Crazy Stable

I live in such a muddle that I was actually caught off-guard by the realization that we are ending up the first decade of the new century. (Spouse insists that it ends next year, but is just being contrary.) And still no proper name for it, although the Times of London is using the "Noughties."

The New York Times, which we're stuck with, has been running incomprehensible rambles on the agony of the decade and its recent rescue, but the only part of the story I recognize is the shared nightmare (now so surreally distant) of 9/11. Supposedly we weathered several booms and recessions, but our finances feel just as perilous in good times and bad. Instead, I was struck by what an overall time of blessing these 10 years had been. Begun in fresh mourning for my mother, who departed this life a month before the "millenium" celebration she would have dismissed contemptuously, the decade shifted our focus from frantic elder care to the joyful business of raising a wonderful child. These first 10 years neatly frame Daughter's elementary school career and Spouse's ongoing gig at the museum he loves. 

The problem with being superstitious is that you're afraid to be grateful: afraid someone will come along and take your little goodies away. Bravely, I will declare that so far, it has been a very good century despite its lurking demons. And as a New Year present to all, here is the best poem ever about the journey. It is called "The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz:

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

On this Christmastide morning, when the sun and December's green have melted out from behind the snow, I fondly remember my Uncle Scrooge: that is, my Uncle Don V. Becker, the man who personified Christmas in my life.

Yes, that is actually him; he worked in the photography department for an ad agency called Horn & Griner, and every so often would be called upon as a "character" model. He posed as a reformed and joyous Scrooge for several accounts, including a memorable Newsweek billboard ("Raise a little Dickens, Read Newsweek") and this Hennessy Scotch ad.

But the characterization was uncannily apt; you would be hard pressed to find a man who would more perfectly "honor Christmas in his heart and try to keep it all the year." He and my bohemian Aunt Louie would show up with, literally, a Santa sack each Christmas, the coolest presents in the world: stuff from their travels in India and Mexico, wind chimes, incense burners, and once, a can of turtle soup. Everything would be tucked into Ektachrome tins and boxes and wrapped in photo background paper, even Louie's Rice Krispie treats. For their little niece growing up sheltered in suburban Queens, their visits were no less amazing than that of the three Christmas spirits.

But it was Don's childlike delight in life, more than any present, that made him the soul of our Christmas. That delight expressed itself in his photography; in a family that otherwise contented itself with Instamatic snapshots lit by flash-cubes, his Pentax opened up a world of wonder. In off hours at Horn & Griner, he would create hand-tinted "Victorian" portraits of us, or elegant black and white vignettes that made us all look slightly glamorous and exotic. He'd always bring a sheaf of his latest exquisite nature shots taken out at their country house, macro studies of glistening moss, icicles, ferns or snow. And he would just hand me that Pentax to experiment with, complete with monster telephoto, when my hands were barely big enough to hold it. Then he'd develop and mat my best shot like it was a pro's, and present it back to me—a gift of trust and celebration in a child's vision and creativity.

Don lived to be almost 94, as did his equally vivacious and great-hearted twin sister Valeska, and he never stopped loving Christmas. We got him sprung from a nursing "home" just in time to spend his last Christmas in his real home—his beloved Manhattan apartment—where he left this life three years ago this day. His last word to me, spoken with deep concentration as if to himself, was "Peace."

"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world!"  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

"Philosophical systems, scientific constructions, and slogans leave the heart of man cold. Even a theory about love means little as long as it remains a theory. But let love become personal in some one and then it pulls at every heart-string in the world. There is the secret of the appeal of the Incarnation. Love became Incarnate and dwelt amongst us. Since that day hearts that have known what the Incarnation means can never content themselves with any system which asks us to adore the cosmos. Man never has loved, never will love anything he cannot get his arms around, and the cosmos is too big and too bulky.

That is why the Immense God became a babe in order that we might encircle Him in our arms."

--Fulton J. Sheen, The Divine Romance

Image: Edward Burne-Jones, “Nativity” (1875), William Morris stained glass window, St. Martin’s in the Bull Ring, Birmingham.

And she brought forth her firstborn marshmallow, and laid him on a graham cracker, because there was no room at the campfire.

