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By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
My left hand had been shaking for some time, over a year or so. Dr. Chris Cordima, one of the most decent of men, treated it weekly, as if it were carpel tunnel syndrome; an easy guess given my daily residence at the computer keyboard and my duties as CEO at Worldprofit.com. His treatments were intermittently productive; my hand, and it was principally my right hand and wrist which were affected, getting a bit better, never (yet) so very much worse. Then one day, as frustrated as I was by treatments which didn't improve, rather offering hope that grew thinner and thinner, never a cure, at best a frustrating palliative , Chris raised the inevitable words; neurologist, specialist, tests. It was no longer his problem; he had done his best, but it was not good enough. Thus it began... and I was soon on my way to a rendezvous with destiny, or at least the first part of destiny's decisions for this date: December 19, 2006. My appointment at Faulkner Hospital was early in a very busy day where I had people to meet, places to go. I was clipped, focused on the day ahead, no time, no worries for yet another doctor's sure-to-be inconclusive opinion. However man proposes, God disposes. I arrived on time, was directed to a nondescript cubicle where lives are shifted and redirected, and told to walk down the corridor and walk back. Nothing more, that was all. On the basis of this single "test" my fate was determined... The physician, for no doubt there was some license on the wall asserting as much, spit out words indicating a new era was at hand; a very different era from the one about to expire. And so the daunting words came, Parkinson's Disease and all the fixings that would distinguish me within the next five years or less, blindness, general paralysis of hands and arms and legs with tremoring to rock the Richter Scale. In short the very and complete implosion and rebirth of this Jeffrey Ladd Lant, as some lesser being of acute helplessness and fatuity, a being I had never known, could not imagine, come to spread dismay and change everything, immediately and for worse. It is time for music, thrilling, powerful music that challenges the greatest and most inimical of "truths" and screams for the will to win oneself back, whatever its flaws and imperfections. "God, give me me and the chance to save myself, not a miracle, but a chance". And for this we need Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 2 (1897). It is the music of defiance, of prayer, of determination and resolution, of soft reflection, and of a love that will find a way to persevere. Yes, it is all there in its inimitable colors, a nucleus of possibilities and dreams that can inspire and must come true. In Just 5 Minutes. The man in his white coat and licensed arrogance and condescension had done his joyful damndest, and I shall go to my grave believing this little man, this messenger of pain enjoyed his grievous news and its impact, not a whisper of humanity in look, delivery, touch. Only fact so casual to him, so acrid, so bitter to me. "Would you like another opinion?" Would I? Aime Joseph was waiting for me, but the transformation process had already begun from the man he had delivered to the one he was taking back. After such grim minutes whatever happens one is never the same again, and there must be sadness in this, profound and enduring. I remember sitting quiet and pensive in the back of the cab, but even now I did not forget my manners. As he sped along the Jamaica Way filled with people who did not know and would not care, I was heading home to my safest place, now threatened, now shrouded. "I'm sorry to be so quiet, but I have some important news to consider." And so Aime Joseph and his dear wife entered my life, to enhance that life, and keep the demons that will come -- that have come already -- at bay. Thus was the second portion of this momentous day set in place, for it is nothing less than the truth that God moves in mysterious ways... He had me, so He gave me Janissaries so I could fight and win against the greatest of odds, with valor, grace, and good heart. "Live in 20 minutes". Worldprofit, Inc. is a most unusual company, not least because my two partners George Kosch and Sandi Hunter are Canadian, whilst I am a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam. They contact me only when the matter is important, and I like to think I do the same. Our roots grow deep, but we need not say so or wonder. We are tenacious one with the others, and that is sufficient. And so I did not tell them the elements of this tale... until now. They are learning it as you do. There was no need to say more before.. My head was in my hands, my thoughts full of rage and self pity. But God was not ready for this. We were far from that failing of the light that Dylan Thomas raged against, and which comforted POM in her turbulent struggles, her despair, and despondence that withered all. Now I, too, would "rage, rage", giving no quarter, asking for none; beaten back now and again, forced to give way inch by inch, but only by force. I might die but even en route to oblivion I would live, I would give, I would laugh, and I would love. Such was the Credo I made with myself, and I have