Writing
“Clayton” is an excerpt from Shelter: the Architecture of Our Days, Stokley Towles’s unpublished manuscript.
Clayton
Clayton’s friendliness kept me from looking straight ahead...
On a Saturday back in 2003, I pushed my children, ages two and four, in a double stroller down Broadway Avenue in Seattle. Up ahead I saw a man in a doorway. He lay in a sleeping bag, facing away from the street. How did you end up here?
I wondered. Where is your family? Will you survive the winter rain? I tried to imagine having a paper cup half full of change and that being all that I owned. How long would I make it out here? I thought of my children living on the street and picked up the pace, hoping they didn’t notice this man curled up on a piece of cardboard. But the kids, who saw everything, asked questions. Now I had to explain how there were people in this world who had no home to return to, and that we were going to respond to this reality by pushing past it. I felt ashamed to be an adult. I was supposed to be a role model for my children. I was supposed to teach them Please and Thank You and Treat Others with Respect and Kindness, yet here I was passing the doorway as if this person did not exist. That was the beginning of the children’s education, their first lesson in how to treat people living on the street. I feel badly and then quickly move along. I say it’s a terrible thing, and then head into the store to buy dinner.
For years after that Broadway morning, I noticed people living on the street just long enough to step around them. It was as though getting too close would make their lives rub off on me. Then I met Clayton
On a Tuesday in 2019, dogs barked and darted back and forth. Adults held leashes and talked in clusters.
“You can do this!” a woman yelled. Seven pairs of arms bent and straightened in a row of pushups. Heavy breathing.
A jet rumbled overhead. I looked up at the April sky. Low-hanging clouds stretched to the horizon.
“Hello, sir,” a cheerful voice called out.
I noticed and ignored all of this. I focused on the watch ticking on my wrist. My daughter was late for high school. We had walked two blocks from our house, and now followed a loose line of commuters cutting through the playfield—some held coffee, others briefcases.
Three runners circled the field. Beyond them, a handful of resting bodies scattered against the fence line. Some were covered in blankets, others with pieces of cardboard.
“Hello, sir.” Again the cheerful voice. It had the deep, slightly gravely timbre of someone who smoked.
I looked up to see a man wearing a baseball cap sitting on the bench in the corner of the field, backpack and sleeping bag by his side. An overgrown gray beard and dark mustache covered half his face but could not hide a growing smile. His frayed coat and pants hung loose over his body, covering a slight frame and narrow shoulders. When he stood up, he looked to be just over five feet. His body type was the same as mine except I was a foot taller.
“Hello, sir.” He waved at me.
I gave a nod and kept moving.
At the end of the day, I met my daughter at school and we followed the reverse route across the playfield. Again, there was the bearded man, and again, “Hello, sir.”
This happened the next day and the next. He said “hello” as if we were old friends, as if to say, “What luck to keep running into you!” I responded with a blank stare. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. Looking back, if someone sitting on the playfield eating ice cream with friends ran up to me and said, “hello”, or one of the soccer players waved at me three days in a row, would I ignore them?
I look for reasons to connect with people in the neighborhood:
“Nice hat.”
“Love the color of your coat.”
“Wow, look at those shoes!”
Anything to disrupt this feeling of moving through strangers. If the man with the beard had been someone in the park who did not appear to be homeless, I would have returned the greeting.
“He’s only talking to you,” my daughter said one morning on the way to school.
“What?”
“He’s not saying hello to the others.” She pointed to the people crossing the field behind and ahead of us.
That was when I woke up and started to notice the man.
❖
My daughter and I played a game called Bodyguard. Every two weeks, she carried her earnings from working at a restaurant to the bank. It was my job to protect her on the way, even though she was stronger and faster than me. Normally, she felt comfortable walking this route on her own, but depositing hundreds of dollars in cash from tips made her uneasy.
We stood back-to-back at the automatic teller. She inserted the money; I faced the street to make sure all was well.
It was in early July, while making one of those deposits, that I saw the man with the beard. He stood at the corner next to the grocery entrance and waved at me. He wore dirty pants and a stained shirt. He looked like he hadn’t bathed in days. Homeless people are not supposed to be this happy, I thought, and yet there he was, smiling and waving. I waved back.
He approached me and said, “Hello.”
“Hi there, I’m Stokley,” I said and shook his hand.
“I’m Clayton. What’s going on?”
“It’s my birthday.”
“Well, happy fucking birthday,” he yelled. “How old are you?”
“Fifty-seven.”
“I’m fifty,” he said. He told me he had a wife and a daughter but didn’t know where they were.
I didn’t know what to say; I was trying to imagine not knowing my daughter’s whereabouts.
