goofy. I felt that any person really facing death would conceive of it in much grander terms. Even my father.
One time my father hit my mother. I wish you could’ve seen his face: the bared teeth and bulged eyes, the mottled redness of the cheeks and forehead, the skin seeming to shine like a lacquered surface. If someone had been there to take a photograph, to freeze the expression in the moment before his hand lurched up to grab my mom by the neck, in a purely objective picture, you would not be able to identify the emotion in that look as rage. You might assume that it was pain or terror. There’s a great photo from the Vietnam war—you know the one, of the guy screaming as he’s shot through the head. That’s what my dad looked like at that moment.
I never saw him look like that, before or after. But if I close my eyes I can see that face as clearly as I can picture the school portraits of my children on the coffee table, or the blue LeSabrethat is waiting for me in the garage, or my first and only dog, Lucky, who, on the night of my parents’ fight lay under the table in the kitchen, his long snout resting warily on his paws.
I’m sure that my father never realized how easily I could graft that face over his gentle one, how much more easily I could conjure up that image instead of some thought of his good qualities. It probably would have made him cry. He wept easily in his last years. I recall seeing him sitting in his easy chair, touching his fingers to his moist eyes as he watched a news special about poor orphans in Romania. When he and my mother had their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and he stood up to make a speech, his voice broke. “This woman,” he said, and he choked back a sob. “This woman is the first and only love of my life.”
I don’t know. It’s hard to decide if the waver in his voice was authentic or not. Who knows what he was really thinking as he spoke, as he stood there with my mother beaming, glistening-eyed, up at him—whether that strangled “love of my life” was tinged with regret, self-pity, whether it was because he was standing in front of all those people who knew that he and my mom hadn’t had the most pleasant of lives together. But it also might be that he said it with true, honest feeling. In the end, there probably isn’t much difference between being in love and acting like you’re in love.
I don’t mean this as a put-down either. I really don’t believe that it’s possible to be in love all of the time, any more than it’s possible to always be good. So you must go with the next best thing. You try to pretend.
There are times when I would do anything to be a good person. But I’m not. Deep down, most of the time, I’m not.What can you do? You have a flash of goodness and you try to hold on to it, ride it for all it’s worth.
There was this one time that my kids and I were playing with clay, the three of us together. I don’t know why this moment was special, but it was. We were all quiet, concentrated on our work, our fingers kneading and shaping. We were making an elephant, and I remember how excited they were when I rolled out its trunk, a careful snake between my palm and the surface of the table. My youngest was about three at the time, and I remember how he rested his cheek against my arm, watching me. I remember how soft and warm that cheek felt. The older one was pounding out a flap for the ear, and I can recall my voice being gentle and perfect when I told him how great it was. He gave it to me; I pressed it to the elephant’s head.
But it didn’t last for long, that moment. I am sure that neither of them remember it as I do, for pretty soon they started arguing, whining about who had more clay and so on. It was a jolt; I could actually feel the goodness moving out of me, the way you can feel blood moving when you blush or grow pale. “Come on, guys,” I said, “let’s not fight. This is fun, isn’t it? Let’s have fun.” But my
One time my father hit my mother. I wish you could’ve seen his face: the bared teeth and bulged eyes, the mottled redness of the cheeks and forehead, the skin seeming to shine like a lacquered surface. If someone had been there to take a photograph, to freeze the expression in the moment before his hand lurched up to grab my mom by the neck, in a purely objective picture, you would not be able to identify the emotion in that look as rage. You might assume that it was pain or terror. There’s a great photo from the Vietnam war—you know the one, of the guy screaming as he’s shot through the head. That’s what my dad looked like at that moment.
I never saw him look like that, before or after. But if I close my eyes I can see that face as clearly as I can picture the school portraits of my children on the coffee table, or the blue LeSabrethat is waiting for me in the garage, or my first and only dog, Lucky, who, on the night of my parents’ fight lay under the table in the kitchen, his long snout resting warily on his paws.
I’m sure that my father never realized how easily I could graft that face over his gentle one, how much more easily I could conjure up that image instead of some thought of his good qualities. It probably would have made him cry. He wept easily in his last years. I recall seeing him sitting in his easy chair, touching his fingers to his moist eyes as he watched a news special about poor orphans in Romania. When he and my mother had their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and he stood up to make a speech, his voice broke. “This woman,” he said, and he choked back a sob. “This woman is the first and only love of my life.”
I don’t know. It’s hard to decide if the waver in his voice was authentic or not. Who knows what he was really thinking as he spoke, as he stood there with my mother beaming, glistening-eyed, up at him—whether that strangled “love of my life” was tinged with regret, self-pity, whether it was because he was standing in front of all those people who knew that he and my mom hadn’t had the most pleasant of lives together. But it also might be that he said it with true, honest feeling. In the end, there probably isn’t much difference between being in love and acting like you’re in love.
I don’t mean this as a put-down either. I really don’t believe that it’s possible to be in love all of the time, any more than it’s possible to always be good. So you must go with the next best thing. You try to pretend.
There are times when I would do anything to be a good person. But I’m not. Deep down, most of the time, I’m not.What can you do? You have a flash of goodness and you try to hold on to it, ride it for all it’s worth.
There was this one time that my kids and I were playing with clay, the three of us together. I don’t know why this moment was special, but it was. We were all quiet, concentrated on our work, our fingers kneading and shaping. We were making an elephant, and I remember how excited they were when I rolled out its trunk, a careful snake between my palm and the surface of the table. My youngest was about three at the time, and I remember how he rested his cheek against my arm, watching me. I remember how soft and warm that cheek felt. The older one was pounding out a flap for the ear, and I can recall my voice being gentle and perfect when I told him how great it was. He gave it to me; I pressed it to the elephant’s head.
But it didn’t last for long, that moment. I am sure that neither of them remember it as I do, for pretty soon they started arguing, whining about who had more clay and so on. It was a jolt; I could actually feel the goodness moving out of me, the way you can feel blood moving when you blush or grow pale. “Come on, guys,” I said, “let’s not fight. This is fun, isn’t it? Let’s have fun.” But my
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