kept this faith day by day, yes, I have kept it. Thus certainly I continue without either regret or recrimination. "What's a Live Business Center anyway? George told me to rush out and get webcam and head set, and for the last time I ran, for mad dashery and irresponsible capers are the first things Parkinson's strips away. But this day I ran to Radio Shack and ran back, installing these crucial tools, too, all in just 20 minutes. "The last of life for which the first was made." I had just seconds to go before the LBC was officially opened: Worldprofit, Inc.sailing into her next incarnation. This occurred when George and Sandi were golfing in Mexico, leaving me firm instructions: If there were any questions or perplexities I was to email George who would solve them while waiting to tee off, for, yes, GK was living by that old USMC adage, "The difficult...." Very Gary Cooperish indeed. Within just 60 seconds. It didn't even take a minute before the LBC was packed with people from around the world; people, often desperately, needing help with the creation, growth, and development of their home-based business. And there was just one Monitor, me!, to assist them in their dozens, then in just minutes, in their hundreds and hundreds. I had no time for inward self reflection and the luxuries of despair. I was alive! I was helping people who needed the help. I was in the game, perhaps to lose, perhaps to win... and this was the best deal of all in those few days before Christmas and all the days thereafter. Dr. Bonnie Hersch, hope. The objective had changed, was very different now; not just about making the oodles of money I spent with joyous alacrity, always aware that however much was needed would be there, the produce of fertile mind and constant application. Now the focus was not on living well, opulently, the "Wow Factor" in every view, but on just plain living, now the sine qua non of absolutely everything. Here's where Dr. Hersh stepped in, "You'll like her," Dr.Zorn said, and I do. For one thing she told me the physician who had made the original diagnosis was notorious for injuring his male patients, happily delivering pain, not just fact. Some time later, his door open, he delivered in my perfect hearing a diagnosis almost exactly the same to a handsome patient in his salad days. I wanted to rush across the thin strip of corridor and tell the fellow to escape before the evil sorcerer blighted his life forever. But, of course, I did nothing, and despised myself, for evil rendering me discrete which is just another word for coward. Let me tell you a bit about Dr. Hersh, for though I am her senior by twenty years or so, packing my own Doctorate, I never venture to call her "Bonnie". She constantly runs behind, her dance card full of movers and shakers who come for betterment but get more than that, hope being the primary medicament of all. In pursuit of this necessary drug of hope, she invited me to participate in a drug trial organized by a major Belgian pharmaceutical company. The goal was nothing short of obliterating the tremoring and its related deleterious effects. For participating I was to receive a life time's supply of what I wanted most of all: normality, the thing so prized, desired and profoundly prayed for when lost. Perfect again, for a minute. My condition was perfect for what they wanted, and so I signed the hundreds of documents which absolved them of every responsibility, no matter what they did to me. Normality was worth the risk, all the risks, and no one wanted a most successful outcome than I did... what's more for weeks it looked like my heart felt dream, the most zealous of my life, would come true, for after all... "When you wish upon a star/ Makes no difference who you are/ Anything your heart desires/ Will come to you"...yes, no difference... "If your heart is in your dream/ No request is too extreme." (from Walt Disney's "Pinocchio", written and composed by Ned Washington and Leigh Harline for the 1940 film). Each week, they upped the dosage of this extremely powerful and expensive drug, and each week I improved, less shaking, more hope; I could see the future, recapturing my lithe and agile self. Then one never-to-be-forgotten day my hand was perfect as the day I was born. I was myself again... and for the first time in months truly happy and grateful. "Like a bolt out of the blue/ Suddenly, it comes to you/ When you wish upon a star/ Your dreams come true." As mine surely had. "Is she menacing?" As if I didn't have enough on my plate, I was in the middle of a ridiculously expensive remodeling with a contractor who drank, whored, and lied like a trooper, all the while gulping my resources as if there was no tomorrow. He was a proven parasite and my escalating blood sugar (for let us not forget the diabetes I harbored) proved it. My home, packed with the artifacts which if not priceless were most assuredly pricey, was a study in dust covers. It was late afternoon, and I knew immediately something was wrong, terribly wrong, menacing, foreboding. There was evil present, and it had settled everywhere in my hitherto joyous precincts, the whole now writhing, a scene of unexampled fright and terror. The first thing I particularly noticed was a headless woman in the Red Drawing Room, her displaced head in hand. She was sinuous, twisting, a