Walking home across the playfield, my daughter said, “I was making my deposit and saw a creepy man come near. I was nervous until I saw it was your friend.”
Friend? I wondered. He was friendly.
In my younger days, my father said, “You need to help the people in your path.” On the way to his office, he gave his spare change to the man sitting on the corner. “I hope that someday someone will do the same for me,” he said.
The evening of the bank deposit, I wrote in my notebook, “July 5, 2019: He lives in the park a couple of blocks away. I live in a big house that will grow even bigger in September when the kids move out.”
❖
As a kid, I would take a right out of our driveway and bicycle down the sidewalk along High Street to the center of Dedham, a town not far from Boston. I would park my bike and go in search of comic books at the newsstand. Some days, I would continue left on Washington, through the rotary and past the old garbage incinerator to the mall. Other days, I would turn right on Washington and go to the record store in the Plaza. On fall and spring mornings, I bicycled to school with my friends. On Sundays, my family rode down Chestnut Street past the town jail to church. I spent a childhood pedaling the streets of Dedham and not once did I see anyone sleeping on the side of the road or sitting on a sidewalk with a cardboard sign in their lap.
Everyone I knew slept with a roof over their heads in bedrooms with windows that overlooked cars parked in driveways. There must have been people in my town who went to sleep hungry; I just didn’t know them.
In the winter, on the occasional Friday, my wife and I would walk through the rain or snow, past Clayton’s bench, and into my favorite restaurant. We would hang up dripping coats just inside the entrance and follow the host across the room. We would sit on a bench that reminded me of an old church pew and order drinks. I would look at the other diners and listen to the kitchen clatter behind us. Steam, generated by the warm bodies, pressed against the glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was as if the world outside did not exist.
In the summer, lunch tables spilled out onto the sidewalk. What was a private dining experience behind closed doors moved into the public. Here, cutlery, cloth napkins, and specialty drinks rubbed up against life on the street. What separated the two were a few three-foot-tall posts connected by a thin line of rope. On one side of the rope, cigarette butts, leaves, and a broken windshield pressed into the gutter. A man yelled. Cars honked. Feet crushed a half-filled coffee cup, the stain expanding across the sidewalk. On the other side of the rope, the host would show us to a table. The waiter would take our order. We would say, “Please.” They would say, “Thank you.”
On the last Friday in July, a few weeks after Clayton and I had exchanged words at the ATM, my wife and I sat at an outdoor table that had a bench big enough for two. It faced down the sidewalk and offered a view of pedestrians as they approached. Our lunch arrived. For her, a salad. For me, a BLT. I was about to take a bite when I saw Clayton heading towards us. He saw me, smiled, and stopped at our table. I introduced him to my wife.
“I just finished sweeping at the cafe,” he said. The cafe was located just around the corner.
“You work there?” I asked.
“Now and then,” he said. “I’m heading to the park.”
The backs of his hands were marked with dirt. In my hand was half a sandwich.
I had seen this dance play out many times before: the destitute and the diners. A hand reaches out. Laughter and conversation stop. Diners struggle to ignore the outstretched hand. Awkward glances are exchanged. Diners wait for the moment to pass.
It was good to finally introduce Clayton to my wife, but I felt uncomfortable sitting there with our food as he stood. Had he eaten? I wondered. I didn’t offer; he didn’t ask.
The destitute approaches the diner because they want something. The diner then decides to dig into their pockets or look away. Clayton broke this pattern. He neither eyed our food nor talked about his troubles. In fact, he seemed to enjoy meeting my wife as much as I enjoyed introducing her. This was part of what drew me to him: how he disrupted my assumptions of how we were supposed to interact.
❖
I think of the people on Capitol Hill as part of my community. Clayton was one of those people, but how many times had I passed right by and not seen him? How many times had I walked past the bench in the park where he sat with a man on either side of him, drinking, laughing, and talking about his marriage?
Throughout the fall, I saw Clayton sleeping in the park. He lay on the ground with his head resting on his pack. He looks vulnerable, I thought. So exposed. I saw people sleep here every day and just walked past them, but this was different. I knew this person’s name.
❖
Clayton and I sat on a concrete ledge at the corner of the park. It had been just over a year since we first met. “I lost my wallet,” he said. “My wallet had everything in it, everything. My license. My benefits card. It had my daughter’s picture. Everything.” I felt a weight land on the word “picture.” Our living room shelves were filled with photo albums of our children at different ages. Framed family portraits sat on tables and hung on walls; my computer stored thousands of photos. I had countless images of my daughter. I tried to imagine having only one and then losing it.
