Seeing Both Forest and Trees
photo credit: Maria Ruth
A framed photograph draws my eye yet again. My grandmother, age 14, stands tallest in a descending lineup with her four younger siblings. Her brother cradles their pet rabbit. This picture has been in my life as long as I can remember. I knew that my grandmother dropped out of sixth grade after her mother died, suddenly her siblings’ caregiver while their train-conductor father worked during the week. Only now do I realize what the date means—1918, a pandemic.
If only I could wind up the frame and she would speak! How did you manage? What did you learn? Why didn’t you leave me instructions?!
The current pandemic recedes, more slowly and more painfully in this country than it should. Its shock lingers. Its imprint will last. How delicious, the prospect of rebooting our lives. How daunting, however, the process of restoring ourselves inside out and upside down. The pandemic, worsened and coarsened by the arrogant madness of those who deny and ignore it, dragged us down deep into murky waters. Constant pursuit of perspective exhausts. Life’s natural rhythm fades just out of reach—I’m out of sync, off kilter, waiting and wanting to pick up the beat. Reality plays hide and seek.
Lighthearted—imagine the return of such sweetness. “And know the place for the first time.” I think often of this line from poet T.S. Eliot’s Part V in “Little Gidding.” Though our exploring lasts a lifetime, eventually we return to the beginning, this time with lessons learned. We start out again and now experience the world with clear-eyed vision. Less and less fogged in, we see the forest and the trees—we sew our own lives into the larger world. All together in one fabric, we know the world as a part of it. “And all manner of thing shall be well” Eliot assures (Four Quartets). Oh, for those fresh first times—carefree hours, easygoing intimacy, restful slumber.
Today, all manner of things should be much more well. Invasive trees can obscure the forest, though. The pandemic should hasten us all to take the high road and stay on it. But….
In Florida and Texas, the virus sickens the angry mask-less and contagion spreads, while voting access restrictions also flourish. The judge in the Kenosha killings trial reprimands the prosecution for calling the murdered “victims.” The word “victims,” he rules, is too “loaded.” Anti-vaxxer lunacy unleashes outside hospitals and restaurants. Fury and threats escalate in school board and city council meetings. When the World Series crowd gathers in Atlanta to root on the Braves, roaring whoops accompany the “tomahawk chop.” Facebook—let’s take a good, hard look and then look away. Alabama’s (among others) board of education, echoed by its governor Kay Ivey, votes down the teaching of Critical Race Theory. In Virginia, the contrast in candidates for governor defies belief. In Charlottesville, white rage perpetrators of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right “rally” go on trial. Wounds never healed bleed again.
Still, that big, beautiful forest has always been there. Just as our eyes adjust, in time, and see the whole forest in ever-sharper detail, a steadying perspective returns and strengthens. The pandemic is, among other things, a superb teacher of what really matters. We swim up through dark waters, relieved and gladdening, each new day another stride toward blue sky. One day, each in our own way, we break through the water’s surface, splashing and slapping. Yes, listen to that, the beat of lighthearted laughter. Look at you, seaweed and shells. I know you.
What a time to live. What a time to try again.
Hats off. Feet up. Having lived “Without,” we might one day understand it all, Poet Laureate Joy Harjo hopes. “Maybe then, beloved rascal,” (and I’m looking at you, my rascal grandmother), we can “watch hyenas drink rain, and laugh.” Feel the brightening of “A Foggy Day” at Oscar Peterson’s fingertips. Shade your eyes and follow the trilling “Skylark” with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
“People Get Ready.” Drop your baggage. Clunk. “There’s a train comin’… / You just get on board.” No ticket needed. Wheels chug—whistle toots. Who can resist this ride with Curtis Mayfield?
Here’s to trying again. What a time to love.
Told with McCarty’s characteristic wisdom, marvel, exuberance, and good will, Leaving 1203 is about navigating that way through. The author draws on all available resources—friends and strangers, food and laughter, life lessons learned in the very house she now empties, and, not least, her newly-inherited West Highland terrier, Billy. McCarty simultaneously learns and deftly teaches the fine arts of remembering, letting go, and holding on to what matters most. She not only finds the way through, she shows the way.
the greatest gift an author could give a reader… lessons of a universally philosophical and existential kind… a touching journey… a welcome, upbeat ride
Read More & Buy