Time-traveler Sophia, Princess Palatine, left her home in 17th century Netherlands to visit one of my favorite parks in 21st century suburban Detroit as part of the Institute of Arts’ novel advertising campaign. She seems to be enjoying the floral bloom of spring.
The air conditioner’s steady whirring was the only sound in the room. “And why do you think,” my therapist said in the modulated tone she used for this kind of question, “that you have such strong memories of your 6th grade teacher, Mr. Mason, after all this time?”
A silver sliver of light had found a path between the drawn curtains and fell across the carpet. I started to say something about Mr. Mason being my first male teacher, but no, that seemed too pat. I let my thoughts go where they might and a memory appeared in my mind, as if on a movie screen. This sometimes happened when I talked with Dr. Monticello, but then I am a movie fan, so no surprise. The scene took a minute to come into focus. My therapist shifted in her leather chair, waiting for me to proceed. Her eyes were a little more intent than usual, as she leaned forward slightly. I noticed she was wearing blue eye shadow. Maybe a new perfume, also.
“There was an evening back then, “ I began. “I was sitting in my bedroom with the door half closed, reading. I heard my father coming down the stairs from his study. My mother called us for dinner.”
“Excuse me, you were in sixth grade at this time?”
“Yes, I was eleven.”
As my story began to unfold to me—and to my therapist—it drew me back in time, to my childhood home in the suburb of Naperville, just west of Chicago, More than 40 years fell away, as if in a dissolve shot in a film, as I vividly recalled one eventful day.
In my memory, the reds and oranges and golds had taken over the woods at the end of our street. But that fall day, what we used to call Indian summer had stopped by for a brief visit, bringing a reminder of late summer warmth before winter’s chill set in.
I had walked home from school at the usual time and spent the next couple of hours in my room immersed in a biography of Patrick Henry, the orator who had touched the American Revolution with fire. I had memorized his most famous lines, and would sometimes close the door so I could recite them dramatically without being the target of derision. “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles 1st his Cromwell, and George 3rd….may profit by their example!” That afternoon, I could not concentrate on the book, being too keyed up about a television show coming up that evening in which I was to have a starring role—I hoped.
I had spent the previous weekend at the library, reading up on the election campaign for Illinois’ governor. I was developing a keen interest in politics, which made me feel kind of strange because none of my friends was similarly inclined. A good kind of strange, though.
I admired the young Democratic governor, who was running for re-election. He had a Kennedyesque image. He, or more likely his ad men, had hit on the idea of a television call-in show where he would field questions from viewers. It was my plan to phone in a question and my hope to have it read on TV. It was the closest I could get to talking with a political leader then, but in the future, who knew?
My mother called, “Dinner is now being served…in the main dining hall.” This was a favorite saying of hers, as if perhaps she were a lady in a Scottish castle. I heard my father getting up from the desk in his study and then coming downstairs. When I got to the dinner table, my little brother was already there. The family collie had followed her nose to a place across the room. “Just for tonight, we will have the television on,” my mother said, and smiled at me. She was setting aside one of her strictest rules—no watching TV at dinner.
My mother had made steak pie, which I knew was one of her favorite recipes. The tenderloin, pastry, and gravy made a deliciously rich combination, to be washed down with iced tea flavored with lemon and honey. I noticed this change from our usual basic fare. The dinner passed in silence, as usual, with the exception of my mother’s question to each of us about our day in school. My father focused his attention on the dinner before him, occasionally glancing up at the television set, which emitted a low hum in the corner.
When the program with the Governor came on, I went over and turned up the volume. He was seated at a table across from the news reporter, his posture being a concession to his having lost a leg in the war—at Guadalcanal, I had read. The call-in numbers showed at the bottom of the screen. I jotted them down, went to our phone, and dialed the first number. A woman’s voice answered and advised I would be placed on hold, but asked me not to hang up. When she came back on the line, I gave her my name and city, and then read my question to her as distinctly as I could. She said my question would be placed in a queue. I thought the British expression odd, but I thanked her and returned to the dinner table.
The reporter read questions from the stack of cards that had been handed to him, and the governor answered each in turn. The hands on the clock on our dining room wall seemed to be moving too quickly. I was beginning to think my question would go unanswered. My mother was just starting to clear the dishes, when the reporter said, “Governor, now we have a question for you from Naperville.” My heart picked up its pace, and we all turned to the television.
“Jeff Wolinski asks you,” the reporter began, garbling my last name of Wallace.
The garbled name had no sooner left his lips than my father started laughing. The governor was answering, but I could not hear what he was saying, as my father loudly continued, “Wolinski, what kind of name is that? Wolinski, does he think we’re Polish, maybe?”
In a flash of anger and desperation, I turned to my father and asked, “Can you please be quiet. I want to hear what he says.”
My father’s face flushed crimson. “Don’t you EVER talk to me in that tone. I am your father and you will not talk to me like that. Do you read me?”
I looked to my mother, but her eyes were cast down. Tears welled up in my eyes, tears of anger and humiliation. I wanted very badly to throw my glass of iced tea in my father’s face and the thought scared me.
“Now, you go to your damn room, mister,” my father said. “And I mean now!”
I trudged off to my bedroom, my stomach in a knot. I had not heard a word of my question or the Governor’s answer. I closed the door behind me softly, but pretended I was slamming it with all my might. I choked on my tears.
