only $500 bucks, too.

Five hundred smackers is not just a few buffalo nickels. But my near-death experience with this other job nudges at me along by insisting that I rather unCalvinisticly deserve a little something for all those hours of work this little extra gig has cost me. I deserve something like an iPad. After all, think of my suffering.

Besides, I'd love to surf technology's cutting edge, love to be out there catching the wave, an old fart out front for a change. We're far more likely Luddites, tucking our thumbs behind the straps of our bib overalls and insisting to our paunchy cohorts that the sky is, in fact, falling. Shoot, my students would think me cool should I march into class with an iPad. I could shed years with a single sweeping grand entrance. A veritable fountain of youth.

And I can afford it.

But it has no usb port, it doesn't support flash, and the silly thing won't multi-task.

But it's cool--good night, it's cool.

But we've already got a mini and my huge old desktop here in the basement. I don't need an iPad.

You don't need two cars either, but you got 'em.

And you've got a laptop at school too, and you can haul it home anytime you want and take it anywhere around the world.

But I don't have a iPhone.

Big frickin' deal.

But I'd love to goof around.

You don't have time to goof around. You're always belly-aching about time.

But wouldn't it be fun?

Listen, Sherlock--you don't have time for fun.

Still--

Still what?

I got an extra $500.

Give it to the poor. All you need around here is another gimmick gadget to collect dust. Look around. Remember what you're granddaughter said not two months ago when she was down here: "What you going to do with all this stuff when you die, Grandpa?"

All right, all right.

Don't "all right" me. You know you don't need some skinny little iPad. It's 500 schmakers, for pity sake.

It's stupid, I guess--just a whim.

Now you're talking sense.

Thus, doth conscience make fools of us all.

But it would be way cool.
_______________________

Upshot? Never got one. Bought an HP pad, used, when I went to Africa five years and a retirement later. That's it up there at the top of the page. Cost me $200. If you're wondering, I'm still regularly haunted by strange voices.

Just a few kind words--from the museum

[From the museum--11/30/07. Occasional old posts from yesteryear. Life has changed, truth endures.]

Weathermen and women are predicting our first big snow this weekend [2015--predicting it today, in fact], but I've been in a blizzard for months already. With three writing classes and more than sixty writing students, I spend most of my life these days reading papers. [Nothing could be further from the truth.]

But we're comin' around the last turn, and the finish line is in sight. It's been one long haul this semester; not in thirty-plus years at this institution have I had three writing classes. I'm bushed, and, if the truth be known, I've got to push myself into the basement every night to keep on trucking through that blasted blizzard.

And then last night, a note from a reader--a man whose judgment I value deeply because he gave his entire working life, a preacher, to inner-city missions. He and his wife, both of them now retired, had been reading through a manuscript of my meditations, "normally one every noontime after our usual dinner meal," he wrote, "a relaxed, thoughtful, meditative, serious-often-with-a-humorous-topping helping of dessert," he called them. And then he asked for more. I'm not kidding.

Thereafter, I spent two hours reading student papers. Not once did I cry in my beer or in any other way bewail my hapless fate.

Just a few kind words. 

Sometimes--and more often, as I get older--I'm just flummoxed at how incredibly gospel-like just a few nice words can be to a parched soul. That short note sent me through the storm. I'm serious. Just a few kind words.

Here's another. After a class that, sadly enough, went true-to-form a few days ago, I felt like a dishrag. When my students didn't show much enthusiasm for Henry David Thoreau, I talked. I lectured. I yakked on and on and on. I do that to cover the hole in my heart. When my students show little joy, I just yap. Call it a defense mechanism or avoidance/avoidance--call it what you will, it's what I do. I won't take a hit from their boredom, so I just fire words at them. It's dumb, I know--but sometimes it's a matter of life and death.

By today's ace pedagogical theory, nothing is as verboten as a prof yakking away in a classroom. Students today are almost impossibly experiential--if they can't do it themselves, they don't learn squat. Only neanderthals lecture. Only old farts.

So when it's over, this old fart walks out of class, depressed, confident he could just as well walk directly into a grave. And then I get even more defensive: "Ah, what do you expect?" I tell myself. "Yer tossing pearls before swine."

I've been at this gig for a long time. I know how to keep my pride intact.

Later that night, I make my sad way downstairs to correct papers, and I find a note in my e-mail, a note from "the team" at Facebook because Emily, the team says, has left a note on my wall. Facebook. Okay, I'm on Facebook. [New in 2007--at least for me.] So I go there, check my wall, and sure enough, Emily sends some definition we didn't get in class and then says something to this effect--I'm not kidding--"loved class today."

At that moment, I swear I could have won the Iowa Caucuses, both parties. Just like that I'm telling myself that I've got a 14-horse John Deere snow blower that's going to clean up this blizzard as if the snow of papers were little more than an inch of billowy-ness.

Just a few kind words. That's all it took. Just a few sweet words. I've made it through two blizzards on just a few kind words. Some people never get 'em. That's a crime. Honestly, I'd freeze to death out here in the snow.

Good night, are we fragile, Lord. Good night, are we needy. I'll send Emily and the retired preacher and his wife this url. I'm not alone in the basement. We all need a few kind words.

Then I've got papers to read.