“What was your old wallet like?” I asked.
“It was leather and had a chain,” he said.
“Did it have a zipper?”
“I made it myself.”
“You did?” Of course, he did. He made it while working at the Shoe Repair.
I had been wondering how to help Clayton, and this was a problem I could solve.
❖
In early May, Clayton and I leaned against the chain link fence outside the tennis court the skateboarders used. A man yelled in a doorway on the other side of the court.
“He’s been doing that all day,” Clayton said.
After the man in the doorway took a break from yelling, I asked Clayton, “Shall we try again to get your benefits back?” It had been two weeks since we ordered the benefits card and still no sign of it in the mail.
“Sure,” he said.
I called the benefits line, put the phone on speaker, and pushed through the prompts.
An agent said, “Hello.”
I said my name and explained that I was calling to help Clayton with his benefits card.
“Is he there with you?” the agent asked.
“Oh yeah,” Clayton said, leaning over my phone before I handed it to him. “My wallet was stolen two months ago.”
“So, you lost your card,” the agent said.
“Yes, I want my card. I need to eat.”
The agent asked questions. Clayton answered, giving her personal information that was none of my business. It was the wrong way to learn about his past, standing against a fence with the phone on speaker, and the man in the doorway yelling.
“What ethnicity are you?”
“I’m a white boy.” Clayton laughed and looked at me.
“Where do you live?”
“On the street,” he said. “I’m on a waiting list for housing. Number 147 on the list.”
After a few more questions, the agent said, “You should receive your benefits card within a week.”
“Oh, thank you, darling.” Tears flowed down Clayton’s face.
I was moved by his gratitude, his emotion, the weight he had to bear.
When speaking to the agent about where to mail the benefits card, Clayton and I agreed to use my address since he didn’t have one. A week later, a letter arrived for Clayton in my mailbox. I walked quickly to the courts, his bench, and then around the corner to the shuttered Starbucks. There he was at the streetcar stop, standing next to another man who took a swig out of a quart bottle.
Clayton pointed at me in greeting. I pointed back and handed him the envelope.
He opened it and brought out the letter.
The other man leaned in.
“Stay away from my stuff,” Clayton said to the man. He seemed to be kidding, but it was hard to tell. His attention was focused on the letter. The longer he looked, the more I worried, Maybe the card’s not in there.
Clayton opened the envelope again, reached in, and pulled out a card. He started crying.
I started crying.
“I love you,” he said.
“Love you,” I said.
Clayton extended his fist. I bumped mine against his.
He turned away to the wall. “I have my card,” he said, “I have my card.” He turned back around and sat on the ledge. He clasped his hands, raised them in the air, and looked up, “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.”
❖
One afternoon, fifteen years ago, my family and I stopped for ice cream on the way home from an outing. I remember being in our car, waiting at a red light. My son, aged six, sat behind me. My daughter, aged four, was next to him. My wife sat next to me. Each of us quietly licked our cones. To our left, a man held a sign and stood on the sidewalk. Ideally, I would have passed quickly by him and turned left up the hill, or, if it was a red light, stopped eight cars back from the light, out of the man’s reach. The worst situation—this situation—was to be the first or second car idling at the light with the person right there outside my window, too close to ignore. I licked my cone. He stood with his sign. I stared at the light, waiting for it to change. Did he look at me? I wanted to look at him, but what if we made eye contact? I heard one of our car windows opening and turned around to see my son handing his ice cream to the man with the sign. In that moment, he gave away his pleasure; all the joy of that ice cream went out the window. It was an action I had not considered taking; and when I say not considered, I mean that in the hundreds of times I had stopped at that light, the thought never entered my mind.
Clayton met Gladys six years ago. For a couple of years, they slept in the park until 1 or 2 a.m. when the bars closed, then they moved over to the Unicorn Tavern’s doorway. In the morning, they crossed the street for coffee at Caffé Vita where Clayton knew everyone and stored his things.
A year after Gladys and I met and grew to know each other, she described a day during a snowstorm when she and Clayton walked down Broadway. There was a young kid barefoot and huddled in the street. “He was cryin’ and all wrapped up cold, wet,” Gladys said. “His mom kicked him out because he got messed up on drugs.” Gladys watched Clayton take off his shoes and hand them to the boy. “The kid was just so happy to put somethin’ on his feet because it was in the ice and cold.” Clayton then walked through the snow in his socks the half mile to the thrift store to get another pair of shoes for himself and a dry blanket to bring to the kid.