macabre picture of seductive undulation. As I looked at her, she stared at me with what nefarious schemes I could only imagine. I called Dr. Hersh at once. My life was about to take another notable turn. For the music for this change, add the deep and unsettling theme from Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 masterpiece, "The Birds". "Is she menacing you?" Dr. Hersh asked, the anxious word "yet" hanging in the air. Here's where my precise use of language became invaluable, for over the next several weeks as the potent drug slowly waned, I described what was happening, clearly, precisely, with clinical exactitude, right up to and including the unforgiving days when monsters seen only by me, kept a paw on my shoulder during my daily on air program. I could see the monster, the monster could see me and the audience, but the audience saw only me. Thus, I lived a dark parallel existence in which I was the focus of creatures who wished me no good, especially at night when my bed chamber was filled with creatures creeping closer, minute by minute, malice their agenda. My home was alive with movement, my brain supplying the lurid, unthinkable, grotesque images; the drug designed to ameliorate and cure, now destroying my equanimity, a fearsome thing controlling me, awesome in its power, intimidating, replacing hope with despair. And I dared tell no one but Dr. Hersh and the drug company which begged me to continue the study into which they had invested so much; the study which she had removed me from at once... in so doing she took care of the immediate problem... but broke my heart... for with my withdrawal went any chance that I would ever be normal again. And this was bitter, so awfully bitter... I can only hope Jiminy Cricket is right: "Fate is kind/ She brings to those who love/ The sweet fulfillment of/ Their secret longing." From his lips.... 7:24 p.m. Then through the open shutters, framing the deep, deep green of this perfect day, this perfect evening came divine song, "Casta Diva", composed in 1830 by Vincenzo Bellini; most famously rendered by Maria Callas (1923-1977), who in comforting dreamscape came to me to sooth everything acrid, desolate, daunting, and corrosive. Note by pleading note the power of this supplication filled the Red Drawing Room, bathing my sleeping form in the most resilient of sentiments, hope, sweet hope, hope enough for the whole world and one more."Casta Diva, Virtuous Goddess, accept my ardent plea for this noble prince now sore oppressed, troubled of mind and spirit. Hear me Virtuous Goddess/ covering with silver/ these sacred ancient plants. Hear me that he may yet live and his worthy endeavors prosper. Hear me!" So I awoke by soft stages, humbled by the sound, the pure and true sound rising for me to the great Cosmos beyond. and I found myself on prayerful knee in earnest beseeching, arrogantly repulsed in happier days, humbly offered now in these sadder hours. "Ah, come back again as you were then/ then when I gave you my heart/ Ah, come back to me." "Your Excellency, wake up. Today is your special day." It was Max, of course, essential, anticipating, affectionate, the best of creatures, who so many years ago had called to me from Calliope on Brattle Street. I thought I had rescued him, but it was very much the reverse. "Sir, I have taken the liberty of picking up these notes off the floor in the Blue Room. They look important." "Out of the tree of life..." (Quoted from Sinatra's version of "The Best Is Yet To Come"; ) composed by Cy Coleman in 1969). It is 12:52 p.m. I have been up for hours and hours. I demolish a colon and fret. I add a semi-colon... and fret. Today is the day. I have been through this 19 times before and 19 times I've grabbed the brass ring from the painted ponies that go up and down. Today is no different. I am giving birth again after the again and again and again that's gone before and may well come again after today. This is good, all good. It is, after all, "a real good bet, the best is yet to come." Yes, it's all good. I've had my way with the wayward words and the refractory subjects. I've caressed these pages... I've made these pages a slick of tears so that there was no escape until your heart was touched and your vision changed. I've stopped along this so often, so difficult way when I saw, sometimes misplaced for decades, a pair of mischievous eyes that once upon a time, I loved to distraction, beyond reason, beyond even desire itself. "The best is yet to come, and won't it be fine." When Gibbon finished "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1787)... he went into the chill evening air falling to his knees to sob. He had given birth to a masterpiece whilst knowing he could never produce such an astonishing opus again that would change the world... and he never did. David McCullough sat at his well littered desk and wept over the body of the late John Adams, just killed by McCullough's unerring thrust. He felt as if he had killed his best friend... and he had. "Wait till you see that sunshine place." The shutters are all open, the green, green outside enhancing the brilliance of The Red Drawing Room within. Max' work. I always know when he and his genius have been at work. There is then not only the spectacular. There is the humane, delicate and refined, things the more valued because so rare. "We are stepping out, mon prince." Max stands before me, my battered Harvard cap in one hand, my unscarred, unused cane in the other. It is a moment of the utmost importance. I have not left the house in weeks, terrified of what another fall could mean. But Max, loving Max understands that being a self-incarcerated prisoner, no matter how comfortable and gilded the jail just won't do. It is a moment of supremest decision, and the tension is palpable. "The thousand mile journey starts with a single step.
