We have been away, visiting J. We have had house sitters looking after the
dog, two cats, two chickens. When we stepped in late last night there was a
greeting committee, all with views. And tails. The chickens were already
safely locked up, so early this morning was our first conversation in ten days.
They came running out of Fort Squawk, muttering about how thirsty they were,
ignored the food, drank deep of the fresh water, then returned to the food. I
had a sense of being invisible…until I spoke.
“Did you miss me?”
They looked up. Mimo, “Oh it’s you.”
Pecorino, “Gods look so much the same.”
“We do?”
Mimo nodded, “Beings that rise into the sky. Seen one, seen ‘em all.”
Pecorino, “Voices, on the other hand, completely different. Ignore differences
in sound at your peril.”
Mimo, “At your peril,” said Mimo slowly and emphatically.
“I thought Pecorino was the one who repeated things?” I asked without thinking,
which is my state of mind at an early hour after a cross-country flight. Quite
automatic of action, me.
“Adjustments,” said Mimo, enigmatically.
And Pecorino echoed.
Two characters on our plane journeys stuck in my mind. The first was a man in
his late twenties who had achieved a degree in engineering at one of our large
colleges. He said he was greatly interested in history but he responded, when
I asked whether he had taken a course or entered that section of the college
library, “No.”
“They have a very good history of science group at… [beat] So what liberal
arts courses did you take?”
“I don’t recall. They were the kind of thing you took for a B.”
He was a platoon leader in an army reserve engineering unit and so wanted to
know more about military history.
“What would you like to know? I’m not expert in everything, but I might be
able to tell you where to look.”
“There was, like, a war in Eastern Europe somewhere?”
“Can you give me a little more information?”
“It was in like, the nineties?”
“Nineteen nineties, or earlier?”
“I have a friend who was in it.”
“Bosnia?”
“That’s the one.”
“What would you like to know?”
“What was it about?”
He asked question after question. The next subject was “some library in
Egypt.” He’d seen something about it on the television. Eventually I had to
withdraw from the conversation, really quite puzzled by the mismatch between
his seemingly genuine curiosity and his complete unwillingness to look things
up or to read a book. When I asked him about that, he said he “didn’t read
much.”
On one of the homeward flights a huge guy carrying a tiny kid folded himself
beside me into one of the two-across seats. I said something like, “They don’t
design these for people like you.”
“Isn’t that the way?” was his response. The kid smiled; he smiled. I was
introduced to the stuffed lamb, who was called “Lamby lamb” or some such name.
Such a cute kid. But all kids get cranky when tired and confined, so out came
the tablet and the movie. I watched the kid watching the screen. At one point
she roared when a large animal joined the action. Roared quietly. And smiled
at me. The kid had cute all buttoned up.
I noticed, not because I am ahead of any curve of awareness but because my
students write about this kind of thing, that none of the characters in the
cartoon on the tablet looked like her. Of course no one looks like three pugs
on a plane—you probably know the movie; I didn’t—but there was Santa
Claus…white…and other characters…white…and here she was, oblivious as a
chicken…for the nonce. Maybe by the time she and her sister grow up—the
mother, sitting across the aisle, had the very young baby sister—we’ll have
improved humanity’s situation in regard to cartoons and chairs.
(My brother-in-law is very tall. It’s an issue when we rent cars together,
pick out which hotel has what kind of bed, play competitive ping pong.
Enormous wingspan.)
What a treat to have the whole family together, all four of us in the same car,
hiking and touring cideries in the Finger Lakes region of New York. It felt as
if the pandemic is fading. Not, however, as quickly as people who step into
hotel elevators without a mask seem to imagine. No one has declared vaccines
one hundred percent effective.
So yes, traveling is still a little scary, but this was the week J. could get
off, so away we went. As did everyone who had a graduation to attend, a
wedding to attend, so on. The airports were crowded and the flights all full.
One of the things this Dad has been known to say to his daughters:
“conversation is practice.” I don’t know why some people get more aphoristic
as they get older, but I do. What I mean by those words is that it’s easy to
pick up a conversation with someone with whom you have practiced, so it’s
important to practice. If there is a long gap between conversations, all
present have to learn again the patterns of intimate speech, speech beyond
social pleasantries. Happily I can report that by the end of the trip we not
only had managed well together; we were back to family riffing, which is a
comedic pleasure. And we all sang, which eventually tried the patience of
those who are paid-up members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Music (SPCM).
On my return I did not riff with the chickens. Who wants to riff at six of the
hay hem? Neither did I find any eggs. We’ll have to see what develops.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