❖
When my daughter and I walked across the park to school and Clayton called out, “Hello, sir,” she pointed out that he only spoke to me. At that time, if I was brave enough to admit it, I would have said that a person in need makes contact to get something from you. A “Hello” was not a simple hello. No, it was the first step. Maybe this is why I did not notice him. I ignored the hello to avoid the conversation that would lead to him asking for something I would not give. Maybe that was why it took my daughter to direct my attention to this person.
Over the next year, his “Hellos” continued and I “Hello-ed” back. He said “Hello” when I passed him sitting at the bus stop. He said “Hello” as I left the grocery store. What impressed me was that in all that time, not once did he ask for something. He did not treat our encounters as means to an end. On the day that Clayton asked me how I was doing, as my daughter deposited money into the automatic teller machine at the bank and I told him it was my birthday, he didn’t say, “You’re putting money in the bank. Can you spare some for me?” No. He said, “Happy fucking birthday.”
❖
A photograph clipped from the New York Times sat on my desk. An aerial view of cars lined up on what looked like an old parking lot. Cars blue and red and black. A few doors were open. The rest were closed. The cars looked like our car, like the ones I saw every day. The caption read, “San Antonio. On Thursday, 10,000 families came to a swap meet hall for boxes of food. It would usually be 200 or 400.”
There were 10,000 families looking for food in San Antonio on that Thursday—the same day that Clayton, trying to get his food stamps, said to the agent, “I need to eat.”
After I had described Clayton’s situation to a friend, he pointed out the ways this could go wrong. “Does he know where you live?” he asked with shock in his voice. He was certain that Clayton played a long game. I had to be careful. He definitely wanted something. I understood my friend’s line of reasoning, because it mirrored my own impulse to stop at the red light, eat my ice cream, and ignore the man with the sign. But if Clayton played a long game, why didn’t he seek me out? He didn’t frequent my regular pathways to find me. When I passed through the park, he didn’t try to stop me or insist that I pay attention. Yes, he said “Hello,” but it was an open greeting, one that carried no demands.
I didn’t know any of the 10,000 families that lined up for boxes of food in San Antonio. But I did know that all over the country, all over my state, there were families in need. I knew that I had a home. More than a home, I had a refuge. For thirty years, I had returned to this place to rest and relax and feel myself. In this refuge I read about others who did not feel safe. I stepped out my front door and saw the tents. I watched as they multiplied on the blocks near my home.
I remember when I first noticed tents appearing on the side of the highway, twenty-five years ago, and when I first saw someone stand on an offramp holding a sign asking for donations. I remember seeing the first person sleeping in the park. Each of those moments landed with a thud, and then settled back to normal. That was my response to homelessness. It is upsetting, I thought, I should do something about it. Then I buried that feeling away in a small box.
10,000 families in San Antonio? I felt paralyzed. What to do with this information? It was a number too big to grasp, but Clayton was just one person and he needed a wallet. He needed so much more—a safe place to sleep, help navigating the city’s bureaucracy, and medical assistance. I wasn’t a doctor or a social worker. I had no skills to provide housing, but, thankfully, he also needed a wallet. This one problem allowed me to take a step towards him. It allowed me to participate in his crisis instead of looking away.
Over the course of a year, I went from responding to Clayton’s greetings to actively looking for him. When I found him sitting on his bench in the park or leaning against the shuttered Starbucks, I wasn’t sure how to act or what to do, so I asked, “What do you need?” He needed a place to receive his mail, so we had it forwarded to my house; he needed his benefits card, so we replaced it; and later, when he needed medicine, I tracked down his health provider. In all that time, it did not occur to me that I might need him more than he needed me. Maybe I was the one with the long game? Clayton’s friendliness kept me from looking straight ahead and waiting for the light to change. He invited me to stop and notice what I had overlooked, what was right there in my path. He shared stories about his family and introduced me to Gladys and others in his life. He helped me recognize the people living on the street as my neighbors.
Clayton’s Neighborhood
Garage Time
On a Sunday morning, I looked at the kitchen clock. It was 11:05. “Time to go to tutoring,” I said to my daughter Lava who was in the tenth grade.
“Just a second,” she said, and disappeared up the stairs to her room.
I stood by the back door.
She returned with her shoes in hand.
“Let’s go,” I said and walked out the door to the car, as if leaving the house would make her move faster.
She appeared at the back door with her backpack and computer, said, “I forgot something,” and ran back inside. I looked at my watch, 11:09.
We climbed into the car, drove down the highway, and off the exit ramp. The dashboard said, 11:20.
I drove into a parking garage, pulled into the first stall, and turned off the engine. The clock read 11:23. “We made it,” I said and leaned back in the seat, pleased that we were seven minutes early.
Lava pointed to the clock and glared at me. “So what was the rush?” she said.
