MARKING TIME


Mark came to visit me a few days ago. Mark is the second oldest of my seven grandchildren, and the one person these days who really has time for me.

He’s someone I can comfortably be myself with. No walking on eggs. No fear that he might feel embarrassed by me -- just a sense of mutual okayness and a willingness to tell each other the truth.

Mark is twenty-three and kind. He never mentions it when I doze off for a minute or two in the middle of a Scrabble game; he accommodates himself to my slow pace as we walk; he answers my stupid computer questions without making me feel stupid.

Mark had a hard time of it growing up, but when Mark is unhappy he doesn’t whine about it. What I desperately want for Mark, of course, is the same thing any halfway decent parent or grandparent wants for their children or grandchildren. I want Mark to be happy.

And I can no more tell him how to do that than my mother could do so for me. I was near forty when I learned how to make myself happy. And, accepted that it was my job to do so.

I remember Mark as a reasonably happy toddler some twenty years ago. At that time I was living in what Mark’s mother called “the mother-in-law driveway” outside their home. Mark would come out to visit me and I’d sit him on my lap where I introduced him to the brightly colored DOS computer games that I enjoyed – Cosmo, Duke Nukem, Word Rescue.

Mark’s parents, my oldest son and daughter-in-law, were less than happy with me about turning him on to the seductive world of computer games. My own mother never did get over the idea that the comic books I feasted on every Saturday morning in Dickie Pitman’s garage would corrupt me in some sinister way. Perhaps they did.

Anyway, as it turned out, Mark makes his living these days working in computer gaming systems. And he has become my go-to guy for computer problems. I probably take advantage of him for that.

But when we’re together we talk about books and politics and the difficulty of finding the right sort of friends. Not just someone to play Scrabble or Warcraft with, but someone worthy of sharing our honest feelings with.

After Mark left I was wondering if he knew how much I appreciated him in my life.

So I wrote this piece to tell him.

A HALLOWEENIE ROAST


I hate Halloween! If I had a porch light I’d keep it dark on All Hallow’s Eve. I’d outlaw candy during the whole month of October. I might even ban pumpkins.

I know it’s un-American to have a “Boo Humbug” attitude. Even Christmas has its “Bah Humbug” champions in Scrooge and the Grinch. But Halloween, which started out as a perfectly respectable pagan harvest festival, was first co-opted by The Church into All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve. Here in America Halloween has been further co-opted by Hallmark and Disney into the orgy of materialism we have today. Halloween is now big business, second only to Christmas for compulsory holiday spending.

Halloween’s “trick-or-treat” rituals teach our children to be extortionists or petty terrorists. Greed is encouraged as some parents drive their children to affluent neighborhoods to acquire better loot. We lament childhood obesity yet feel obliged to spend money we can’t afford on empty calories for our youngsters. We costume our children in store-bought images of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the devil, yet are horrified and bewildered when our teenagers identify themselves as Goths and venerate vampires.

I’m not against childhood fun and “Let’s Pretend” and dressing up. I’ll even admit to having a soft spot in my heart for a really good pirate, as well as enjoying Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Years ago when my children were young I usually went along with their Halloween plans. I helped create costumes and carve pumpkins; I walked or drove around on trick-or-treat excursions. I grudgingly bought candy to hand out to strangers.

Back when I was a child myself our family didn’t do Halloween; we had a harvest fest at our church school instead. This anemic get-together was eclipsed by Santa Fe’s weeklong fiestas that have been celebrated since 1712. The best part for me was the giant marionette effigy called Zozobra, known as “Old Man Gloom”. Zozobra was burned the second week of September to conclude the celebrations, and, as he writhed in the great bonfire with spooky shrieks and moans, all the gloomy worries and troubles of the previous year were symbolically burned up in the flames.

The burning of Zozobra is a tradition both exciting and practical, unlike our North American Halloweens. After I began traveling in Latin America I discovered other autumn traditional events equally interesting and integral to their culture.

In Mexico November 1st is known as El Dia de Todos los Santos (All Saints Day) and November 2nd is El Dia de los Muertos (All Souls Day). El Dia de los Muertos is more commonly known as The Day of the Dead and it is believed that the souls of the dead return each year to visit with their living relatives to eat and drink and be merry as they did when they were alive. The whole family treks to the graveyard with favorite treats of their departed family members and they have a picnic together in loving memory.
In Guatemala The Day of the Dead is celebrated similarly, but with the addition of plenty of firecrackers. As a matter of fact any day in Guatemala is an occasion for much noise and firecrackers. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the fact that Guatemala has known civil war much of the last hundred years, and shooting off guns was common.

Most autumn celebrations are full of noise and light – firecrackers to scare away evil spirits; bonfires to warm living souls before the cold and dark of winter settles in our bones. I have no trouble with these rationales for Halloween.

Jack-o-lanterns are fun and pretty harmless; I appreciate the creativity and whimsy. The rest of Halloween I find disturbing without reason. Halloween encourages the worship of materialistic false idols.

Give me Zozobra who still suffers for our sins every September in Santa Fe, or a cheerful Day of the Dead family picnic in the candle-lit graveyard.

I’ve recently become intrigued with a weeklong Labor Day event in Black Rock, Nevada. It’s called Burning Man and each year over 40,000 people come together in the desert to create a temporary community that bans commercial transactions and encourages barter. Burning Man sounds like a merger between Woodstock and Zozobra. My kind of hedonistic and artistic expression.

I’ve just added, “attend Burning Man” to my bucket list.