Who nimbly roamed the ancient isles of the Aegean in search of adventures and Odysseus, one bold, audacious step before the next? Who stepped lively and with determined purpose through the corridors of power in a hundred jurisdictions, astonishing even himself, an agile empire the result? A step can lead to all this and more, but it may also lead to an eternity of sickening descent, into impenetrable darkness and unease that becomes fearful disorientation and unwonted panic, dark and uncontrolled. "Your excellency!" This is the moment immediate reality becomes the stuff shaping all the future and all the denizens of my observant establishment know it... and waft hope my way. And so I, the boy, the man, who trusts with the greatest difficulty is forced to trust now. It is Sinatra, "We've only tasted the wine/We're going to drain that cup dry." Thus I take the step, small, uncertain, in anxiety...but achieved, amongst the greatest achievements of my life of achievements. "Lean on me, mon Prince, lean on me." And I do... with doubt, with grave uncertainly, with just fragile conviction, but I do, I do... and this is everything. "You think you've flown before, but you ain't left the ground." But now I am, each step however small fueling the next...and I am surrounded by joy, growing confidence, and the love which eclipses all. Sinatra can do this. He is, after all, the Prince of Impertinence, iconoclastic, take no prisoners, do it my way guy. He could be -- and often was -- insolent, impudent, a master of the smirk and the put-down. The timid world looked to him in longing, because for just a moment they, too, wanted to do what they wanted, critics be damned, elusive truth the grand goal, but so rarely achieved. Sinatra shouts at me, "Do it! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Live life no matter how much or how little you have." "You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shine"... and you insist upon seeing it shine, whatever the cost. Then he turns to the assembled company and flips the unmistakable bird, but whether at anyone in particular, or at the world in general, at what has gone before or what is now on its way, no one can say and even that most perfect courtier Sir Max gives way to a broad (but quickly suppressed) smile of the "thatsa my boy" variety. With that Max in full regalia, holding the emblem of the Prince and his Principality of Tornavan, black, orange, and white with but a single word "CREDO" under a princely crown, claps his paws three times, instantly gathering the full attention of the distinguished company. "Your Majesties, Your Imperial and Royal Highnesses, Your Graces, Milords, Ladies, and Gentlemen All, I give you the undoubted Prince of this realm." "Three cheers for the Prince". And with that the music of Giocomo Meyerbeer rises rhythmic, regal, imperial. It is the Torch Dance No. 3 in C-minor (1856), a dance which only princes may walk. "The people are waiting, mon Prince. Reign for them and reign happy. Here is the secret"...whereupon Max hands me a golden box.... then its key. There are two words engraved on it, "Credo" and "Veritas." It is locked. Then the kiss of loyalty, fidelity, and love, left, right, left. It is a new beginning... and I embrace it, for even life encumbered and difficult is life, and that is the most important thing of all. Max remembers. Thus, the Prince took up his cane and took the first step, strenuous, arduous, uncertain, essential, for from this single step all else must and would ensue. He would walk, and he would walk the Torch Dance, too, in all its intricate figures of dazzling fire. Fall or falter, he was a Prince and this royal walk was his birthright, and as he walked, the brilliant lights went on in the Green Room, in the Blue Room, in the Red Drawing Room, "Fiat Lux", each one a summons to the world in acute need and growing desolation. Thus take heed. Whatever your condition or status, this light is for us all, and so he progressed, humbled but determined, love his constant companion, though he might not always know it. But the good people of Tornavan and everywhere else on Earth determined the Prince would know it. In a moment their collective good wishes began to rise high and ardent, "Ease on down, ease on down the road/ Come on, ease on down the road/ Don't you carry nothing/ That might be a load", and Prince Jeffrey knew for a certainty that he had everything he needed in a single phrase whispered in his ear by the Wiz (1978). "Don't you give up walkin'/ 'Cause you gave up shoes, no." And he stood suddenly at his full height again, bathed in the pure light emanating from the Red Drawing Room, and he raised his cane, a moment ago a tool of subservience and diminution, now one of defiance and life enhancement, and heard himself say what he had never said or even thought before, "I love you. I love you all." With this, there wasn't an eye still dry or a heart untouched, such was the undoubted power of unbridled affection and joy, and it all happened here. I was there. Max. Credo. Cambridge, Massachusetts June 1, 2015 in the Blue Room.
