The Grandie has some special friends at school.
Saturday, one classmate whose family lived awhile in Switzerland, shared an autumnal ritual learned there with invited classmates and their chaperones.
We gathered on the grass next to Lake Merritt, which would've bee enough. Just to see people walking, marathon runners in Halloween costumes, picnickers, lovers, whole families in celebration of whatever they were celebrating on a beautiful October twilight lifted spirits.
For kids, the freedom to rough house on Mother Earth's soft green lap while their adults watch obliquely, is a rare and needed gift. Bubble blowing, bubble popping, bubble keep-it-up games, tag, circle dances, swings, slides, and climbing structures delighted the two to ten-year-olds. Playtime would have been enough.
The inviting family came prepared with humble yet magic ingredients: A plethora of rutabagas and collection of carving tools. Sarah cut the top off each stinky tuber before showing a child how to use a melon-baller and the pokier pointed tools to make the walls thin enough to see light pass through.
Now imagine that as the sun descends to color up the sky, a goldish pinkish glow of more than a dozen candles - each in a hollowed out rutabaga echoes what's above.
The effect as twilight yielded to darkness was breath-taking. My camera couldn't capture one one-thousandth of the wonder in children's eyes as each held her/his light-filled vessel. Still, I will remember the glow inside and out as I witnessed these children thrive in the warmth of their own imagination, camaraderie, and safety of caring adults. Shared food was also delicious.
What transpired about half way through our gathering gave many of us food for thought.
A gentle, but at the effect of whatever was in his "water" bottle, man parked his body on the grass just on the fringes of the tarps for veggie carving and blankets laid out by the fifteen or so families from the school. The gentleman spoke to the air around him, or to entities only he could see, about gratitude, all people, and food - while gesturing to anyone who walked near enough to make eye contact. He looked hungry in every meaning of the word.
The "unknown" plunked himself in the middle of our minds in mid picnic, putting all us caring adults into a quandary as the imaginative children, who cannot be sheltered from news cycles, shortened the distance between themselves and their adults. How do we keep our kids safe without hovering, without instilling irrational fear but only reasonable questioning fear: Is it safe to be near this person? How near is too near? What does he want? What is my responsibility to be my neighbor's keeper? What of my right to enjoy nature without an uncomfortable closeness of unknown other?
My granddaughter asked me on our way home, "What was wrong with that man?"
"I don't know for sure," I said, "but it seems as if he had too much alcohol to drink and wasn't making good choices. Maybe he is without family, without friends, without shelter, and without food. The food seemed to interest him most of all, right? And the blankets.
"Uh huh." she said looking into middle space the way she does when she's sorting information.
Then she changed the subject.
I could not derail my trains of thought so easily. What I didn't voice, but what raced through my mind with the force of dozens of diesel-engine locomotives for a good portion of the rest of the night was those actions I might have taken to support and move along to another locale the gentleman on the fringes of life in the park.
He wasn't sinister. He was marching to a different drummer. He wasn't holding weapons. He was holding us captive by our concerns for fairness and well-to-do guilt. He wasn't making obscene gestures. He had found a picnic and wanted to taste it.
Dark came fast. I moved to make a plate for him at the same time I asked the host nearest to me if I might please take a sandwich and piece of pizza to him. "Of course," said the classmate's dad. "I think someone is giving him the whole box of pizza now." I put the sandwich in with the fragrant cheese pie while the gentleman said in his accented English, "Put all in. Put ALL in."
He asked for a candle.
The mom of the classmate drew a line, saying, "Sorry. These are what the children made to take home."
Guilt assuaging phrases come cheap:
The lights around the lake stay on all night.
He has a blanket and a meal.
We don't want to encourage hustling in the park.
There's a bathroom and a boathouse for warmth.
Some might say, he shouldn't be making people feel uncomfortable.
Or... He shouldn't be making people feel.
Or worse... He shouldn't be.
I do not pat myself on the back because I don't say that.
The Grandie and I may need to have another conversation about how the presence of a different sort of gentleman near the picnic made her feel.
He certainly became my teacher at twilight.
No comments:
Post a Comment