On the nightstand, the biography of Patrick Henry remained open. Outside, the last streaks of red were fading in the western sky. I turned on the light, picked up the book, and started reading. In a moment, I was back in the Virginia Assembly in 1775.
When I finished my story, the memory dissolved and I was back in my therapist’s office. My stomach was still knotted. My therapist’s expression showed her concern. After pushing the box of Kleenex across the table that separated us, she said, “I’m very impressed that you were able to tell me that story.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
She unfolded her hands. “I’m afraid that our time is up now, Take a couple minutes to collect your thoughts, if you like. We can go into this more next time.”
When I was leaving, she said, “I’ll see you next week.” She gave my hand a squeeze, which she had not done before.
Copyright 2020 by Tom Schultz. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express consent from this blog’s author is prohibited.
In the conversation that followed, we recalled the June day, over ten years ago, when we had first sat next to each other in a public speaking class. She teasingly reminded me how shy I had been.I pictured her back then, sharing scenes from her social life: her stories a playful medley, drawing me in, subverting my best defenses. High school I had spent seeking refuge in a social cubbyhole. Finding myself seated next to this blonde, lissome girl proved a culture shock. I might as well have shared a desk with the goddess Athena; our early conversations had been that one-sided. Linda had been patient with her shy neighbor, and gradually our conversations became a partnership. Through getting to know her, I had stepped into the sunlight. Seeing her again, I wanted to share this, but it came out this way: “I still think of our conversations before class. You were quite the raconteur.”
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Hartwick Pines, Michigan
—William James
A quote that now holds personal meaning for me, as James suggests we choose not to respond to most negativity, either in our present or stored in the attic of the past.
Newburgh Lake, Michigan
Cee’s Which Way Challenge:
A young man in his blue linen cloak paces the dimly-lit room, then looks out the window at the crowd gathering in the village square. His ambitions exceed his current station, but he expects that to change after today. He is a lawyer, which is to say he occupies a lower rung in the religious order. He steps down the mud brick stairs of his house to the courtyard, then walks through the arch and onto the street.
Shielding his eyes against the sun, now glowing white in a molten sky, he can clearly see the plaza. There are more people than he expected. Surprises irritate the young man, but he consoles himself that the larger audience suits his purpose. He walks briskly to the village square–he always moves briskly–thinking over his scheme to confront, and perhaps trap, the itinerant rabbi from distant Nazareth. His superiors cannot fail to be impressed.
Near the well, Jesus is talking to a small circle of men. As the lawyer approaches the crowd, he feels his hands sweating. Moving through the throng, he strides up to face the rabbi. After a modest introduction, he asks, “How can I attain eternal life, Teacher?” He expects that Jesus’ answer will offend the orthodox and prove his undoing. The crowd is silenced by the lawyer’s boldness, just as he had hoped.
Jesus’ expression takes no note of the lawyer’s sarcastic tone and his voice is mild as he turns the question back on his inquisitor, offering him a dialogue. The lawyer knows the law by rote and so he confidently quotes its letter. Jesus’ response, now provocative, exposes a chink in the lawyer’s armor. The lawyer tries an evasion. “Who is my neighbor, that I am to love?”
The crowd waits for their teacher to take up the challenge, perhaps with a sermon like the ones they have heard him deliver. Jesus smiles thinly, a knowing smile, but in his eyes there is a flash of anger. He has faced so many of these inquisitions–meant to trap him into some blasphemy–over the last year. The rekindled memories leave him inwardly seething. He has thought about the answer to this question, or one very like it, through cool, dark velvet nights with only the flickering fire as companion, and so He retains his composure.
Masking his anger with an even voice, Jesus tells a tale of two pious men who pass by a wounded stranger on the robber-plagued Jericho road, not even approaching him to see if alive or dead; and of the third traveler who stops to assist the man, bathing his wounds in oil and taking him to an inn for shelter. Jesus faces the lawyer, but the crowd is his real audience–and when mentioning the solicitous man, He calls him a Samaritan. Even his close followers glance at each other–did he really say Samaritan? According to Jewish tradition, Samaritans are despised outcasts; there is bitterness and enmity between the two peoples. A Samaritan as role model does not sit agreeably with the crowd, but Jesus had warned his followers that he had come to bring a sword.
His parable completed, Jesus asks the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, sir, was neighbor to him that fell among the thieves?” In the telling of the tale, his anger has faded; his voice is almost serene.
The lawyer’s arrogance has wilted in the Light. “He that showed mercy,” he replies, leaving unspoken the distasteful name, Samaritan.
Jesus’ voice is a friendly invitation. “Go and do likewise.”
As the Samaritan ministered to the injured man, so Jesus discerned the wounded spirit of the lawyer inside the cynical shell. He treated his foe with acceptance, but with the parable challenged him to think anew. In so doing, He placed before his audience a gift, allowing them to see, if they chose, that the quality of mercy is for outcasts as well as members of the tribe, for the reproachful as well as the faithful.
Sometimes a story’s meaning is inside, like a kernel in a husk; and other times the story’s most eloquent message is revealed by the manner of the narrator.
Photo Challenge: Twisted
Tacquamenon River, Michgan
Spirit in Politics 