❖
My father was never late. He always arrived on time which meant that he arrived early, which meant, later, when I was old enough to meet him on my own, I arrived early.
When I was younger, I chafed at his insistence on the clock. Now, 61 years into life, I no longer think of being on time as good or bad; it’s simply the way I live.
Arriving early is now so familiar, that once when I was five minutes late to meet my friend, she worried that something had gone terribly wrong.
❖
In the garage, Lava and I parked in front of a bank which was closed, it being Sunday. A drive-thru automated teller stood directly behind us. I stared out the windshield as Lava stared at me.
To arrive at this moment, I started moving at 8 am when I went for a run around the neighborhood that ended at the bakery where I picked up pastries. At home I slid them into the oven, took a shower, and made scrambled eggs. My wife Sarah cut fruit and called Schuyler, our son, and Lava to the table. The four of us sat down. With the changing work, school and sports schedules, this hour was one of two in the week that we ate together.
❖
A few years earlier, when Schuyler was 11 or 12, he was invited to go skiing for the day. His friend’s family said they would pick him up at 7am. I set my alarm for six and made Schuyler breakfast. He gathered his skis as I assembled a sack lunch. We sat in the living room to wait for his ride. 7 o’clock. 7:05. 7:10. 7:15?!
Frustrated, I said, “They’re late.”
“Oh yeah, they’re always late,” Schuyler said.
“How late?” I asked.
“They probably won’t be here until 7:30.”
“So, why did we get up so early?”
“So, we’d be on time. Our family is always on time.”
❖
Every Sunday followed the same pattern. After family breakfast, I rushed Lava out the door. We pulled into the parking garage and she pointed at the clock.
Until one Sunday, Lava asked her usual question, “Why are we so early?” and without thinking, I said, “So we get this.”
“What?” she said.
“This,” I pointed to the space between us.
“What is this?”
I thought for a moment and said, “Garage time.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what this was but at least now it had a name.
❖
On a winter afternoon, at the end of Lava’s school day, we walked to the grocery store. I picked up milk, yogurt and a loaf of bread. She found a pack of gum. Together we looked to see if our favorite foods were on sale. When we approached the checkout, there were two lines of customers. I chose the line to the right; it was shorter.
The customer in front of us leaned against the counter and watched the clerk bag his groceries. The clerk moved the bags from the counter to the grocery cart and announced how much money was owed. The customer reached into his pockets looking for his wallet.
I thought, Why didn’t he have his credit card ready instead of doing this last minute search?
“Let’s go,” I whispered.
“What?” Lava said.
“This line is taking forever,” I said.
“But dad,” she said, “this is garage time.”
I had just rushed from work to meet Lava at the end of her school day. Soon we would walk home to start her homework and my dinner prep. After eating, there would be more homework, dishes to clean, and teeth to brush before going to bed.
This standing in line was a small break before the momentum of the day took over again. I turned away from the register and faced Lava. I felt my body settle and my shoulders relax.
❖
The beauty of garage time was how it created this small space within an overly scheduled life. It was a space that made no demands. It had no requirements. For a handful of minutes, we could speak or stand in silence.
After that day in the grocery store, we found garage time at the doctor’s office, sitting in the waiting room; standing outside the grocery before its doors opened to the public; and at the airport, milling around the gate before boarding the plane.
❖
There’s a luxury hotel that sits along the beach in Santa Monica. To walk into the lobby is to feel a space that is at once grand and intimate. The high ceilings create an indoor courtyard. Plush chairs and couches in the center of the room form semi-private spaces in which to gather. Two bars and eating areas sit to the south and west. A gift shop to the north. Lava and I don’t stay here. We stay in the smaller hotel across the street. Our room looks out on a lawn made of artificial turf.
Lava attended her first year of college at a university not far away from the hotel. She wanted to take a break from the campus, so we met here for the weekend. During the day, we walked the beach and sat inside coffee shops and on benches facing the water. In the evening, we left our room and crossed the street to the luxury hotel. The doormen greeted us as if we were old friends. They greeted everyone that way.
Up the curved stairway, we passed the reception desk into the main room. We circled around people gathered in small clusters and large groups and found a spot to the side, two long couches joined in a V-shape. There seemed to be a convention going on. I watched a group sitting together cheer, “Hello” to half a dozen people who walked into the room. A trio—piano, bass and drums—played soft jazz standards and the room filled with conversation.
Lava and I sat side by side. We commented on the hotel guests as they came together and apart, remembered little moments from life at home, and rested in silence. It was three days of nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do. Listening to the jazz, I wondered, Were those Sundays in the parking garage a training ground?
