Two Walks

On a brisk autumn morning the other day, as I walked in Prospect Park, the orange and yellow foliage glowed. Mist rose from the Long Meadow, where dogs, permitted off leash until nine, ran alone, frolicked with one another, or fetched the balls that their owners had thrown out for them. Younger runners and bikers passed me as I walked as fast as I could on the West Drive. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the air was just cold enough to provide a pleasant briskness. What a marvelous day, I thought to myself, and then felt a deep gratitude that I was again able to walk without pain.

And then I remembered the cartoon by the late, great William Steig that I clipped out of The New Yorker Magazine years ago and placed in a plexiglass frame. It shows a man floating in a sun-dappled sea, his head on an inflatable pillow, his hands clasped on his stomach. He smiles blissfully. Beneath him swims a dreadful sea monster. The caption: “Complete Peace.”

And that reminded me of a spring day during my sophomore year at college. I was a staffer on the college paper and well on my way, so I hoped, to becoming a Big Man on Campus. I was enjoying myself so much at college that I said to myself that “this is too good to last,” although I had no idea about what could derail me. I didn’t know that my mother was dying, that in another month she would be dead, that I would transfer to a college near home, drop out of campus life, and live at home, where I could help my grieving, shell-shocked father raise my younger brother and sister.

These two walks, one on the quadrangle of a college campus, the other on the West Drive of Prospect Park, are separated by more than 60 years. In both cases, I felt the intimations of darker times to come. The difference is that when I was 19, I had little experience of catastrophe, and I took for granted the good things life had given me. Now I know what catastrophe means, and I’m grateful for every day.

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved