Lost . . . and found

You might be familiar with Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story on ABC radio; it ran from 1976 to 2009. I remember him well, largely because of his unique delivery, filled with pauses and odd inflections. I only remember the particulars of one story however: it was about vandals who stole a stop sign and about the person (people?) killed when they drove through the intersection, not knowing they should have stopped. I'm not sure why I remember this episode, but I do.

I thought about vandals again today. Above is a picture of our mailbox. I installed it last year after vandals stole our previous mailbox. Not “knocked down” or “broke” but actually “stole.” It was simply there one day, gone the next.

Installing a mailbox is not the simplest thing in the world. I had to go to Home Depot, buy the box, buy a post on which to mount it and a spike to drive into the ground with a holder for the post. When I got everything home I couldn't find our sledgehammer so I went out again to buy one. Total expenditure: just a bit shy of $150.

With the very clever post holder spike (see it here) the actual installation was pretty simple, though swinging a sledgehammer is not something I do a lot, so I felt the pain next day.

I was pissed off about the whole adventure but got over it pretty quickly and haven't thought about it since.

Until Friday, when I came home from work and what should be lying on the ground opposite our house but our old mailbox (see picture). WTF? Did a good Samaritan find and return it? Did a parent order a recalcitrant child to bring it back? Or is it more sinister, perhaps a sicko sending some sort of message – “remember me? I'm still here.”

I'll likely never know, but this little drama ranks near the top of my weird-things-that-have-happened-to-me list. Paul Harvey might have titled this episode the Case of the Vandal with a Guilty Conscience.

Perservering

My friend Don was worried about me recently. I was moaning about how much my life sucked of late and I told him that, were it not for Ransom, I might be suicidal. This set off alarms for him and he expressed serious concern. I felt bad that he reacted that way, because, while I stand by what I said, I am NOT in fact suicidal. As my last post indicated, I am immensely happy to be celebrating 25 years with a wonderful man. I am blessed and I know that. Plenty of people have things far worse than I.

That said, I am, mostly, a pessimist and, having been slammed a lot in the past six months, I've affirmed my belief that life is difficult, joy fleeting and the general state of mankind depressing. Alex Ross, writing on Bach in the current issue of the New Yorker says

“The musicologist Gerd Rienäcker has written that Bach possessed a “consciousness of catastrophe”—a feeling for the suddenness and arbitrariness with which suffering descends on unsuspecting souls. The texts of Bach’s church cantatas . . . indicate that the life of man is like a rising and vanishing mist; that we live with one foot in the grave; and that those who sit among us like gods will be forgotten. The world is said to be like a hospital in which countless people, even infants in cradles, lie down in sickness.

I look forward to pulling out some Bach cantatas and listening again, keeping the above in mind. I certainly agree with Johann Sebastian but had never before thought about his life philosophy and his music, and how they relate to each other. In the opening of the New Yorker piece Ross points out that Bach's parents both died when he was but nine years old and that, as an adult, he watched ten of his children die young. Ten! The man certainly knew misery and pain.

I could list the emotional and physical injuries I've been dealt since September, but there's no point. You have your own list, perhaps longer than mine. Some people's lists will be shorter. Some people will argue that life is beautiful – I try not to think of them as Pollyannas, but there is that temptation. There's an old saw something like “if you're not an optimist at twenty you have no heart; if you're still an optimist at forty you have no brain.” Here, here!

Don thought that my comment was a cry for help. I understand that, and from many people, it would be. From me, it is simply a statement of what I think is obvious. Life is powerfully cruel. But love can be even more powerful. Ransom's love allows me to persevere and, on a good day, even flourish.

25 Years Ago Today

April 8, 1986 was the day I moved into Ransom's New York apartment. It had been a whirlwind courtship only a couple months long; can anyone say “rushing it”? If you haven't read the story of those beginnings, you can do so here.

It was a two-bedroom place at 123 West 93^rd, plenty large for a single man, rather cramped once I moved in. I didn't bring a lot of stuff, but it was still tight. The second bedroom was an office so there was no place for us to hang out separately. There was certainly no place for me to get down and listen to loud rock and roll, something I quickly realized made him crazy.

But we adjusted and learned to live together. Not always smooth sailing, but we persevered. I would be lying if I didn't admit that it was helpful he travelled so much. We needed time apart to be able to grow together.

After a couple of years the building converted and we were able to sell our apartment at a nice profit; we used the money to plan for a house in the Catskills and for a down-payment on a pied-à-terre on 103^rd Street. After the 1990-91 recession we gave up the New York apartment and moved to Connecticut where Ransom took his current position at Yale. I returned to school to finally finish my degree and started working at Yale myself in 1994.

25 years! It's hard to believe in some ways, but, on second thought, it is the only possibility. By that I mean that Ransom and I are a terrific fit and I can't imagine either of us ever finding another mate so perfectly complementary. Where I am emotional and cry easily, he is stronger and supports me; where he is disorganized and at loose ends, I am there to find things, pick up the pieces and get us through it; he calms my manic need to run around and do things; I calm and caress him when the stresses of his career get to be too much.

It's not perfect of course, but it's far better than I ever believed possible. So to you, Ransom, I say happy anniversary, and . . .

You're the reason I'm livin' You're the breath that I take You're the stars in my heaven You're the sun when I wake. You're the reason I'm livin' Oh, you carry me through All of life's little burdens I'd be lost without you.* *with thanks to the immortal Bobby Darin