All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (17 page)

C
UCKOO
C
LOCK

A
LWAYS WANTED
a cuckoo clock. A big, baroque German job with all kinds of carved foobaz and a little bird that leaps out once an hour and hollers an existential comment about life. So I got one. For my best friend, who also happens to be my wife and lives in the same house with me. See, the way this deal works is that she usually doesn’t really like what I give her for Christmas anyway, and I usually end up with it in the end, so I figure I might as well start out by giving her something I want in the first place, so when I get it back I can be truly grateful. She gets the thought; I get the gift. I know it’s wicked, but it’s realistic and practical.
(And don’t get high-minded about this, as if you would never think of doing such a thing. The hell you say. I’ve been around. I know what I know.)

Anyway, I wanted an authentic antique cuckoo clock. But they cost a bundle. And this store had new ones—overstocked—a special cheap price—hot deal.

So I bought one. There were two messages written in small print on the carton, which I missed reading. “Made in South Korea” was one. And “Some Assembly Is Required” was the other.

The carton produced five plastic bags of miscellaneous parts. And an ersatz Bavarian alpine goatherd hut marked “genuine simulated wood.” And to top it off, a plastic deer head that looked like Bambi’s mother. I put it all together with no parts left over, thank you, and hung it on the wall. Pulled down the weights, pushed the pendulum, and stepped back. It ticked and tocked in a comforting kind of way. Never before had such an enterprise gone quite so well for me. The damned thing actually worked!

The hour struck. The little door opened. The little bird did not come out. But from deep in its little hole came a raspy, muffled “cukaa, cukaa, cukaa.” Three cukaas? That’s it? That’s all? But the hands of the clock said noon.

I peered deep into the innards of the Bavarian alpine goatherd hut of simulated wood. There was the bird. Using an ice pick and a chopstick, I tried to pry the creature forth. It seemed loose. I reset the clock to three. The clock ticked and tocked and then clanged. The door was flung open. No bird. Out of the darkness at the back of the hut came “cuck” but no “oo”—not even “aa.”

Applying the principle of “if it won’t move, force it,” I resorted to a rubber mallet and a coat hanger, followed by a vigorous shaking. Reset the clock. Hour struck. Door opened. Silence.

Close inspection revealed a small corpse with a spring around its neck, lying on its side. Not many people have murdered a cuckoo-clock bird, but I had done it. I could see Christmas morning: “Here, dear, a cuckoo clock. For you. The bird is dead.”

And I did. I gave her the clock. And I told her the story. And she laughed. She kept the clock, too, dead bird and all, for a while.

The clock and its bird are long gone from our house now. And Christmas has come and gone many times as well. But the story gets told every year when we gather with friends in December. They laugh. And my wife looks at me and grins her grin and I grin back. She reminds me that the real cuckoo bird in the deal was not the critter inside the clock. I remember.

And me? Well, I still don’t have a cuckoo clock of my own. But I have kept something. It is the memory of the Christmas message written on the packing carton. It said, “Some Assembly Is Required.” To assemble the best that is within you and give it away. And to assemble with those you love to rekindle joy. Cuckoo to you, old bird, and Merry Christmas, wherever you are.

When I retired from the parish ministry, my congregation gave me a parting gift: a first class cuckoo clock. Every time the bird came out, I thought of them—a bit cuckoo, but reliable. The clock fell off the wall in an earthquake two years ago. Smashed. Repaired. But somewhat unpredictable in the hours it keeps and the appearance of the bird. More like me, now, I suppose.

V
ALENTINE
C
HRISTMAS
T
REE

A
LITTLE BACKGROUND:
I often spend the winter in the mountains of far Southeastern Utah. San Juan County. Four Corners region. Not many people live around here. Mostly Navajo Indians and Mormon farmers. The national forest is large and nearby. So it’s still possible to keep the old tradition of taking the family out to cut down a tree in the woods just before Christmas.

