Pancake is back in Luxembourg to defend his M.A. thesis. I don’t mind a bit of solitude but my mobility outside the apartment is limited. I don’t fancy the prospect of a broken hip or leg. I’m noticing that it’s harder to maintain my balance or climb the curving narrow staircase that leads up to my second-floor apartment. There is something unexpected about how ALS spreads, which might explain the “lateral” in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It’s been a year since my feet got numb, and the numbness is slowly intensifying, but instead of rendering my feet totally useless, it’s spreading laterally to my arms and now to my mouth. Is it only in my imagination that I’m having difficulty articulating clearly? It seems to spread first laterally before boring down to the nerves that operate the voluntary muscles of my lungs, where ALS is said to deliver its coup de grâce. I have difficulty walking like a feeble old man, but I do walk.
When my children were newborn, I was painfully aware of the fragility of life. I have the same feeling now. The freshly kindled flame of life that was flickering up in them is a dying ember in me now. It’s actually comforting to imagine myself united with them in a natural process that encompasses us all. When I think of the love I felt for my children when their presence in my life was new and contingent, it’s evident that that love always harbored a mystical awe for our miraculous continuity and unity. As they got older, I was awed by their courage: my brave daughter bracing herself as we were bussed at night from the dark harbor of a Greek island to the winding streets of its high village where we would negotiate for keys to the house we had rented. Everything was strange, but to her acceptable. Or my son: finding his way on a journey on which only his ideals offered guidance, determined to go on, even when he seemed utterly lost. Unfortunately, what children need from a father isn’t mystical awe but positive involvement in their lives. By ceding that to my wife—a wonderful but assertive mother who took charge of every adventure—I lost my opportunity to develop the mutually rewarding relationship with my children that I enjoy with other young people their age. Nothing could be sadder.
But what is this that I’m seeing? In my mind’s eye is a little girl who could be my daughter, struggling with her mother up a muddy slope, dodging thugs and wild beasts in the Darien Gap on their way through a thousand dangers and nightmares to a hostile closed border. I’m imagining a little boy who could be my son, clinging to a flimsy raft, lost on the high seas between North Africa and Europe. Once you get an image like that in your mind, it stays like a thorn in your flesh. Don’t imagine that we live in a world apart from the enemies of life. Not looking won’t vouchsafe our innocence or our safety.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 