Seventy-four (74)

“They say it’s your birthday!”

By Moristotle

It was about three months before his 75th birthday when my father died. The fact that he died when he was the age I am today has been giving me pause for some months.
    It was once explained to me (over half my lifetime ago) that some apparent acts of self-sabotage of mine might be stemming (Freudianly) from the “Icarus Complex.” I was reminded of the Greek myth that, when Daedalus fashioned wings for himself and his son, Icarus, so that they could fly above the mountain tops, Icarus flew too close to the sun, which melted the beeswax his father had used to bind the feathers of their wings, causing Icarus to fall to his death.
    Beware attempting to eclipse your father? No, I was counseled. The Greeks knew very well that it was colder on the top of the mountain; Icarus’s wings did not come unglued. Rather, beware imitating Icarus and undoing yourself for fear of eclipsing your father.

So, banish Icarus! I may not be a high-flyer, but I would like to live a few more years. I want to continue to feed Siegfried in the morning and let him out, make coffee for my wife & me, put out her fruit, arrange mine on my cereal, replenish the wild-bird feeders & enjoy their scramble for a perch....I want to continue to be here for our son and our daughter, our grandson and our granddaughter, for my remaining sister, nieces & nephews, friends & colleagues...for Moristotle & Co....

I am ashamed to admit what I answered, about 38 years ago, when I was asked whether I thought I had yet (at almost 36 years old) accomplished anything. I answered no, I hadn’t accomplished anything. I was ashamed, that is, when my wife reminded me later that I had, with her, in fact “accomplished” two fine children. Indeed we had, and I have never forgetten that.

Jennifer, Dale, & Geoffrey, Christmas 1976

What is the worst thing I have ever done? It was probably having our Springer Spaniel, Dale, put down (about 1987). I have never forgotten that as the vet was about to administer the injection, he asked me why I was having this done, had Dale bitten someone? (As though that could be bad enough for any dog to be put down for.) And I had said, no, Dale never bit anyone. In fact, Dale had never done anything to deserve what we were about to do. Some members of his human family had simply failed him. Among them was not my son, whom we had not told beforehand....
    I know that I have hurt other individuals by things I’ve done or said – or left undone or unsaid. I hope they can forgive me – if they don’t despise me to the degree that I myself despise, say, Mitch McConnell for his treasonous obstructions, or Donald Trump for the calamity his shameless bullying, lying, bragging, and reckless exploitation of other people’s nastiness have inflicted on America.

What is the best thing I have ever done? Not for me to say. I only hope that others can mostly agree I have been a good person and done more good than bad.

But I have already lived long enough for reality to disabuse me of my early conceits and delusions – good rewarded, evil punished, prayers answered, everything set right.
    Relieved of these fanciful expectations, I am ready, whenever the time comes – whether before my next birthday or a few years beyond – to fall quietly into the sea.

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“Musee des Beaux Arts,” by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Copyright © 2017 by Moristotle