But times have changed here, too. The pockets of available fir and pine trees have diminished in size and number. The trees grow slowly—not as fast as the population grows. But another thing that’s grown is the population’s awareness of how people affect the environment, even in this remote location. The number of trees available for seasonal cutting has been noticeably reduced. The tension between nostalgia for the past and fear for the future exists even here. Many are shifting to having live or artificial trees. We understand why this is necessary, but we don’t like it. It’s depressing. Somehow, it just isn’t Christmas without a real tree in the house.

In late December I drove a long way out into the back-country to hike for an afternoon in the winter sunshine. The area is high desert—sagebrush and scrub—but with red sandstone formations and sheltered side canyons that still contain pine trees. These evergreens are old growth remnants of the great forests, which dominated this landscape in wetter eras. Hiking up a streambed, I had what I thought was a hallucination. A fully decorated Christmas tree stood just ahead.

It was for real. A pine tree, about twelve feet high, gnarled and bent as it fought its way out of the rocks that had cradled its existence for perhaps two hundred years. Strings of popcorn and cranberries looped around its branches. Dried fruit and cookies and nuts hung from the branches like ornaments. And at the very top, perched a silver star with a tiny angel in the center.

It was the most beautiful Christmas tree I’ve ever seen.

Who did this? Two sets of tracks told me something—one large, one small—an adult and a child. These somebodies had come all the way out here, carried all this stuff, and carefully decorated the tree with things that birds and small animals might eat. More than that, they had the imagination to think of doing this in the first place. They must have had a wonderful time thinking through the logistics and then actually decorating the tree. And now they have a wonderful memory of one of the best Christmas trees ever. What’s more, the tree lives on.

Later, now early February, I went back in the same direction looking for sunshine and solitude. I thought I’d check on the tree. But I had a hard time finding it. Because the same somebodies had come back and undecorated the tree. The fresh tracks in the muddy ground around the tree seemed to match those I had seen in the snow in December. All evidence of the decorating had been removed. And the star angel was gone. How did they get it up there and how did they get it down? A ladder? No. A child standing on a parent’s shoulders would do it.

I’m inspired. My tree quandary is solved. I’ve picked my pine and enlisted two small co-conspirators. From now on, come December twenty-first, we’ll decorate, and go back to undecorate on February fourteenth.

Imagine how the woods would look each December if more of us made a pilgrimage in the dead of winter to see the evergreen trees and decorate them with care? And then went back to restore the woods to their natural beauty. What would our children think?

As I said, this is a Valentine’s story. It’s about loving something—not just one’s self or one’s family or one’s neighbor. It’s about loving life—about loving this world—and seeing this world as our living room.

C
HRISTMAS IN
A
UGUST

O
NE YEAR
I didn’t receive many Christmas cards. One fetid February afternoon this troublemaking realization actually came to me out of the back room in my head that is the source of useless information. Guess I needed some reason to really feel crummy, so there it was. But I didn’t say anything about it. I can take it. I am tough. I won’t complain when my cheap friends don’t even care enough to send me a stupid Christmas card. I can do without tacky love. Right.

The following August, I was nesting in the attic, trying to establish some order in the mess, and found stacked in with the holiday decorations a whole box of unopened greeting cards from the previous Christmas. I had tossed them into the box to open at leisure, and then I ran out of leisure in the shambles of the usual Christmas panic, so the cards got caught up in the bale-it-up-and-stuff-it-in-the-attic-and-we’ll straighten-it-out-next-year syndrome.

I hauled the box down, and on a hot summer day, middle of August, mind you, in my bathing suit, sitting in a lawn chair on my deck, with sunglasses, a quart of iced tea, and a puzzled frame of mind, I began to open my Christmas cards. Just to help, I had put a tape of Christmas carols on the portable stereo and cranked up the volume. Merry Christmas.

I opened the envelopes and set them out on the deck. Here it all was. Angels, snow, Wise Men, candles and pine boughs, horses and sleighs, the Holy Family, elves and Santa. Heavy messages about love and joy and peace and goodwill. If that wasn’t enough, there were all those handwritten messages of affection from my cheap friends who had, in fact, come through for the holidays.

I cried. Seldom have I felt so bad and so good at the same time. So wonderfully rotten, elegantly sad, and melancholy and nostalgic and all. Bathos. Utter bathos.

