A Case Of Divine Dyslexia
My father died in 1929 at the age of 39. This past week I celebrated my 93rd birthday. My father always made a big thing out of marveling at my uncanny good fortune. It is how he would have observed the event. I check it off as a clear cut case of divine dyslexia. If God was all knowing (I have long given up on the notion of all powerful) then he would have never allowed Dubya to become president and he would certainly never have allowed me such a long run. Unlike Dubya, I don't think God is as much incompetent as something more mundane, and maybe something the Greeks would have approved of as an observation: dyslexic. But we should leave divining the nature of the almighty to the Hucklwannabees of the world who claim to care about such things and get on with the party.
They all through me a wonderful time at my place. My daughter organized the folks from the old Vincent DePaul food kitchen where I used to wash dishes for something to do with myself and where I met the mother and the boy. My grandson brought along a magician friend from his MIT student days who was quite the performer. The boy brought along some of his musician friends and we had a wonderful livingroom jam from everything from Louis Armstrong Hot Five to Monk to Miles to whatever is going on these days. It was all something to hear and behold. I was inspired enough to take out my cornet and blow a few notes, though the lips are shot and my teeth hurt something awful afterwards. My grandson produced some paste that numbed them up just fine. As Monsanto says, life itself would be impossible without chemicals. Every family should produce at least one progeny that is not simply a wise ass but also actually smart.
Henry, the last of the old poker game buddies was let out of the home where he has been since a stroke this past fall, was brought by and it was wonderful to see him. I talked with him in a one way conversation that must have driven him to distraction. I couldn't help but feel that my father was essentially right about me. I have luck that is helped along greatly by my blissful ignorance of how life might shit on me, but the fat lady has not yet sung as they say.
My Margaret went into a story telling fit about the Vaudeville show we through about six or so years back now where the boy truly came into his own. She impersonated the poor lost poet soul from the park who nearly burned the theater down thinking the audience were some hoard at the perimeter of his Vietnam war miseries. What surprised me was that her manner of impersonating provided him with a dignity that he would have been hard pressed to manage on his own. I did not for a moment of all these years think Margaret had such a sense of the stage in her. It was the highlight of my birthday knowing that some part of it will survive my passing.
And finally, Harry the dog who crashed at my place for a couple of weeks or so was brought over by his mistress, a darling little girl who promised me she would share the little Frenchman with me. I suspect that my heroism in her eyes of taking in her Harry has not yet worn off, so it was a wonderful little visit that I am grateful for.
The older you get the more the nature of time changes in an expotential manner. A day like that lasts a long time. So should the almighty discover his error, I got news for him: the fox has already come and gone.
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