Or something.

Frankly, I've never gotten the whole "s'mores" novelty thing, or even real s'mores. A marshmallow, a piece of Hershey bar and a cracker are a pitiful snack, one that never becomes more than the sum of its parts, and whose entire appeal must surely emanate from the charm of its rustic improvisation. The s'more as a decorative item also seems to be "from hunger." But as a Nativity set?

The disturbing item above, seen in a Bay Ridge gift store over the weekend, is a bizarre genre extension of Cute Non-Human Nativities, which started, I suspect, after the barely humanoid Precious Moments characters opened the floodgates to other species. Most popular is the Bear Nativity, which comes in several varieties, from cuddly teddies to rather gruesome black bears. As Best Friend tartly paraphrased St. Paul, "He was known to be of ursine estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself."

And, well...let's not even go here. Although I cannot resist observing the folly of a Pug Wise Man, unless stars were made of ham.

This sign inspired the family to extend the brand beyond marshmallows: How about a Dental Nativity? Jesus of course would be a baby tooth, Mary and Joseph the front teeth, and shepherds the incisors; angels could be molars with little halos. And don't make us tell you which teeth would play the Wise Men. (Hint: They, too, come in last.)

I seem to have become a de facto Catholic blogger this week--now there's a wonk's wonk--and will make a trilogy of it by descending joyfully into a crypt. 

This one, actually, below the altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where yesterday I visited the tomb of Fulton J. Sheen on the 30th anniversary of his death. (No, I didn't take this shot; I forgot my camera, and was relieved of the temptation to be tacky enough to whip it out in such a holy site.)

Yesterday's mass, for the cause of Sheen's canonization now under study in Rome, was a gorgeous affair; the entry procession featured 3 cardinals, at least a dozen bishops, and amid the mitres, some sparkly crowns and other exotic regalia from bishops belonging to, perhaps, the Vulcan or Romulan Catholic rites. You would think after my prior two posts (scroll down for tears and gall) that this showboating magnificence aswirl in incense would have, er, incensed me, but no; I delighted in it, especially the beaming presence of our new New York archbishop Timothy Dolan. The guy is a rock-star, he's like the Ghost of Christmas Present, beaming light around; it's as if the dour and arrogant Egan had created a dark-matter vaccuum just for his successor to fill.

"Fulton Sheen wanted to get to heaven, and he wanted us all to go with him," preached Dolan, to a huge congregation that included Sheen's niece. (More of Dolan's backstory with Sheen here.) The ultimate rock star, Sheen inspired countless souls to convert to Catholicism, among them my own father. My dad was drawn into the magnetic young radio preacher's circle by two fan girls, my mother and my aunt, who attended Sheen's "Catholic Hour" broadcasts live in the 1940s and often got the charismatic monsignor to sign one of his books for them (see his quip, above).  

In hunting down that inscription to share with you, I found another tiny miracle, one of hope and healing after this week's awful news reports. The book, The Divine Romance, was published in 1930 but Sheen's words could have been penned yesterday to ease the pain of our post-abuse scandal, atheist-ascendant Zeitgeist:

“…The world should profit by experience and give up expecting the Church to die…The notice of her execution has been posted, but the execution has never taken place. Science killed her, and still she was there; History interred her, but still she was alive. Modernism slew her, but still she lived… in fact, she is constantly finding her way out of the grave because she has a captain who found His way out of the grave. The world may expect her to become tired, to be weak when she becomes powerful, to become poor when she is rich, but the world need never expect her to die…She is reborn to each new age, and hence is the only new thing in the world…She will go on dying and living again, and in each recurring cycle of a Good Friday and an Easter Sunday her one aim in life will be to preach Christ and Him Crucified.”

And in the very next paragraph, only halfway through his life, Sheen writes his own epitaph:

"...if any single word of mine has lifted up but one soul to a nobler understanding of Christ, or fanned a single spark of love for His cause into a flame, or induced the tendrils of a single heart to entwine about the Heart of Hearts, then I shall believe that my words and my life shall not have been spoken or lived in vain."

And now, Advent is calling: time to leave the crypt and hang the lights.