As fate always seems to have it, I was discovered in this condition by a neighbor, who had been attracted to the scene by the sound of Christmas caroling. She laughed. I showed her the cards. She got weepy. I got weepy. And we had this outrageous Christmas ordeal right there on my deck in the middle of August, singing along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to the final mighty strains of “O Holy Night.” “Faaallll on your kneeees, O heeeeeer the angel vooiiices.”

What can I say? I guess wonder and awe and joy are always there in the attic of one’s mind somewhere, and it doesn’t take a lot to set it off. And much about Christmas
is
outrageous, whether it comes to you in December or late August.

B
EETHOVEN’S
N
INTH

T
ALKING WITH A NICE LADY
on the phone. She has a case of the midwinter spiritual rot. And a terminal cold she’s had since September.

“Well,” rasps she, “you don’t ever get depressed, do you?”

“Listen. I get lows it takes extension ladders to get out of.”

“So what do you do?” asks she. “I mean, what DO YOU DO?”

Nobody ever pinned me down quite like that before. They usually ask what I think
they
should do.

My solace is not religion or yoga or rum or even deep sleep. It’s Beethoven. As in Ludwig van. He’s my ace in the hole. I put his Ninth Symphony on the stereo, pull the earphones down tight, and lie down on the floor. The music comes on like the first day of Creation.

And I think about old Mr. B. He knew a whole lot about depression and unhappiness. He moved around from place to place trying to find the right place. His was a lousy love life, and he quarreled with his friends all the time. A rotten nephew worried him deeply—a nephew he really loved. Mr. B. wanted to be a virtuoso pianist. He wanted to sing well, too. But when still quite young, he began to lose his hearing. Which is usually bad news for pianists and singers. By 1818, when he was forty-eight, he was stone-cold deaf. Which makes it all the more amazing that he finished his great Ninth Symphony five years later. He never really
heard
it! He just
thought
it! Imagine that!

So I lie there with my earphones on, wondering if it ever could have felt to Beethoven like it sounds in my head. The crescendo rises, and my sternum starts to vibrate. And by the time the final kettledrum drowns out all those big F’s, I’m on my feet, singing at the top of my lungs in gibberish German with the mighty choir, and jumping up and down as the legendary Fulghumowski directs the final awesome moments of the END OF THE WORLD AND THE COMING OF GOD AND ALL HIS ANGELS, HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! WWHHOOOOOOOOM-KABOOM-BAM-BAAAAAA!!!

Uplifted, exalted, excited, affirmed, and overwhelmed am I! MANALIVE! Out of all that sorrow and trouble, out of all that frustration and disappointment, out of all that deep and permanent silence, came all that majesty—that outpouring of JOY and exaltation! He
defied
his fate with
jubilation
!

I cannot resist all that truth and beauty. I just can’t manage to continue sitting around in my winter ash heap, wringing my hands and feeling sorry for myself, in the face of THAT MUSIC! Not only does it wipe out spiritual rot, it probably cures colds, too.

“So what’s all this noise about winter and rain and bills and taxes?” says I to me. “So who
needs
all this talk about failure and confusion and frustration? What’s all this noise about life and people being no damned good? Get up. Get on with it!”

In the midst of oatmeal days, I find within Beethoven’s music an irresistible affirmation. In deep, spiritual winter, I find inside myself the sun of summer. And some day, some incredible December night when I am very rich, I am going to rent me a grand hall and a great choir and a mighty symphony orchestra, and stand on the podium and conduct the Ninth. And I will personally play the kettledrum part all the way through to the glorious end, while simultaneously singing along at the very top of my lungs. And in the awesome silence that follows, I will bless all-the-gods-that-be for Ludwig van Beethoven, for his Ninth, and his light.

I had the time of my life—MANALIVE!

And yes, as a matter of magical fact, I did get to conduct that great piece of music—the Ode to Joy—with the Minneapolis Chamber Orchestra. Crazy dreams can come true when the dreamer has a crazy fairy godmother or two. The experience was all I hoped for. And a good deal more. It’s too long to tell about here, but you can find my account of that improbable adventure in my book Maybe, Maybe Not.