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By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. Please note the date: Saturday October 13 for this is the opening of the Christmas preparation season for 2012. Archeologists and cultural historians will be grateful to me in years hence when they get their government grants and write their learned tomes about the whys and wherefores of Christmas in this our particular era. Yes, I say they will be glad to have each salient fact, observation and deduction gathered by yours truly and herewith shared with the world. For we are talking about the most joyous event of the Christian year, Christmas, and its preparations, staggering for some, meagre and tardy for others, but all acknowledging that this is and continues to be an event of significance to each of us. How was October 13 selected as the commencement date for this event? Easy! It was the first day when your observant author was assailed by not one but a series of "the Christmas season has commenced" portents, signs which might easily be dismissed were there but one or even two, but which in their concerted numbers make it clear that the great count-down to Christmas, with its traditions, meanings, songs, poems, foods, displays, sentiments, travels, resolutions, friends, observances has now commenced in earnest and for the next 71 days until the day itself your life will be affected, influenced, shaped and to a greater or lesser extent determined by what our fellow travelers do or don't do, buy or don't buy, wear, stand in line, decorate... or don't wear, stand in line, or decorate. In other words, because of the birth of a child you may or may not believe was the Son of God your life and all its prosaic concerns and tasks will be hi-jacked; weeks of your life will be less yours, significantly influenced and directed by others you don't know, will never meet, but who are nonetheless powers over you, determined you should listen to them... or else. The first portents. The thing about portents, that is a clue to future occurrences, is that they must for maximum impact take you completely unaware. One moment you're doing such and such a task; considering such and such a thing; talking about such and such a topic. Then the portent arrives, preferably delivered by one or more appropriate gods of Olympus, all of whom seem to traffic in the dicey business of portents, omens, divinations, and auguries. The portent (often obscure and therefore more amusing to its deity deliverer) having arrived, pushes other quotidian topics to the bottom of your consciousness, pulling out the rug on what you were focused on a moment ago and substituting quite a different agenda. Yesterday, October 13 mind, these portents arrived thick and fast; itself a sign that a seismic moment had arrived; actung! stop what you're doing and pay attention. And unless you're that hapless noodle the bored and therefore capricious gods have determined to make even more hapless and miserable, you do pay attention. Thus does your life cease to be as much yours as it was just a moment before. The gods know this, but they have kept this insightful observation for their own delectation and benefit ere now. They wouldn't dream of imparting this intelligence to you; "free will" for humans being one of the most potent and popular of their shrewd devices for controlling the not so sapiens homo. Let me make one thing clear, for sharing this with you I shall be persona non grata at Olympus tonight, for if mankind knew just how little true freedom their gods have allowed us, there would be such a revolution as has never been even imagined before, much less consummated. And the gods would surely have to make concessions, or they would never regain exalted position and control... and what would their excellencies do then to amuse themselves at our expense? What is your portent saying? Portents must be clear but capable of complete misunderstanding. In other words, when reviewing an event that could be a portent, two reasonably intelligent people must be capable of drawing two dramatically different conclusions, for a portent is not a directive... not a declaration... if it were the gods would be most unhappy... for if their signs could be so easily read by everyone the muddles beloved of these ancient deities would cease and the gods who already have to wrestle with the matter that is eternity...would fall into even deeper despair; for they already have too little to do and far too much time in which to do it. Remember, their irritation, ennui and pique become the basis for our misery. No wonder they don't want us to know. Christmas portents by the hour. The gods realize humans are short sighted, careless, capable of massive confusions and misunderstandings. Thus, the game becomes determining the precise formula that will give us clues (but not too many) and insight (but not too much). Even the Olympian gods are not born knowing these things; they must learn. And they do so at