Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, November 27, 2004
SNOWY MORNING at my parents' home
We're back in Montreal. What a voyage in one day: from midday in the sparsely-populated, economically-stressed agricultural rolling hills of central New York to the ethnically-diverse, busy streets of a French-speaking city at nightfall. We drove up the far side of New York, on the crumbly, sedimentary plateau bordering Lake Ontario, under slate skies washed with striated clouds. Huge flocks of Canada geese beat their strong wings overhead; we saw grazing deer, too many large hawks to count, and a flock of thirty or forty wild turkeys in a cut cornfield -- but for the most part, the terrain (except for the St. Lawrence seaway and river crossing at Thousand Islands) is fairly monotonous and, for the second half of the trip, flat as a tortilla from the strangely-named town of Mexico, New York - an anomaly on a map filled with ancient Greek and Native American place names, with a few historical figures like Henry Clay (Clay, NY) thrown in for good measure.
It was a good trip back "home" (as in "ancestral"): I was reassured to find my parents both looking vibrant and cheerful, and we had a nice family gathering at my cousin's house on Thursday noon. I was an only child who grew up in an extended family of parents, grandparents, and great-aunts, with two aunts and several cousins nearby, two of whom were practically like siblings. My cousin B., who is just 8 months younger than I am, and I were somewhat at odds most of our childhood – but we share the same family memories, which becomes more important to me as the years accumulate. We are different: she grew up on a big dairy farm, dropped out of college, married a high school teacher, had three kids, and has stayed four miles from where she grew up to raise them, driving many miles every morning to work at a state correctional facility. We were both good musicians who loved playing in band, and good French students, but the scholastic and social resemblances stopped there; I was “weird”, in her book: artsy and intellectual, a townie and an over-achiever who was headed elsewhere. So we diverged even more, but B. has mellowed with time, even if her typical upstate accent has not, and probably I have too. There’s nothing for either of us to be jealous over anymore, or threatened by. I admire her parenting, her sense of humor, and her husband’s dedication to teaching. But more than any of that, she and her brother, who is five years older, remember the same things I do, and I think we all find, with the passage of time, that it matters to us more and more to be able to talk about it.
This trip did feel like a red state/blue state thing. Although Kerry did pretty well, Republicans always win that part of New York, and the American flags and yellow ribbon magnets are as ubiquitous as the pick-up trucks. But I mostly forgot about the outer world (and it really does feel "outer" in that context) for the days I was there; my family is pretty sensible - even the rednecks among them – and besides, we had other things to talk about. And this was the first year for a new generation at our Thanksgiving table, bumping my own generation up a notch in the ancestral hierarchy. Maybe that’s part of why people engage in these annual rituals - they provide a background against which to view the passage of time and one’s place in it, different from one’s regular life which so often moves like a video on fast-forward against the blurred familiar.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004 CORN near Iberville, Quebec
Tomorrow we'll be heading over the river (the Hudson, in this case) and through the woods (the Adirondacks) to what used to be grandmother's house, for the annual Thanksgiving family gathering. I don't think I've ever missed one - if I have, I don't remember when, or why. The gatherings, the place, even the foods have changed greatly over the years, along with the faces around the table. I don't always even want to be there, but I go, and almost always I'm glad I did.
This evening I read a report from Falluja by an embedded BBC reporter who is with an American Marine division. Paul Wood is a good reporter, and he made me feel the fear and the courage of the officers and soldiers who he described. He also made me feel the fear and desperation of the civilians and the dead rebels, including a ten-year-old boy who the marines discovered, dead, rifle in hand, when they stormed a building from which they'd been being attacked. War is hell, and this was a description of hell.
Earlier today I was doing some shopping; all the stores were decked out for Christmas, of course, and there were shoppers shopping, and clerks clerking, and cheery bell-laden music playing -- and yet what I felt was sheer, pervasive joylessness everywhere I went. Everyone was going through the motions, doing what we do this time of year, but there was absolutely no delight in it. The air was heavy.
