When my mom retired from teaching prior to the first SonM's birth in 1986, she gave me a framed picture of a colored print that hung on the wall of her third grade classroom for some time. She'd received it from the teacher I had in 5th grade who taught at the same school and had passed it on to her when she retired. That teacher was the one who read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe aloud to us during class time. I liked that story so much I asked for the book for Christmas and to this day regard it as one of my favorites. She was also first to notice I had difficulty seeing the chalkboard and told my parents I needed glasses. Those glasses provided me with a startlingly different view of the world, similar to the delightful opening of imagination and awareness that took place with that first introduction to Aslan and the Chronicles of Narnia.
The print showed a young blond haired boy looking out a window with a book on his lap and a wistful expression (or perhaps dreamy or thoughtful look) on his face. I'd hung it in the nursery I was setting it up and it remained there for ten years while I rocked and sang two M babies to sleep and later read and told bedtime stories to two little boys, before we eventually purchased and moved to my childhood home in 1996. At that point it went into storage in the basement while those two boys grew to be men. One day, during the downsizing that followed their leaving, I pulled it out, dusted it off, realized they'd found their way into authentic lives of their own outside the window and decided to send it to Goodwill in the back of MrM's truck for someone else to find and take home.
What I didn't know then and learned through chickelit's recent mention, was the name of the artist who'd created that picture and his relationship to the man whose songs and voice had accompanied me through college, played on an 8 trak player that I'd plug into the cigarette lighter and keep on the front seat of my car as I searched for and found my own life outside the window.
Sometimes the objects in life's rear view mirror turn out to be closer than they seem! This story pleases me as it reveals the scope and reach that can occur unbeknownst to us as we daily go about living, choosing, wrangling with others, working things out, following our interests and needs, and sharing our gifts. The angst and joy, levity and gravity realized through face to face encounters and blogosphere connections with friends and strangers can truly be a form of treasure.
James Ormsbee Chapin: Boy With a Book Looking Out Window
15 comments:
Good post, MamaM - I like that story.
Just this week I learned the ASL sign for "choose" - one version has the non-dominant hand held chest high, palm facing signer, dominant hand comes in using thumb and forefinger and plucks the middle finger out of the array of fingers offered to it - I'll take this one, thanks.
We all make choices and as I learned when I was a youth, we learn how to make good choices by making bad ones and learning from those.
I still have much to learn.
Kid must be a city kid cause I see fire escapes, or maybe they're just balconies of a big apartment building outside his window. I grew up in an apartment house, which I suppose is a great deprivation to some people but not to me since it was all I knew. Best staring out the window memory was a big snowstorm at night when the power went out and we lit candles and stared out at the falling white.
Thank you, Mama, for connecting three generations of Chapins. Who knew? It almost seems newsworthy -- especially with so much other crap news cluttering and clogging up the otherwise normal flow of life.
The Narnia books had a similar effect on me. The great escape.
I wonder if the Cats cradle song was the son whining about Dad not being around enough. That generation could not stop blaming their parents for everything.
The background of "Cat's in the Cradle."
Thanks for posting that, windbag, that kind of goes along with my thoughts upon hearing that song - it is a lament about not being able to spend enough time with one's children. Perhaps my father felt that way, I know I did, perhaps my son does - but that is our lot in life - we go out, earn a living, time flies by, next thing you know, your children are grown. So it goes.
When the kids were little, I'd tell people, "We had them last week, they're leaving next week. We're just trying to enjoy them this week."
The description of the ASL sign for choosing made me laugh as I immediately pictured the middle finger selection as one that could go either way!
When I saw it done online I smiled again as it looked very much like picking--snappy quick. And that's how it goes sometimes, without enough time or opportunity to linger or count all the costs. Similar to raising children. It's hard to know what will matter, be remembered or make a difference and I'm often surprised by what comes up now as significant.
All we know as children can be wonderfully enough sometimes, with a felt experience of safety, place, peace and quiet wonder in the midst of a storm and power outage as a memory that keeps on giving.
I don't regret giving the picture away. It served its purpose and accompanied us when needed. There was something about it that invited melancholy in me the later years, similar to what comes up with Harry's song.
Cat's Cradle was also a string game we played in elementary school. It required two and I remembered it as hard to do, thinking it was supposed to result in something that looked like a cat in a cradle but we never got there. In watching a video of it today, I was disappointed to learn there was no such end. We didn't get there because the only goal was to keep it going as long as possible, until one of the two playing would mess it up!
When I was a juvenile probation officer in KC back in the 70's many of the kids on my caseload were 8 track deck and cassette thieves. They would have stolen Mama's player, tapes and her CB if she had one.
My brother and his best friend were Harry Chapin-heads. Went to many of his concerts. My brother got word to Chapin that it was his friend, Steve, birthday. During the concert Chapin led the arena in Happy Birthday to Steve.
Steve suffered from clinical depression. It was just prior to the advent of life saving meds. Steve hung himself just a few years after that memorable birthday.
I'm sure they would have nd, but suburbia was still fairly safe back then and the campus was located on the outskirts of town, away from where the big city thievery and fencing took place. Knocking over mailboxes with a baseball bat was a regular occurrence, as was driving drunk at high speeds on rural roads and killing several passengers at once. Three from our high school class died in one accident.
The car I drove was an old white Galaxy 500 with 100,000+ miles on it (a rolled over speedometer) so it didn't invite too many eyeballs or speculations about valuable contents. And the 8 track was the yellow Panasonic pump model. I used it until the tapes broke and sold it at a garage sale.
I owned several Volvos back before I got my mind right and started buying Japanese cars, and in late '77 I drove a Volvo P1800 - the funny looking little two seater with the B18 engine. Well, my first son was about to enter the world in the usual way so I decided to sell that car. But before I could sell it some JD broke out the driver's side window with a rock and stole the 8-track. It's hard to sell a car with a smashed window, and the irony is had the perp but asked I would have given him the 8-track. Seriously - I didn't have any tapes for it at that time and it was not really a value enhancer, just saying.
But that stroke of bad luck was followed by a bit of good luck - I found a Volvo-specific junkyard out in the country and was able to buy a new window. Car sold, so long, farewell, off to greener pastures go we all.
Two out of sync and but-for-time stories, nd.
The goods the young thieves were risking their futures to steal are now almost impossible to give away. And in an arena full of people willing to celebrate brother's friends' life and birth in song, there was likely no one with access to the yet to be released medications that might help him address the overwhelming despair and chemical imbalances that eventually prompted him to end his life.
That's a sad story about your brother's friend, Steve, one you and your brother have held in memory for many years. One where "May he rest in peace" seems like a fit. I like the fact that Harry was willing to play along with the request, and I also enjoyed the pics and story in the link windbag provided.
My brother and his best friend were Harry Chapin-heads.
I loved Chapin, even as a kid. I remember hearing "Taxi" when I was a kid (I was nine when it came out) and loving it immediately. It remains one of my favorite songs from anywhere. I never really cared for the sequel to that song.
An old business partner was not a Chapin fan. I mentioned a Best of Harry Chapin CD to him and he asked "Why would anyone want a blank CD?"
Remember When the Music
Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire
For we believed in things, and so we'd sing
Remember when the music
Brought us all together to stand inside the rain
And as we'd join our hands, we'd meet in the refrain
For we had dreams to live, we had hopes to give
Remember when the music
Was the best of what we dreamed of for our children's time
And as we sang we worked, for time was just a line
It was a gift we saved, a gift the future gave
Remember when the music
Was a rock that we could cling to so we'd not despair
And as we sang we knew we'd hear an echo fill the air
We'd be smiling then, we would smile again
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