our expense, for what are we humans for if not to provide the wherewithal for their education and expertise? We are just so many lab rats to divinity. Nice work if you can get it. Store sightings, catalogs, email. The first shop in my neighborhood to deck the halls was the smoking shop in Harvard Square. Given the fact that teen-age smoking has dropped dramatically; thereby proving that even heedless adolescents can get the message if we adults have the patience and deliberation to beat them about the head with it. As a result, the revenues at the smoking shop have most probably dropped... whilst their Harvard-charged rent has undoubtedly done the reverse. It is therefore obvious why they want to weigh in with a cheery seasonable greeting and display. "Give the gift of cancer." Even the most knowledgeable of advertising executives might think twice before taking on this daunting account. Still, there they are, hoping that the dwindling number of young smokers will purchase their diminished life span from them, especially if they can do so in the name of Jesus, who promised the eternal life the smoking shop is doing so much to curtail. Cool. Catalog temptation (and ease) by mail and the 'net. Stores like the smoking shop need to lure you into their premises as early as possible before Christmas; their continuing survival depends on it. But catalogs live to remind you how difficult and irksome store shopping is in the age of catalogs and 'net. Simply mentioning the invading hordes, the unending lines, the harassed staff, the parking difficulties is usually enough to tip the scales to catalog shopping online and off. That persuaded me. As a result the last several years such shopping constitutes all my shopping. The problem is the proliferation of mail-order Christmas catalogs, especially after you become a proven buyer. Then you may expect to hear from each catalog at least 3-4 times before their last frenzied promotion, hitting about December 15. All prophesy consumer distress if you fail to ACT NOW, visit their website and ORDER! But here the retail stores re-emerge as they reap the considerable advantages deriving from procrastinators like you. At this point you will most assuredly wish you had heeded their October warning. You will pledge to do better next year. You won't, of course. And so you'll keep your name on every list; a portent of things to come, especially purchases you're sure to make. They know that, even if you don't. Polishing the silver. In my house there is one certain activity that indicates the coming of Christmas. That is polishing the silver. It is a very time-consuming task, taking a couple of days. Mercedes Joseph, so giving and warm in all her aspects, will take these traits and leave the silver burnished into eye-popping radiance. It's a significant part of our invitation to the Prince of Peace, an invitation that will see us clambering up step ladders to clean the chandeliers in all the rooms to ensure that all is brilliant and every facet sparkles. So that there is not a single molecule of tracked in dirt or bunched carpet. We work hard to make it perfect; we work early and late to make it perfect... and we do it all because of the advent of this harbinger of our salvation; because we will do it, not because anyone tells us what to do or oversees our efforts, evaluating what we do. We do it, because this is Christmas and the greatest gift we give is our voluntary adherence and a belief that starts in our hearts and has no ending whatsoever. That is why October 13, I awoke to the strains of my favorite carol running through my head, "God rest you merry, gentlemen/Let nothing you dismay", first released in 1760. In an instant I find Bing Crosby's 1945 version; then in a search engine one other version after another, including a rendition by "Barenaked Ladies" (2004). Only the very young can find the sniggering humor in such sophomoric nomenclature, but today I don't care. For you see, every off key note I sing proves that I have become a portent myself of the great event en route "For Jesus Christ our Savior/Was born upon this Day", and we rejoice in the Good News passed from me and mine, to you and yours, to a burdened world which needs "tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy", the true meaning of Christmas and why we gentlemen and gentlewomen rest merry and shall remain so long past the day and season itself. by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author's Program Note All of a sudden things are radically different. A week ago, even just a day or so, the implacable summer sun reigned supreme, turning even the most energetic and equitable into sweat soaked complainers, facing even the least demanding task as if it were a firing squad. Then, on a morning like this one, you know, you sense, you feel that that sun, with all his dictating of every particular, has passed into long-gone history. You remember him without regret, though his leaving brings the incorrigible winter into plain sight. Thrifty housewives catch themselves while sweeping the porch, "My, my Christmas will be here before you know it. How time does fly." And she shakes her broom with a vigor that no one in the whole town had just the day before. She shakes again to be sure things will be just so, ship shape. She didn't feel this