Through Mama’s Eyes

Standing fully in the present moment, there are times when you can touch the past and the future, all at once and at the same time. You can even feel eternity sliding through your fingers.

And sometimes it happens through someone else’s eyes.

I see my mama’s eyes in a black and white photo of her when she was six, maybe seven years old--- about 85 years ago now. She’s standing next to her mom somewhere out there on the Oklahoma prairie with the Great Depression swirling around them.

 Mom’s wearing a simple calico dress and beige stockings. Her short cropped hair and straight trimmed bangs appear utilitarian: easy to wash and dry.

Her mom, my grandmother, is clutching her purse in her right hand while her left is resting peacefully on my mom’s back. Grandmother’s bonnet is pulled down low, casting a shadow over her eyes, now worn down by time, fading them, hiding them from my view, preventing me from seeing what they might be saying.   

But I can clearly see mama’s little girl eyes. And they seem to look into mine, peering at me as if to say, “When will you arrive in my future, little boy?”

And then, “Where are you going, young man?”

Now, “What are you going to do with the rest of your life, since you’re past the half century mark?”

Those little girl eyes see right through me in this moment, then  back to yesterday, and forward into tomorrow.

It happens all at once and at the same time.

Her eyes are accompanied by a half grin that strikes me as vaguely familiar. “Yes,” I smile to myself, “those are the eyes of my oldest daughter.” And now those eyes---the eyes of my little girl daughter, six maybe seven years old---stare through the glass door of our house, waiting for my arrival. “Can we go for a drive, Daddy? Please?”

And then my little six maybe seven year old girl is a young lady, glancing back one more time in my direction as she passes through airport security for departing flights. And she’s gone---gone far away to her big city.

It happens all at once and at the same time.

Now, in Mom’s little girl eyes, I see my older brothers, Mark and Lowell. Mom snaps her fingers, watching us boys through her horned rimmed glasses, commanding us to settle down there in the back of the station wagon, for it’s a long way from Altus, Oklahoma to Disneyland in  California, and through Mom’s eyes, squinting with the threat of discipline, I can hear Lowell holding something called a transistor radio, tuned in to KOMA AM radio, listening to Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans.” And Mark is warning Lowell not to drop the radio from the station wagon’s back window because Lowell is letting the transistor dangle dangerously from his wrist.

I look again and see Mom’s little girl eyes arriving in Fletcher, Oklahoma, where she, now 19 years old, meets my future daddy’s eyes, and both, in that past moment, lock eyes in a forever gaze.

And I can see in those little girl eyes the grief, the joy, and the thrill of living: the death of a son in a car wreck, Mom herself graduating from college once her boys had their diplomas, her travels to Africa, India, Arabia, and Central America.

The serious expression on the  little girl’s face breaks into joyful celebrations of  life in her poems, her collectibles, and her friends, bestowing favor upon my dad, who needs her, beaming with pride in sons, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

And then quite abruptly the little girl eyes bring me to the recent past:  Mom and Dad’s 70^th wedding anniversary, where her eyes, now in their 92^nd year, look to me for help as she grasps my arm, taking tiny steps on the way to the car.

“I love you boys more than you will ever know,” she reminds me. And I know she means it.

But now, I don’t want to look into those eyes—fearful that they may be worn down by time, the years having cast their shadow over them, fading them, blurring them so I can no longer see what they might be saying.

.

I choose instead to ponder the little girl’s eyes.

And through them touch now and forever in this present moment.

When you can’t care enough to care

You can often see it in their eyes, if you take the time to look: That far away gaze tells you they are somewhere else---maybe in the future or the past but not the present.

Or sometimes their eyes dart this way and that, like those of a trapped animal searching for an escape route.

And if you have occasion to be with them for very long, you’ll notice a restlessness---an inability to move forward with any kind of fruitfulness---even though they might exhibit workaholic tendencies or conversely, extreme lethargy.

I’m not referring to someone afflicted with ADHD or Lyme disease or mononucleosis.

Then, what is it?

If, like a “Jeopardy!” contestant, you've just said, “What is acedia?” you should be hearing Alex Trebek saying, “Right you are.”

This is no recent phenomenon. Acedia  (pronounced uh-SEE-dee-uh) was first described by a fourth century monk named Evagrius of Ponticus. The Greek root of the word literally means “without care.” It’s a complex condition that defies a simple definition.

 It’s a spiritual lethargy---an extreme kind of indifference: the awareness that you don’t care, but you can’t seem to care that you don’t care, even though your apathy weighs on you, crushing your spirit.

Evagrius described it as the “noonday demon,” perhaps because it’s bold enough to attack in the middle of the day instead of sneaking in late at night, or maybe because that’s when the intensity of the sun begins to wear on us, and the drag of the day creeps in as the freshness of the morning evaporates, leaving us languishing with the staleness of the afternoon’s work awaiting us.

Acedia can be dangerous because it is subtly attractive.  Kathleen Norris, who has struggled with acedia for much of her life and written extensively about it, describes it as “spiritual morphine.”

Disconnecting from people, God, and yourself can be seductive because there are times when we grow weary of them all. Like someone teetering between being comfortably numb and inebriated, we stare at the world as it passes by.  Soon, cynicism sets in: We criticize ourselves and others but have no desire to make improvements; we watch TV shows we dislike but are too enervated to pick up the remote and change the channel.

No wonder, as Norris notes, Aldous Huxley called acedia the primary affliction of his age. “Its baleful influence still sours our relationships to society, politics, and our families,” she said.

