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Know Your History
Sunday. So much like a million Sundays. Mother in her chair furiously knitting something which reaches ever-closer to the floor. In a few years, it will be inching its way into the kitchen. Father sits in my spot on the couch reading his newspaper. Grunting disapprovingly every few sentences. A dozen clocks tick.
Because Father is in my spot, I have to sit in the foreign armchair. A spring in its middle, acquiring strength with age, is butting obtrusively at my ass. May yet win its war with the cover fabric and propel me whooping into the air. A solo note of excitement to this barely humming Sunday.
There is no distraction, save the spring, to keep me from my case of nerves. Athena has not phoned. My foolproof plan has somehow flopped.
I lift my guitar from behind the chair. Where Mother always hides it. And strum all the minor chords I know. In many original variations. Hoping to discover a particularly miserable one.
"Sing, Tyrone."
"I can't sing, Mother."
"Oh, you can too, I've heard you when you didn't know I was listening."
Stage-struck. Mother is smiling: an attempt at reconciliation. "All right."
I start picking out the simple notes of a song by Leonard Cohen. Very deliberately chosen. For its soothing effect. I will apply it like salve to all my wounds.
"It's called 'Winter Lady.'"
I sing the small number of verses. Which lull me like a hypnotist's words. Granting me a convincing absolution. Slips a feather wedge between each word and its trailing guilt. I imagine it ending in a soft sigh. Leaving me caught in dreams of strange and eerie farewells.
"Did you have to sing a dirty song?"
"What."
"Just because your mother asked politely for you to sing a song, you had to go and sing a dirty one. Didn't you?"
"I didn't think it was dirty, Tom."
"It sure as hell was and he sang it on purpose."
I get up. Toss my guitar onto the couch and walk out into the porch. I pull on my old parka, heavy socks, and gumboots. And launch into the ice-cold sunshine. I look around for Plato, that uncritical friend. I call him, but he does not come. Must be out sniffing after long-gone rabbits. As a last hope, I glance into his doghouse. And there he is, wrapped round himself. Looking cold and sleepy. I climb into his smelly little room. He crawls up on me and licks my face. I let him. He tires of the taste of me and sprawls his front quarters across my crossed legs. I finger his ears so soft and expensive-feeling. "Plato, the world is an unfit mother. But we're stuck with her, aren't we?"
Taking his cue from the misery in my voice, Plato moans.
"Too bad people aren't as willing to do that as you, Plato. Then I wouldn't mind so much." And there we stay for a long time. Plato drifts off to sleep and leaves me staring at his walls. Now and again, he jerks in reaction to his dog dreams. Now he has jerked so hard he has awakened himself. What did you dream, Plato? In our dreams, we all have giant fears, don't we? No one can claim a life without nightmares. Sleep renders us all equal in our cowardice. Too bad no one thinks of the time they woke up sweating and terrified when they're in the process of judging one such as me. It's just a simple reaction, isn't it, Plato? When you dream of a stronger foe, you jump with fear. As simple as two plus two. I'm just an unfortunate case of true vision. I can't stunt the size of my foes in daytime or inflate the size of me. I see them as they are. Cyclopes. Giants.
I am so puny in relation.
I am the one that the weakling at the beach comes looking for after his humiliation at the feet of the sand-kicking bully. Egos feed on me. I will run from anything. But, I was laughed at when I said there was a social need for cowards. Told my sociology class that we should be paid by the hour to absorb society's shit and abuse. Shallow bastards didn't understand.
A humbug on social workers! Think they all have a message for humanity. Would swear up and down that their helping hands are extended everywhere. Yet, who sponsors "Take a Coward Out For Dinner Week"? No one! The mercy is all dispensed to the hungry, the sick, the crazy, and the crippled. And there is none left over for me. Even you, Plato, are better off. There is the SPCA and the Dog Lovers' Club for you to look up in times of need. But where can I go? Not even home.
When my trials have finally driven me mad, hordes of social workers will rush to take hold of my shaking hands. And won't they all feel holy then? To have overcome their revulsion for this putrid madman. For having the pluck to lead me to the madhouse.
They think that sainthood is within their easy grasp. Only three years of being sprayed with academic paint and you pop out feeling just like Florence Nightingale. Total absolution given for all prior sins. One good that you do erases all bad that you did before. The day you pushed little brother off the roof and he broke his arm and leg: all forgiven when you cart me off to be lobotomized.
Unfair that they should be allowed to feel sanctimonious and sinless. While I am accused of everything. Just a matter of time until I am blamed for winter.
Mother yells to Plato that his dinner is ready and he scrambles over me to go and get it. I must leave now too. Quickly. As long as Plato is here, he is the obvious choice of any flea looking for a home. In his absence, it’s any port in a storm. I hustle after him. Mother sees me.
"What were you doing in there?"
"Plato and I were discussing his Theory of Forms."
I walk toward the house and Mother waits, holding the scraped-out potato bowl and spoon. Plato is oblivious to all but what lies in his dish.
"I'm sorry about that business about the song. I thought it was very nice."
"Thank you."
"And don't think too harshly of your father. The type of life we lead here maybe makes Tom a bit narrow. But that can't be helped. You have to be willing to bend a little because your father isn't likely to. It's too late in his life now."
"Narrow? How can you say that Father's narrow? He eats well, sleeps well, farms well, drinks well, belches expertly, and plays great poker from what I've been told. Father's not narrow."
"Don't be so sarcastic."
"I don't want Father to be a swinger. If he smoked marijuana and sang rhythm and blues while he drove his tractor, I wouldn't get along with him any better. All I want from Father is that he think back a little. Surely to God his life hasn't always been tractors and grain quotas. That song was about being young and wanting things that you want because you’re young. I hate to think what a lousy place Father's mind must be if he thinks that's dirty."
Mother looks very sad now, I think I have opened old wounds. "Tyrone, I don't think you know very much about your father. The truth is that his life has been mostly tractors and grain quotas. When all the other boys were going off to war, your father was exempted because he had to take care of the farm. His father died during the war, you see. And before that, the Depression kept him home. He couldn't have made a living if he had started drifting. Your father never really had a chance to be young. He was even very businesslike about marrying me, I'm afraid. It wasn't one of those relationships where you spend a lot of time walking under the stars. Grain quotas had a lot to do with it, actually. Your father decided he could afford a wife one winter, so we got married. Do you see now why he understands you so little?"
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, I'm not complaining. Tom's a very good man. He's always treated me like gold. You see, Tyrone, our generation never scolds over what it didn't get. We're happy that we got anything at all."
After Mother goes back inside, I spend a lot of time sitting on the verandah rail. In a few sentences, she has summed up why I have not murdered Father in his bed. It is different to be narrow-minded from choice than to be narrow-minded from lack of choice. If Father had, from myriad possible ideologies, picked his out, I would loathe him. But, I don't suppose he can be blamed for the history that shaped him.
But Mother falls short in her generalization too. Only a small segment of her generation is as satisfied as she claims it all to be. Too many people benefited from wartime and other sufferings and they will never be satisfied. No one can argue with me that the American imperialist, who has now come to own one-quarter of the world, isn't setting his sights on half.
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