way a single moment of the summer. But she feels that way now. She catches herself, "Oh Come All Yea Faithful" her favorite Christmas song; she must check the attic. That's where she'll find the seasonal necessities. Then she smiles. It really is good to look early... she can't help herself. The summer is gone, that's for sure. And another line of "her" hymn slides out. She'll check the attic today... just to be sure. It will never do to be unprepared... and she never is. That summer which ordered all just hours ago is gone. Dancing reindeer must follow. One sure way you can tell the season has changed is the sound. You look quizzical, "Sound"? Yes, summer is full of Apollo's happy music, the unbridled laughter of the young who pined for the summer, that May a million months ago, and long ago tired of it; though they must be coaxed to admit to this dark heresy. Whoops Summer comes with whoops and shouts and slammed aluminium doors. Summer is boisterous and capable of rebuffing any amount of "Jeffrey, come in NOW!" But in summer no one means it, for everyone wants to linger in the last twilights of sun and nowhere to go. Fall is a very different thing. And so the sound is a very different thing, too. Summer is pagan, sprawling, pocket full of secret treasures from tree limbs and swamps where the cattails are always just a few inches too far and ingenious methods are required to avoid the mud that laughs at your inadequacies. Fall is disciplined, organized, clean clothes and a new lunch box without a single scratch and extra supplies for trading. Summer is full of sound and laughter. Fall is muted, quiet, a time of sacred spaces and promises; some of which will haunt you for a lifetime, too precious to disregard, too painful to remember, except alone, head bowed. Summer slows, autumn speeds. The summer sounds say "bide a while" and even if we cannot, we know we should. In autumn we are too focused on arranging the remainder of the year now swiftly ending. It is always going somewhere, and never takes us along. This is the definition of sadness, and it is the leitmotif of the season we cannot stop for even a moment of "Once upon a time." Autumn returns the people, our friends and neighbors, who slipped away one summer day wearing sun glasses and the battered heirloom that is a grampa's straw hat with its unexpectly bright riband in a fanciful color called cerulean. The children who shouted their boisterous adieux as they left the security of drive way for the great imperial highways which take them anywhere; these children are full to the brim with stories of acknowledgement and high adventure, including first love with a broken heart and blurred photos you must promise never to reveal, cross your heart... Summer may accept no destination as acceptable. Autumn is nothing but destinations, all important, even the least of them. Summer dawdles and saunters. Autumn has a date, a time, a purpose. It is for those who want to move up, move fast, and never tarry. In summer, we slow down to smell the flowers; in autumn we grab the few remaining flowers as we race by, never stopping to sniff; grabbing because we need to give our hostess a bouquet, thereby enhancing our reputation, even if we rip the blooms from her very own garden, unthinkable in autumn. Back to School I'll become a septuagenarian my next birthday and yet I caught myself just yesterday telling a guest to go to bed at once, after all tomorrow was a "school day", a day for improvement, dreams dreamed, defined, refined, improved, achieved and new ones launched to continue the process for life. To so aspire I was taught soundly and well. For this my teachers of yore deserve an encomium they will not get unless from me, for when I was in the schoolyard God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world. And I have always ladled out ample pomp and circumstance to those treasured beings who made it so. I waited for them impatiently through the days of high summer. Then one day in the dwindling days of summer, all these beings, all women, all graduates of Illinois teaching colleges came back, like so many macaws in flashes of color and insistent chatter. Now their serious endeavors could begin. I, for one, needed no encouragement. Summer has no standards. Autumn reveals new standards with daunting regularity. My fellow students decry the new destinations, some so they will not be seen as "teacher's pet"; some because they know these new standards push them down and under, another obstacle to their ever less certain advance. Summer, for these, was better. Then they had only to regale us with new formulations of mischief and frolic, traits in limited demand for the rest of their three score and ten, unmissed by everyone else. The smells of summer are clean, fresh, the honest scents of the good earth, crucial, good for a thousand years. They are strong, uncompromising, too real for the fastidious whose well being rests on the smells they seek to avoid at any cost. These waft down corridors enveloped in manly whiffs of Old Spice and Right Guard or, for the ladies, perfume like Chanel, No. 5 my mother's scent. One day when alone at my grandmother's, I tried her Coty and understood its power at once. A single drop was enough to envelope you in a crowd of violets, wanton and beautiful, my favorite