My son and daughter began the process of leaving home. Our family no longer shared daily and weekly routines under one roof. We left the rituals of their childhood behind and moved into a future where the kids would build their own lives. More and more, Sarah and I would have to fit into their schedules.
❖
This past spring, Lava was a junior in college. She called one afternoon as she walked to work. Her shift started at 4 o’clock. She told me about her 14-mile run that morning and plans to go out later in the evening. I said that I had been outside reading the newspaper and gave a report about our pet bunnies that lived on the deck. We spoke for a few minutes until she said, “I just arrived at work. Thanks for garage time.”
I looked at my watch.
She was ten minutes early for her shift.
❖
My father died 10 years ago. I never thought that he would be gone this long. I never imagined 10 years of not seeing him or hearing his voice or simply sitting together.
On December 12, each year, I make a chocolate cake with white icing to celebrate his birthday. My father’s mother, who died more than 20 years ago, taught me the recipe. While mixing and baking, I talk to Dad and Grandma. It is a one-sided conversation that takes place mostly in my head, but I try to imagine what they would say.
The cake process begins the night before, when I take two sticks of butter out of the refrigerator to soften. In the morning, I mash the butter with sugar, eggs, and melted chocolate. I sift 2-1/2 cups of flour. The recipe calls for two and three quarters cups, but grandma said, “Use less flour. You can always add, but you can never take away.”
I spoon in sour cream and vanilla and measure 2 teaspoons of baking soda into a cup of boiling water. I mix it all together and pour the batter into two square pans. Towards the end of the baking process, I check the cakes every two minutes and pierce them with a dry straw from a broom. If the straw comes out wet, the cake goes back in the oven. After covering the cake with the icing, I cut a piece, put it on a plate, and place the plate at the center of the island that stands in the middle of our kitchen. There Dad’s piece of cake will stay for a week.
The writer, Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”
My father continues to shape the hours of my day. His drive to be on time flows through me and now my children. What I didn’t anticipate, and never would have imagined, is how his never-be-late rule created Garage Time, those brief moments in the day, moments where I can simply sit with my child and remember, I am here with you and isn’t that enough?
Kepler and Snowflakes
I read somewhere that in a single year the astronomer, Johannes Kepler experienced a great tragedy while also writing a book about snowflakes.
It was the winter of 1611. Kepler walked the streets of Linz. He had no place to go and too much on his mind. His wife and daughter had just died. War ran through his homeland, sending him to this exile. His eyes were so full of images of grief that he couldn’t see beyond his face. That’s how he noticed the flake, that one snowflake out of the tens of thousands that fell around him. Close up against his pupil he saw clean lines and a grace of construction.
“Six points of perfect symmetry,” he said as the flake hit his cheek and forever melted. “Why six and not four or seven?”
Johannes looked out at the parallel lines of snow that passed before him. “Six is half of the apostles. It’s three times two. A year ago, there were three of us then I lost two. God must have a plan.”
Johannes dropped to his knees. His hands turned red as he pushed through the cold powder, searching for a clue.
But underneath this pile of equally sided stars he found only pebbles and dirt.
Kosovo
They dropped bombs on Kosovo last night. I should care but I don't. I should be full of sadness and rage--I'm not. News travels more slowly now.
I wipe breadcrumbs off the kitchen counter and sweep the floor. The sink and dish rack trade ceramic back and forth. I scrub plastic baby bottles with an oversized pipe cleaner. My attention is drawn to the inside of a rubber nipple and making sure the tip is clean.
This is my world.
Here is where I find the local news. From the living room to the front door, that I call regional. Noteworthy but not necessary. The ring of the doorbell and the dull thud of letters hitting our mailbox, these are national headlines. International events take place between the front gate and the park. Kosovo is so much further away than the park and the park is as far as we go.
Six months ago, Kosovo was a name on a map that, with difficulty, I could locate. Today I can't even find the map.
I try to read the newspaper, but the words won't stick.
My son ate carrots this morning. That brings us to four. Milk, rice, yams, and now carrots. He tries one new food a week, one thought for the tongue, that is enough. Kosovo has to wait for acorn squash, peas, barley, corn, beats, spinach, tomato, pumpkin and lima beans. Kosovo must stand in line behind eggs, bread and butter.
It will be years before my son imagines our home as part of a map, surrounded by a landscape that makes up a country. By then what will become of those people whose homes are bombed into the earth?
A birthday held underground, that much I remember from the papers. A little boy celebrates another year in a dark room of cement.
I want to go out but the teacups multiply. Plates spread themselves thin across the counter. Laundry piles at the basement door. My eyes lose their ability to focus.
