I watch my grandsons, marvel at their hot desires --
“ I must have it now, or die.”
The little face contorts in pain.
The shoulders and the knees sink in.
The voice wails its shrill distress.
We think of childhood as sweet and lovely,
But it’s often purest Hell,
With pain as sharp as ever poets cry.
Desires stab us to the core.
Our lives are courses in desire :
How it feels to get – or not -- all that we may want;
How to lie both to ourselves and others
Thinking no one truly knows our pain
Or sees our ruthless search.
Finally, we may discover wisdom, and with it peace.
Our bodies may be battered then, our energy decreased.
But when we learn to see beyond ourselves –
When desire’s tide has turned back out toward others --
We find, at last, the fount of joy. We’ve learned to live.
Reflection: To Ellen
Your damaged arm dominated your whole life, till the last few months. When you were a child, your family coped the best they could – massaging your arm several times daily, in the vain hope that somehow the nerves would regenerate; helping you to function when, after surgeries, you were in a body cast for months, immobilized from the waist up.
Your own inner drive required you to learn to do everything for yourself, to overcome. At four, you figured out how to tie your shoes with one hand. You wanted your parents to know, but feared their reaction, and asked your older brother, your protector, to tell your mother.
In school in the hospital, you skipped ahead grades, because you learned so quickly. By the time you were in high school, your peers felt you were on another plane, the smartest student, and even the best athlete. You were apart, even when succeeding -- never included, always "marginalized."
In Brooklyn in the early and mid 1940s, baseball was a major preoccupation, and kids would gather at Prospect Park to play. When you arrived, you pitched, with one arm to use, figuring out how to stash the glove in the armpit of your paralyzed arm while you were pitching, then quickly slipping it on to catch, slipping it off again to throw a player out – all with your left hand. You were the best pitcher, both in the park and on your school team.
For fun, you read the New York Times every day. One year, you won a city-wide “current events” contest, based on your avid newspaper reading. Your English teacher taught you Latin, to challenge you, asking you to write all your compositions in that language. Your brother said that you had graduated from Tilden High School with the highest average ever achieved by a student there.
You once said that you hadn’t felt disabled during your youth, and I can see that it was because you could direct your unquenchable energy and intelligence to figure out how to do everything better than everyone else, fearing all the while, deep inside, that others pitied and looked down on you because you were flawed.
Your father, compassionate, and aware of the suffering you would endure all your life, told you once on Yom Kippur that you already were destined to suffer enough, and would not be obliged to fast and atone as you otherwise would have been.
Your drive and energy were extraordinary, and – yes – even you eventually mellowed, after a lifetime of struggling and excelling.
Ellen: 2008
I wish still that it were otherwise,
That my right arm had not been torn over my head when I was born,
That it had not been paralyzed, atrophied, helpless, a prop, a hook to hang things on --
Not a hand that holds a bow or presses keys-- never making music.
For seventy-five years I have wished that it were different.
Today I realized that it never would be,
In fact, never could be.
Years of aching heart, envy, jealousy, self-pity for something that could never change,
What a waste!
It took seventy-five years to know this.
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