Thu May 24 02:19:05 2001

Hi, Frank, and everybody...

This kind-of wrote itself:

The looseleaf paper is beginning to yellow, and its blue lines have nearly faded away, though the red margin line perpendicular to them on the left retains some of its vibrance. The handwriting perched on the ghostly blue horizontals is blue as well, though a deep blue still, a fountain pen ink with no blots, but with the uneven tint caused when the pen begins to run dry as the writer tries to squeeze that last word out of the nib before returning to the bottle to refill its thirsty chamber. The handwriting is expansive and precise, full of vigor, without hesitation, but somewhat prone to stuff a word onto the end of the line when aesthetics would have compelled a fussier soul to place it on the next line: someone who has had to scrimp, but whose first impulse is a generous one.

The composition is tucked carefully, uncreased, inside a large blue paperback with a dark cloth spine entitled Concerning Words: A Manual and Workbook, copyright 1940. It reads:

Teddy

His lineage and the great deeds of his ancestors would probably fill a book, if they were known, however his appearance belies his great past. His coat, much resembling a well worn asbestos fire jacket, covers the rotund body of a matured world-wise beast who would get the most out of his existence by allowing the world to pass him in his leisure. His eyes look on everything with an expression of boredom and deadness which characterizes a skilled gambler.

I have heard it said that the Most Reverend Dean is like a minor Oriental potentate who walks about constantly followed by a faithful, if lazy, worshiper. The little beast has seen the growth of every part of the College and as he struts about it is evident to the onlooker that he knows that he is lord of all he surveys and king of the heap but nevertheless he is reserved and even scornful in relation to those about him.

He is sometimes aroused to life by the appearance of someone or something unusual or strange. At this time he will rush forth with challenging barks and threatening growls to discover what or who this novel thing is. Once he has satisfied his curiosity and convinced himself that the new one means no harm he returns to his slothful habits of lying in the sun or parading around the campus in all his pomp and aloofness.

At the bottom the author has written his name: Michael D.

******************
Every year, a week before Memorial Day when the frosts were over, my father would gather the same equipment to place in the trunk of our family’s black Ford sedan: two trowels, a watering can, a hand cultivator that reminded me of Captain Hook, a steel bucket, a wooden scrub brush with natural bristles that I’d seen used on the floor. A box of brown and yellow marigolds and red geraniums rode in the front seat with my mother, who called us all to come out. “Time to go visit Uncle Mike!”

We all piled into the car. Uncle Mike was Daddy’s oldest brother. His other brother lived far away, nearly half-way across the country, and we only saw him and his family during their twice-yearly visits. Uncle Mike never married and had no children, but we got to visit him often, and always the week before Memorial Day.

As we pulled off the main road and drove through the cemetery gates, we saw many other families who were similarly visiting their relatives in a flurry of spring cleaning before the caretakers came around with fresh flags to decorate the graves. I always wondered how Daddy remembered the way: the cemetery was so big, and the welter of narrow roads was so confusing.

Eventually, though, we always got there. Mommy would send the three of us girls to the nearest spigot to fill the watering can, and we would fill our toy watering cans too, if we had remembered to bring them. We also put some water in the bucket, but didn’t fill it. The spigot opened by squeezing something that looked like the handles of pliers or a very large one-hole punch, and it took all my strength to let the water out when I was little and my hands were small. Daddy said it was made that way so careless people wouldn’t leave the water running.

The bucket and brush were to scrub the stone clean, a ritual only done once a year, though it was rinsed often. His name and birth and death dates filled with water as the grey granite grew black with dampness. And there was that other engraving: “Killed in action in France”. Daddy broke up the hard, bare ground just in front of the stone and then Mommy would plant the flowers: geraniums in the back, marigolds in the front. They were cheerful and hardy, Mommy said, and would endure the rabbits and the careless lawnmowers. Then we would all water the flowers.

Just before we left, we stopped for a prayer. Not an out-loud one so you would know what you were supposed to say. As a tiny child, I had just picked one of the prayers we said for the Rosary, but as I got bigger, I had started to think about Uncle Mike during that quiet time.

Who had he been, really? I knew what he looked like: his photograph hung on the wall in my grandmother’s bedroom all by itself next to the closet door, with the creamy palm fronds from Palm Sunday looped behind it like an offering at a little shrine. I knew he was handsome, captured smiling out of the sepia, dressed in his Army uniform, his eyes soft and mischievous and tinted brown (though I knew they were blue like the rest of the family’s). And later, when I was deemed his emotional heir because I was the bookish writer in the group, I received his books, what few remained: a large anthology of American literature that I still read; a book of essays given by the Knights of Columbus as an award for scholarship in history called If, or History Rewritten; and a couple of writing workbooks, in one of which I found an essay, written in fountain pen during the first and only year he attended college, called “Teddy”.

And I wonder still, as I wondered then: One can imagine the kind of world we would have if he and those millions like him had not gone away, but what would the world be like today if he had come back?

A thoughtful and peaceful Memorial Day to you all.

--Mary Anne