I used to get out my binoculars and train them on the buildings downtown. I used to care about the people in my city. Now it's a question of pacing out the toys to last until the afternoon nap. Now it's a question of dry, wet, hunger, sleep, four intersecting plains on a small map. A map that has no capitols or city borders. A map where election results will never be posted.
As my son begins to grow and take in the world, I see less. Soon even the movements of our neighbors, walking just outside the window, will become a distant landscape. And their names, Mark and Nicole, will sound as foreign as Kosovo.
To Keep You Close
Last year, on the first day of December, I reached into my desk drawer for a gold-colored wristwatch with a black leather band. It had a round white face with black Roman numerals. Below the XII at the top was a rectangular red and white striped graphic with white letters that spelled out BBH & Co., the initials of the company where my father worked for 50 years. Dad must have received it at a company event. Did he ever wear it? I only remember seeing a black Caseo digital watch on his wrist. I put on the BBH watch and thought about Dad, childhood, and the routines we followed. At breakfast, Mom, Dad, my brother, sister and I would sit around a table covered in yellow Masonite. Dad on one side. Mom on the other. Between bites of cereal, Dad would hold the newspaper as my siblings and I crowded around to read the comics. Each morning, we checked in on the Phantom, Dick Tracy, and Charlie Brown. Then each evening, after work, Dad would arrive home for dinner at 6 o’clock. The five of us would then return to the kitchen table to eat the meal Mom had prepared and share stories from our days. At bedtime, I would wait for Dad to come into my room and sit at the edge of my bed. By then, he would have taken off his tie but still worn a pressed white shirt and suit pants from work. We would speak about the day for a moment until Dad clasped his hands. I would follow suit. We would bow our heads, close our eyes, and quietly recite the Lord’s Prayer. After saying, “Amen,” Dad would kiss my forehead and whisper, “Sleep tight; don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
My father’s life was built on routines. I could rely on him to get up at the same time each morning, dress in a gray suit, and eat Corn Flakes for breakfast. His actions, repeated day after day, over the course of a childhood, provided me with a sense of security.
In the weeks after Dad’s death, I wanted to call him on the phone. I struggled to remember the sound of his voice. At the time, my wife and I were in the middle of raising two children in Seattle. Our son, then a teenager, pushed for freedoms that we resisted giving. My teaching contract was about to end. I worried about losing my job. I worried about losing my connection to my father, that he would just fade away. And then I received a package in the mail from my brother. Inside was the watch. My brother found it in Dad’s dresser drawer when going through his things the week after he died, 12 years ago. I wore the watch for a year; it accompanied me on my commute to school, sat with me in the classroom, and joined my family at the dinner table. After that first year, I continued to wear the watch each day in December, the month Dad was born.
Dad’s absence made me think about how I connected with the rest of my family. Each spring, I make a list of 13 children, nine parents, and three grandparents. Over the next months, I take pictures of each person on the list. In November, I edit the images to create a calendar to be delivered to everyone in December.
My niece first appeared in the calendar in 2006, six months after she was born. In the 19 calendars that followed, her new teeth became second teeth. Braces appeared and disappeared. Her hair grew to her ears, and then her shoulders, and then moved towards her elbows. In photos, she spins in a playground, does a TikTok dance, and stands behind the checkout counter at her summer job.
The calendar hangs in my sister-in-law’s office, my nephew’s dorm room, and my son’s cubicle at work. It lives in our kitchen where, last year, my nephew’s portrait occupied the month of December. In the photo, he stands with his back to the ocean. The sun, off-camera to the left, lights one side of his face and casts a shadow over the other.
One year, the calendar cover featured pictures of my mother, her two sisters, and their husbands. My mother and one of her sisters raised their children in the Boston area. The third sister worked as an artist in Vermont. I remember when I was in my 20s and started visiting her studio, a room with a high ceiling and windows that lined the upper walls. Paint brushes lay in orderly rows on two low tables next to a painting in progress. Over the next 30 years, I admired how her work evolved from realistic landscapes to colorful dream worlds and complete abstraction.
For each Valentine’s Day, she would create small heart paintings and mail them to the family. As her painting style changed, so did the hearts. She made the hearts across three decades until 2017, when doctors found a tumor in her brain. The growth disrupted her ability to think and speak. I worried about her mind; I thought about the hearts. Not once had I sent her a Valentine in return.
On a Friday, shortly after her diagnosis, I cut up photographs of our magnolia tree that I had taken at different times of the year — abloom with white petals, covered in green leaves, branches lined with snow — and combined them with thick pieces of pink, green and blue paper to make a four by six-inch card. I wrote a note on the back and mailed it to my aunt. Each Friday, for a year, I repeated the process until the week she died. After the memorial service at her home in Vermont, I remember walking through her living room and seeing the cards I had mailed her, standing in a line on the mantlepiece over the fireplace.
