crutches

“I realize now that I want to leave you some sense of transcendence.” I looked up from my book and glanced around to see to whom the old man spoke. There was no-one else nearby. The old man sat in a wheelchair with his back to me, not two feet away. Before him, on one of the tables so often devoted to chess, stood a a small stainless steel thermos. After a moment he continued. “This sense that I have –that I am connected to something bigger– is something that most children probably have from the time they are born. Growing up is usually the process of becoming disconnected from that.”

I waited silently, certain that he would momentarily realize the person to whom he spoke wasn’t around. He reached forward with a slow, careful hand to feel the thermos. Then, having gotten hold of it, he screwed off the cup-lid and poured himself a cup. The faint smell of coffee drifted past me on the breeze. “I felt it sometimes as a young man.” He sat pensive as he sipped his coffee. “I smelled it in the secondhand smoke of the other house painters, as they roughened up the morning with wry curses. I tasted it in coffee. If I had been a beer drinker then, I’m sure it would have been in the bar after hours.” He paused and sipped again. “You and your comrades buck the system in little ways, and stare some small amount of danger in the face, like an inoculation against all the dangers you can’t talk about.

“I didn’t have a family of my own back then. So I had no place speaking of the dangers of working too hard. My young and green place was to listen quietly with an aw-shucks grin about how hard it was to raise kids. If I felt talked-down-to, I could sense that it was necessary. I needed the older men to gripe about all the stuff I could not know about, and they needed me; needed me to be young and ignorant, and unlikely to take their advice. We helped each other reinforce the pattern that reassured us.

“But that particular bigger something was never big enough. That was one of the dangers we could never talk about. We all knew that we could joke about women or the boss or taxes, but in the end, we were not safe from anything simply because we named it and laughed about it.

“I can see how young people get caught up in the ‘isms.’ Whether it’s Communism or Islamism or feminism or environmentalism, the ‘isms’ fill that need for comfort; the need, not just to be part of something bigger, but to be part of something bigger that will survive.”

He exhaled wearily. “My son, we all pick one. I did, and I’ve never regretted it. When you decide what ‘ism’ you want to be a part of, I hope you’ll take your time. I hope you’ll give yourself time to think clearly. I hope you’ll search your own heart, because the Good Lord put the keys in your heart. There is only one ‘ism’ that can truly make you safe. All the other ‘isms’ were created as just another temporary port in the storm of life.”

The old man sat still, apparently finished speaking. Having absorbed this message without confessing I was a stranger, I was now hooked by fascination and hidden in embarrassment. The breeze blew at the pages of my open book, and the paper rasped as I reached out to hold my place. I waited. The old man sipped his coffee. And the silence slowly became our mutual understanding; he understood that I heard him, whoever he thought I was, and I understood that he needed to speak. I understood that I needed to hear. I believed, in that moment, that the silence reassured us both.

There was the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path, and I looked around to see a young man approaching. He obviously pertained to the old man, for he looked at me with an indirect glance of suspicion. “Hang onto your coffee, grandad,” the young man said, “Mom’s bringing the car.” He wheeled his grandfather back down the path, and carefully did not look at me as he passed.