flower. I never tried this experiment again. I could not trust myself. I have seen the results when it is used without wisdom or restraint. It is where seduction ends and cruelty begins and never leaves. Ammonia. Without any effort whatsoever I can close my eyes and smell the workaday smell of mopped floors in the cafeteria where sticky linoleum did not preclude our dance class; boys awkward, girls already proficient at entrapment, perfecting skills they will use for a lifetime. If they married "well", their parents could congratulate themselves -- and the school. A different smell permeated the floor of the new gymnasiusm, the pride of the parents who bought it and entirely believed that those who engaged in manly sports upon its lacquered surface would never do anything squalid or dishonorable, on the floor or off. We were shocked to the core when we found off differently. I only remember one such game on that supremely polished floor. It was a basket ball encounter, and I was coerced to be there. The star in that pipsqueak league was Bobby Lucas, who at 13 or so already knew the full power of the word "suave". Indeed the word and all its moves might have been invented for him. As usual he dazzled with irresistible footwork, a junior Globe Trotter for sure. And then one of those thrusts calibrated by God himself brought the crowd to its feet, even me. To celebrate, I threw my head back and hit Bobby's dad squarely in the face. A trickle of blood ensued, enough to remind me these almost 60 years later of the astonished look I generated when I was young and careless, when everything worked and painful limps and uncertain organs were not my portion. I'd bump old man Lucas again and again if I could bring grace and agililty back, even for an hour. I'd even go to basketball games and holler. The trees in summer beguile and snooze under the humidity that slows all, then slows all again. Summer is happy to stay home. Fall can hardly wait for all the tickets it receives to gad about. Summer says "Come by whenever you like." Fall makes it clear the event begins at 8 p.m. and don't be late. Transformation The last days of summer now demand our full attention, demand but don't get. All eyes are on the rising sun, where every colored leaf arrests the eye. We cannot remember summer when God's arbor wafts such allure to our attention. And so the children pile all this windswept moribundity with rakes bigger than they are and jump in, youth and beauty in every jump; their laughter infectious. Dappled with sunshine, bedecked in only the choisest leaves, life's acolytes walk to the shrine, from Woodward Avenue, where Mom waves and waves again. "How fast they grow up", the mantra on her lips and every other mother's. From Woodward they move to Prairie, cross Belmont Road to Puffer School, which my grandfather helped to build, brickwork his specialty and where Principal Hefty had been my mother's teacher and lived across the street from my grandparents. Many a day I ate the mulberries that fell on her sidewalk. Delicious though they were, I was the only one who partook of their richness. Now I've always wondered why. "... And to the Republic for which it stands..." At last we were all assembled, rooms of Baby Boomers, the pride of the nation, our hope for years to come. "I pledge allegiance to the Flag..." and amongst us some did so with a fervor impossible to disguise. These were the children and grandchildren of Europe's internecine destruction, grateful every day to thank God for the Great Republic, "liberty and justice for all." They more than anyone knew it wasn't so everywhere. And soon, to our chagrin and peril, it wasn't true here either. "O, say can you see...?" Program note The music for today's program is the theme song for "Ding Dong School", which ran on NBC from 1952 to 1956. You will remember Miss Frances (Horwich), the host. She was very low key and talked exceedingly slowly, perfect for small ears and hands and irritating to anyone over 6. Her approach made her a star. For at the height of her popularity, she had 3 million rapt viewers, one of whom was me. I can remember so very clearly carrying Miss Frances's messages to my mother, and leaving the television set when she said she had a private message for mom. This approach was media magic, and led on to Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood, and "Sesame Street", all gold mines. Now here is a link that will take you back to where it all started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK5xsXa9LMw About the author Harvard educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant has been a "schoolboy" his entire life, his life ruled by the rhythms of the classroom. Using the knowledge gained and abiding by the commitment that produces results, Dr. Lant has written over 1,000 published articles, and over 55 books of merit and achievement. If you aim for success for yourself or your family, he is the man to connect with. Start with his autobiography "A Connoisseur's Journey: Being the artful memoirs of a man of wit, discernment, pluck, and joy." |
AuthorDr. Jeffrey Lant, Harvard educated, started writing for publication at age 5. Since then, he has published over 1,000 articles and 63 books, and counting. Archives
August 2018
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