My mother is sitting at the far end of the pool, in the shade. My father is perched at the edge of the pool in the sun, and I am facing him with one leg dangling in the water. They separated ten years ago and have had a better relationship (in my opinion) ever since. I listen while he thinks out loud, and I think about his life.
He lives on a marsh, an ecological reserve. He is surrounded by funky little houses all built on water and mud and indestructible pickleweed. The only way to get to his front door is by a long, weather-beaten boardwalk. The people who pass him are all his friends. His other friends are people who fly in from all around the world to visit him: his wife, his daughters, the ducks, the great blue heron, the snowy white egret, the willet, and the grackle. The grackle makes a melancholy sound, he says, which made him sad at first.
A frog leaps off the edge of the pool and swims expertly to the bottom.
My father did some of the earliest work on X-ray microscopy and was one of the pioneers in X-ray holography. He taught at Stanford, Harvard, and The Open University at Buckinghamshire, England. The work with UNESCO in Baghdad began his deep involvement in science education in underdeveloped countries. The list of committees he has chaired and movies he has made in the field of science teaching easily runs a page. He added French to his Spanish and English. As he traveled many parts of the world speaking and heading committees, he developed theories about what he considered to be the most pressing issues of the day: population, poverty, pollution, and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Twenty years later, he expounds on the four C’s which he says are needed to understand and cure the four P’s: curiosity, creativity, competence, and compassion. Today, by the pool, he says that there may not be time to remedy all the damage that the human race has caused the earth.
He is talking about the fast bang and the slow bang. The fast bang is the holocaust, the final meltdown, World War Three. The slow bang is the steady diminution of the earth’s resources due to the greed and ignorance of its inhabitants. He thinks the slow bang is the greater threat, as it is probably already in irreversible progress. The fast bang might still be avoided, but the chances are getting slim. As new thoughts form and shift in his mind, the lines in my father’s forehead cut deep and corrugate his skin, and the circles under his eyes become disturbingly prominent. In this moment of disquiet, with his shoulders suddenly too small and rounded, he has a crumpled look. His hands are clasped around his shoulders as he speaks. Seeing his usual bouyancy dampened makes me angry. He will not remember, later on, that he used the word “despair.”
The sun continues to dance on my father’s face.
Now I am thinking that Ronald Reagan is the same age as my father. They have some things in common. They are both young in spirit, buoyant, well-preserved, and optimistic. Beyond that, I can find only outstanding differences.
The President is either ignorant of, or unconcerned by the ills of the world about which my father and I have been speaking. He is particularly immune to any part America may have in engendering these ills, as he dislikes the inconvenience of thinking beyond his own definitions of good-guys/bad-guys, and also doesn’t like to be depressed. His pleasant, bumbling demeanor is preferable to the murderous efficiency of Kissinger and Kirkpatrick, but on the other hand, he is involved in the same dark and bloody deeds, all done under the same vast, all-encompassing and convenient banner of anticommunism. He feels that God is on his side, and that he really can do no wrong.
What piques me is how this man and his followers can write off someone like my father. Because of my father’s protestations about the raping of the Amazon forests, the pollution of our rivers, the misuse and depletion of natural energy, and the poisoning of our children’s air, people like my father are explained away with the flick of a wrist as a doomsayer, a depressive, a pessimistic liberal.
Looking into my father’s intelligent face, I am appalled at where the scholars and men and women of conscience have been relegated in American society. Protesting the four P’s does not promote the current trend toward shining new patriotism, whatever that is.
My father doesn’t know I am silently comparing them: the short, handsome Mexican scientist who still attends Quaker Meeting, thinks globally, and is preoccupied with the betterment of all people; and the strapping cowboy who reads Louis L’Amour, watches Rambo and thinks there is no longer any segregation in Pretoria. Although my father might be flattered by my thoughts, he is much kinder than me and would not revel in them. At the moment he is busy looking for a glow in the ashes of our conversation, and has begun smiling and nodding as he speaks, his perfectly straight row of teeth gleaming bright as those of any Zapata, his eyes shining with an unquashable optimism. He concludes a hopeful thought with an exclamation about the positive forces of nature: “Thank God for the pickleweed!”
You should be in the center of the village, Papa, where all the townspeople go to pay their respects. I would go with them at the close of the day and offer you a bright-colored blanket, a cup of tea, and some of the fine crown jewels you imparted to me at birth. And over tea, I’d tell you how much I have learned from you, and together we’d say a little prayer for the soul of the cowboy.