JUNE 1, 2024 – This morning in my self-quarantine at the Red Cabin, I received a call from my sister Jenny. She was on a stroll—no, at her customary gait, it was a power walk—through Central Park across the street from her and her husband’s Upper West Side abode.
“How’s your cold?” she asked.
“I’m holding my own,” I said. I felt well enough to have sounded more optimistic but didn’t want to jinx anything.
“The weather’s beautiful here,” she said buoyantly.
“Here it looks like my cold,” I said, “meaning, its drizzling, but we’re promised some breaks this afternoon and tomorrow.”
We talked for a good half hour—politics, accompanied by our shared despair and disbelief but quickly shifting to more pleasant matters, such as “Kids Day” at the Met yesterday. Jenny described with great enthusiasm the crowds of ebullient teenagers who’d descended on the museum yesterday. They were from all over the city and participated in various well-rehearsed performances, from East Indian dancing (“Spectacular!”) to Gospel singers (“Fantastic!”) to an old-fashioned marching band in smart uniforms with tall plumes waving from their hats (“Wonderful!”).
“Those kids were having such a great time,” said Jenny, “and I couldn’t help but find hope and faith in the future because of them. They represented the antithesis of all the garbage we’re seeing in politics, and we should remember that those kids, not [the Duly Defeated and his enablers] are the future.
“And what was cool,” she continued, “was that they were involved in and excited about art, dance, and music—not just sports. I’ve really got to hand it to the Met for sponsoring the whole thing.”
Just then Jenny encountered a large group of people participating in the annual YAI Central Park Challenge for young people with disabilities. They were having a blast, and all for a very good cause. I could hear their raucously good cheer in the background.
Another great example of what’s right with the world.
Jenny then expressed as she often does, her love for The City, and her amazement over how well things work and how well such a large and disparate population gets along—despite the well-publicized threats, dangers, short-comings, and deficiencies that abound.
She recalled an observation that our mother had about the contrast between life “back East” and her surroundings in her adoptive home in the Upper Midwest. “What I’ve noticed,” said Mother, “is that people out here aren’t accustomed to living in such close proximity to one another as people are out East. I think people in more densely populated areas feel a greater imperative to figure things out.”
When Jenny mentioned this, I thought of places like Seoul and Tokyo, where people live and work in even tighter quarters than exist in New York, yet those Asian cities have achieved a remarkable state of order, stability, and live-ability.
“I just love this park,” she said. “And on a nice day like today, you see so many different kinds of people, all enjoying this wonderful place. I love it!
“Yesterday I took Garrison on an outing to the Met, then a late lunch and a walk back across the park. He wanted to stop and sit on a bench,” she said, “so I let him. He said he wanted to look around at things.”
Just then, another call came in. It was the man himself. “Jenny,” I said. “Guess who’s calling? Garrison!” I answered my own question.
“Ha!” she said. “Better take it. I’ll keep walking. Love you! ’Bye!”
“Love you too. ’Bye.”
I pressed “end and accept.”
“Hi, Garrison.”
“How are you doing all by yourself up there in the woods?” he asked.
“Fine, just fine, thanks. Nursing my cold but otherwise, fine.”
“I’m not sure how you can be all alone up there like that,” said the man who is in his happiest state while sitting alone for long periods, gazing at his laptop and working on a novel or show script.
“I take full advantage of it,” I said. “I enjoy the solitude, the quietude, the wonders of nature that surround me.”
“But all alone? You? I can’t picture you enjoying being all alone.” I took that as a compliment or at least an acknowledgment that I like the company of my fellow human beings, and not wishing to disabuse him of his perception, I quickly amended my statement. “Yes, yes. I always enjoy being around other people,” I said, “but I also appreciate the time and opportunity to be alone—to write, to read, to think, to observe nature, and inevitably, up here, to engage in cabin projects that require problem-solving and mechanical skills.”
“Hmmm. I see.” I recalled the time when Dad had recruited him to climb up on the roof of our old family cabin (at the other end of the property from the Red Cabin) to help Dad clean out the gutters. There’d never been another soul on that roof who looked so out of his element.
“Plus, Garrison,” I said, “when I take walks through the woods and observe all the never-ending cycle of life and death and rebirth—the new growth, the old growth, incipient decay, and advanced decomposition, and lo and below, new life sprouting from compost—I’m reminded of my walk with the rest of my own species. From this experience I derive perspective and rekindled hope for our world.”
“Hmmm. Like for Jenny, Central Park is her church, her cathedral.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I enjoy attending my church, which is the Episcopal church, St. Michael’s, up on West 99th Street, the church where we got married. I like the music, and coming from a non-liturgical background, I like the liturgy—a lot—and sometimes, but not always, I like the homilies, and going there simply gives me a great feeling of hope, knowing that what’s in the past doesn’t matter anymore.”
Garrison then described the portion of the service in which personal prayers are solicited. “I’ll say a prayer for you,” he said, without the slightest hint of sarcasm. I know him and his voice well enough to know he was being wholly genuine.
“You know, Garrison,” I said, “I’d really appreciate that. I really would. And just for the record, I’m not a militant atheist. I’m an agnostic agnostic.”
This drew a chuckle in which I delighted, coming as it did from the master of humor. I then related the anecdote of the chief of the train crew who’d befriended me aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad; a Communist Party member and avowed atheist (so he’d told me on the first day of the seven-day journey), who, in telling me a story about how he’d narrowly escaped death in a car crash, had re-enacted the motion of crossing himself.
“But you said you’re an atheist,” I said.
“Da, da”—Yes, yes—the train man said, but then with the aid of my Russian-English lexicon he communicated the exception to his rule: When you really need him, God does exist.
Garrison responded with another chuckle.
He then mentioned his outing yesterday with Jenny; their trip to the Met in the middle of “Kids Day.” Having just heard about it from Jenny, I suppressed the reflexive urge to say, “Yeah, Jenny told me about that.” I could detect special delight in Garrison’s voice, an eager desire to tell me about it. Not wishing to deflate his cheer, I listened. His account—and overall reaction—was identical to Jenny’s.
As always in our conversations, we talked politics. He’s convinced that the Duly Defeated will suffer an ignoble defeat in November. “He’s incapable of talking about anything except himself,” said Garrison, “and the people on the margins are growing sick and tired of it. They want to hear how he’s going to make their lives better, but all he can talk about is how he’s been wronged.”
I’m grown accustomed to Garrison’s optimism on this front, but I suspect that much of it is the product of wishful thinking. There’s little point to my suggesting that. In any case, I wholly subscribe to Garrison’s patriotic indignation—the impetus for his wishful thinking.
“Oh, Jenny’s back from her walk,” Garrison then informed me. “I’d better go now.”
“Okay, say hi to her for me. And Garrison . . .”
“What?”
“Thanks for calling. I really do enjoy our conversations, and I really appreciate your calling. I feel bad that you’re always calling me, but I rarely call you. It’s not that I’m not thinking about you, but I’m always afraid I’ll be interrupting.”
“Interrupting? I like being interrupted.”
“Well, okay, then. I’ll try interrupting you. Anyway, thanks for calling. Take care of yourself.”
“You too. ’Bye.”
Photo credit: Jenny Lind Nilsson
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