Thinking back on the Norman Rockwell Thanksgivings of my childhood, during the Eisenhower years, I remember long one season of anticipation and happiness stretching from Thanksgiving all the way to New Year's. The gratitude I remember, as the extended family talked happily from one end of the long tables, spanning two rooms, to the other, may have been still fresh: World War II had ended, nearly everyone in the family had come back safe, babies were arriving, life was beginning anew. The adults never seemed worried or stressed, although of course they must have been sometimes, but we children didn't feel it, at least not until later when the Cold War heated up.
I'm still grateful for those years and those gatherings. One entire generation is gone now, and half of the next one, but those strong personalities and spirits remain quite present in my life, especially at this time of year. From them I learned that it was possible to live graciously and generously even when you had your own troubles; my grandparents and great aunt never stopped giving, and they never stopped being grateful for all the good things in their life - chief among which was the family.
This year, when I'm finding it difficult to be grateful, when so much feels like it is falling apart rather than coming together, and the atmosphere of the entire country feels somber and anxiety-ridden, I find myself casting back to happier times and finding both solace and strength in those memories, seen through the filter of four additional decades of life. "Everything changes," says the Buddhist calligraphy on my desk, and it's true: better not hold on too tightly. But it's also not true; some things don't change: the love and wisdom and lessons that enter most deeply into us and wait there, almost unknown, for the times when we really need them.
Saturday night we had some good friends over for dinner. There was a lively conversation and the wine flowed freely while sleet fell on the grass in the dark and splattered on the windows. I like to drink. But I have to watch it. There are quite a few things I can’t drink at all, and usually I stick to vodka or a glass of red wine – and never both. That’s “a” glass – one. Maybe one and a half. More than that and I wake up like I did in the middle of last night with a massive, throbbing headache that analgesics will dull, but not eliminate. It’s not a hangover – I wasn’t even close to feeling drunk - as much as it’s an allergic reaction like the one that gives so many people migraines. I find this annoying and boring – one of those getting-older things that feels like an affront and an unnecessary reminder. J. says my body is like a sports car – very touchy – and compared to his, it is. In any case, today was different from what I’d anticipated, but it turned out to be nice: I did some knitting, took a long nap under the comforter on the couch, cleaned my desk, thought about things. It was actually a Sabbath day, and at the end of it, with my headache discernable only as a dull distant ache, I’m almost grateful.
When I spoke to my mother last night, she said that hunting season had just opened, and a friend who lived further out in the country had said it sounded like a war in the woods near his house. Tom wrote about hunting season today too. I haven’t heard any shots here – we often don’t, in the village – but next week, when we go to see my parents and I go for my usual November walk along the fenceline near the river, I’ll put on Dad’s old red plaid jacket and be very careful.
A few days ago we were driving back on one of the main roads here, and there was a pickup truck stopped on the side, with a gunrack in the back, and the driver was pointing out the window to his companion. Down in the deep gully across the road was a beautiful big doe. “Think he’s going to shoot across the road, out the window?” J. asked. I saw someone do that once, in central New York – he pulled off the road in the opposite lane and shot across, right in front of my car. The deer bounded away, white tail flying, into the woods. I can only imagine the fear these already skittish creatures live with during these days.
I don’t hunt and never have, although I used to fish. There is no way I could deliberately take the life of one of those beautiful, wild, long-legged companions of the woods I love so much – and yet I know the toll that overpopulation takes on the herd. There are killers, and there are hunters – those like my uncle Dick, who used to shoot a deer each year for meat and was completely respectful of the animals and that relationship, using every bit of the meat and the hide – I still have some small pieces of chamois he gave me when I was young. And then there were hunters like my mentor, Herm, who went into the woods with a bow and arrow and often sat the entire time in meditation under a tree, or up in one, watching the deer he knew so well walk by, graze, lift their heads and sniff the wind with delicate nostrils. For both of those men, and for me, the woods were temple and cathedral, filled with Spirit, and home to an occasional encounter that’s as close to union as we’re ever granted in this life.