In times of crisis, I want to take action. Even when there is nothing to do, I feel uneasy sitting still. Making those cards helped me reach across the country and, in some small way, shorten the distance between us.
I felt this same pull to action five years later when my daughter was in college and going through a difficult time. To help ease her burden, we spoke on the phone throughout the day. She from her bedroom in New York or at the University library. Me at my desk or lying on our couch in Seattle. Hearing her voice, I thought, I would do anything for my children, but what do I have to offer? When my daughter and son were little, I covered scraped knees with Band-Aids, held hands to cross the street, and delivered exhausted bodies to bedtime. My daughter needed none of that now. Still, I wanted to wrap my arms around her and carry her home. I wanted to make this go away. Instead, I pressed the phone to my ear.
On the third or fourth call of the day, after running out of things to say, we would sit in silence. I’d close my eyes and listen to the police sirens pass by her bedroom window.
One afternoon, when she rang, I was reading the newspaper. We said our hellos and then the call once again grew quiet. I didn’t do well with the silence. Are you still there? I wanted to ask. Is the conversation over? What can I do for you? There were no words to make this better, but I needed to say something. I looked down at the newspaper on my lap. When I left home to go to college, I continued to read the comic section. For a lifetime, I had followed the lives of those characters, so when the conversation slipped into silence that day, I turned to the back of the newspaper and said, “In Peanuts, Peppermint Patty is having trouble at school. Today, she’s sitting at her desk and says, ‘I’m not sure about the first question. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I can answer any of these questions. Maybe I could just help the custodian sweep the halls…’”
The next morning, my daughter called and said, “How’s Peppermint Patty?”
I read the comic to her. “‘I have a problem,’ Peppermint Patty said to Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s dog, ‘My dad is willing to send me to private school, but they all cost four or five thousand dollars.’ Snoopy handed her a brochure that said, ‘Ace Obedience School… Complete training… Twenty-five dollars.’”
Peppermint Patty signed up for the school, received her diploma, and then learned that she had attended an obedience school for dogs. I continued to narrate the story each morning until I realized that I could text my daughter the actual comic strip. On subsequent phone calls, we discussed Snoopy’s eye movements and how Peppermint Patty wore a striped shirt and flip flops. Even as my daughter’s situation improved, I continued to send her the daily comic.
Last year, on December 6th, I lay in bed before going to sleep and thought over the day. It started with sending the comic strip. Then I dressed for work. Almost forgot to put on Dad’s watch. Ate a sandwich for lunch. Late afternoon, made changes to the calendar and ordered copies. Wrote a note to my cousin before dinner. When he fell into trouble three months earlier, I had started sending him a postcard on Fridays.
Individually, I didn’t place too much weight on each of these routines. The watch gave the month a bit of ceremony. The comic section comforted me so maybe it would help my daughter. Making the cards eased my worries. And the family calendar was something that my mother had started decades ago. For years, she carried a camera and used rubber cement to glue her photographs into the 12 months. After she stopped, I continued the practice. It felt like she was handing off the baton to me.
But seeing these routines stack up one on top of the other, I couldn’t help but wonder, What am I doing? At one time, it was just the calendar then I added the watch and the cards and now, the comic strip. I’ve been sending Peanuts for months. Her crisis is over. Do I keep going?
I woke up the next morning thinking about the Rabbi I had met on a flight to New York two years earlier. I sat in the aisle seat. He in the middle. A few hours into the flight he asked to get out. I stood up, happy for an excuse to stretch my legs. He walked to the back of the plane and soon returned saying, “Sometimes they let me pray in the back but not today. Would you mind changing seats? I need to stand.”
I sat in his middle seat. He stood to my left, wrapped a piece of string around his waist twice, and then loosely tied it. He put on his suit coat, placed a felt hat on top of the yarmulka that already rested on his head, pulled out a phone and started
to read the text on the screen. He spoke in a quiet voice and gently swayed back
and forth.
I bent over, rested my elbows on my knees and looked down at the floor to give him some privacy. Listening to the Rabbi’s voice, I wondered, When did I last pray? My head is bowed and I am almost kneeling. This seems like a perfect moment. Maybe I should try? But what do I say? Where to begin? My wife’s name came to mind and then my children’s names followed by my brother, my sister, and my parent’ names, and the names of their spouses and children. Is this a prayer?
I thought. Didn’t prayer look more like the man standing next to me?