Maybe John Plotz, Professor of English at Brandeis University, is right: “It takes an acediac to know acedia.” If he’s right, I can’t say I know acedia, except as an occasional minor affliction, an unwelcome guest that’s bothersome but not permanent. And yet, like the winter cold that seems to keep hanging around, when you've got it, you wonder if it will it will ever go away.

The cure for acedia is not as easy as repeating a few positive statements, as Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) did in the movie, “What About Bob?” “I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful... I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful... I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful...” Bob rehearses to himself each morning in an effort to conquer his neuroses.

The Egyptian monk and early Desert Father of the fifth century, Abba Poemen, knew something about overcoming acedia. He admonished his disciples to recognize it for what it is: a temptation to despair. Naming it is at least a beginning to finding peace when the noonday demon strikes. Again, Abba Poeman said, “Teach your mouth to say that which you have in your heart.”

I've learned to speak to acedia as I would to any seemingly insurmountable mountain in life. “Greater is the Spirit that is in me than the spirit that is in the world,” I say to myself, paraphrasing I John 4:4.

Another Desert Father, John Cassian, advised patience, prayer, and manual labor as the way through acedia. And Norris suggests such practical actions as memorizing Scripture, finding community, shoveling manure, washing dishes, dusting the bookshelf, and being kind to one another as ways of coping with acedia.

Since we are in control of our thoughts, we don’t have to be dominated by acedia or any temptation. We may not be able to avoid it, since it is part of the human condition, but we can respond to it in positive ways. As the reformer of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther is supposed to have said, “You can’t help it if a bird flies over your head, but you don’t need to let him make a nest in your hair.”

The challenge of course, when it comes to acedia, is caring enough to wave the bird away.

Despite other paramours, I’m still in love with my computer

Maybe it’s a part of the yearning for a slower, simpler world, a less digitized world when others--- including the National Security Agency---didn’t have instant access to our privacy. Or perhaps it’s more a desire to touch and embrace an older vehicle for communicating.

It could be both.

I’m referring to the return of the typewriter.

Even high school students are learning the joys and frustrations of tap tap tapping away on what many consider an anachronistic way of communicating.

Ryan Adney, a high school English teacher, has his students doing almost all their writing on typewriters these days.  In an interview with NBC’s Stephanie Gosk, Adney said 20 years ago only eccentrics used a typewriter. But that’s changing. People across the country are utilizing the typewriter. That would include the high profile users like Pope Francis I; the famous collectors, like Tom Hanks (he owns 12 of the old printing machines); and the modern day enthusiasts, like Mike McGeddigan, who organized a “type-in.” McGeddigan prefers typewriters because they are finely crafted, are not meant to be obsolete, and are intended to do only one thing: type.

It’s the simplicity of that “one thing” that apparently appeals to so many, even among some of the younger generation. “They help you concentrate more because on a computer there’s other distractions,” said Jessica Duren, one of Adney’s students. Because typewriters have no backspace, spell check, or auto correct, mistakes are more permanent. “You gotta know what you’re gonna say and make sure it makes sense,” said another student, Sonia Aldana.

Adney believes the machines have helped his students improve their writing skills because they have to be more cognizant of their word choices, and slowing down has facilitated their creativity, he maintains.

And then the nostalgia of using a typewriter can create enthusiasm for writing: “When you’re sitting at one, you almost feel like you could be like…Ernest Hemingway or Jack Kerouac,” said student Matthew Scidoni.

“Now that’s what I need,” I mused as I read about the return of the typewriter. I pictured myself with my hands on an old Smith-Corona, channeling Jack London or Ray Bradbury as I pecked away. “The perfect vaccine to any possible invasion of the writer’s block virus,” I thought. “I’ll be perpetually energized.”

But then something woke me to reality and sent me running to hug my beloved laptop: It was the memory of my typewriting class in high school.

I had learned the keyboard with relative ease, but then came the more technical aspect of the course: the correct layout for a business letter, proper form for footnotes, the simple office memo---details I figured I’d never use. Then my guidance counselor informed in a by the way moment that I had already accumulated enough credits to graduate. “Just wondering, why did you add the typing class?” he asked.

 Good question. I promptly dropped that first hour typing class and slept an extra hour each day.

A few months later I graduated and merrily went along my way without much use for a typewriter. I had one (an item, along with my 1974 Chevy Camaro, I now wish I had kept) but rarely used it. I wrote in longhand and either had a friend type my research papers or paid a typist. Although I wish I were more proficient on my laptop keyboard, corrections are easily made with a computer.

Granted, the computer invites distractions. Stopping to check email or facebook messages can be deadly to meeting deadlines.  

But the typewriter isn’t the perfect antidote to the problem, at least not for everyone.

Shelby Foote, author of the massive three volume history, The Civil War: A Narrative, refuses to use even a typewriter. In an interview for The Academy of Achievement, Foote said, “I don’t want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter.” The clatter of the typewriter and the turning of the drum backward to make corrections is “a kind of interruption” Foote can’t stand. He even refuses to use a fountain pen, opting instead for the old-fashioned dip pen, preferring it for the same reason some like a typewriter: The dip pen forces him to slow down and think before writing each word.

But a pen can be frustrating too. Novelist Stephen King likes to write in longhand. “The only problem,” he says, “is that, once I get jazzed, I can’t keep up with the lines forming in my head and I get frazzled.”

Precisely. King’s problem reminded me why I started using the laptop in the first place. And that brings me back to my love affair with my writer-friendly computer, to whom I pledge my everlasting loyalty.

At least until a more efficient writing companion comes along.