A Song for St. Leonard

An Uplifting Tale About Grief

In a verse of the Tao te Ching, Lao-tsu tells us that if we ever lose awe, we will be doomed. It’s one of the sentences or stanzas that dropped their nickel at just the right time in my life for me to get the message. Joseph Campbell’s “Poets have the courage to follow the echoes of the eloquence within” is another. I don’t have a whole lot of them, just the right ones.

There was a movie starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta that did not take place in the 1950s and did not involve summer lovin’. It was called Two of a Kind and in it these two angels get tasked to search the earth and find one good reason God shouldn’t destroy the world. And that one good reason was them, the stars from Grease that the angel showed to God. And God agreed and did not destroy the world. Oscar Wilde’s version, The Happy Prince, is better, and the animated film is devastatingly beautiful. I saw it when I was six. That is the only time I have ever watched it, and I stand by those words. So crazy beautiful. I can see it perfectly right now even while I look out the kitchen window at the full moonlit woods.

It came on the TV when my parents weren’t home so I watched it, just stayed there. Babysitter was from an agency which always scared us kids a bit. You know. Stories. I was probably in my orange sherbet-colored “footie pajamas,” and I bet I had my stuffed animal lion I named Loopy and which is still with me, having shared it with my daughter for a spell, who has now grown.  My sister was off in her sister universe. I was watching The Happy Prince. It was night. My parents had gone out for the evening to someplace fancy. He was in a turtleneck and a brown leather jacket while my mom was in this beautiful bright orange jumpsuit thing with a wide leather belt and a choker necklace made of massive pearls. They looked wonderful.

We lived in Lawrence Park, Toronto. This story I am telling you happened at 285 St. Leonards Avenue. No. Wait. That was my best friend, Beth’s house. My family lived at 218 St. Leonards Avenue, with a giant spruce tree beside the wrought iron banister you’d have to be stupid to touch with your tongue in winter. I remember Beth’s house first. That should tell you a thing or two about both Beth and me. Beth’s family ran like clockwork. Nothing left to chance. The days of the week had a menu at Beth’s house.

I drove past that house three summers ago, and I’d swear the same blue Pontiac station wagon I had ridden in the back seat of that faced backward back from Brownie Camp where I got my fire-building badge for building a fire. I still have it, along with the dog-care one, and, for some odd reason, puppetry. The same god-damn car since nineteen seventy-six still in the driveway in 2018. Can you beat that? If anybody could make a car live forever, it’s them. They took care of everything. They functioned.

I didn’t stop. It definitely crossed my mind. I’m sure that any member of that family would recognize me, just like I would them. Nearly fifty years later. I spent so much time at Bethy’s house I am sure I absorbed that family’s DNA. From a tissue or something. Maybe a fork. Monday-Casserole. Tuesday-Broiled chicken seasoned with Lawry’s and served with baked potato and green beans that Bethy and I had shucked outside if it was between April and September, but only the first part of September.

That was the time of year we kids at Blythwood Elementary School walked all through the neighborhood asking people to give us the baskets that farmers or somebody use for apples. We’d take our wagons all around the streets, as long as we were home by the time the streetlamps came on. I still see streetlamps as a kind of clock just because of that one rule. I was good with rules. We’d have these baskets piled into one another, and I’d be so proud to have so many, and then my sister would wheel past in rollerskates hauling a wagon with seven times as many baskets. Where could she get them from? How did she do that on skates?  I mean, every child in the neighborhood went to Blythwood. How many of these basket-keeping people were there and why did they have so many apples? I didn’t stop in because everything that ever went on in that house should just keep on doing it without me interfering.

It was one perfect, pristine household the likes of which I know I will never see again. I can see the tidy summer sausage circle on the tidy piece of break with the tidy dots of French’s mustard and another piece of bread perfectly in line with the first. I can see it sitting perfectly on the red and white checked napkin lining the wicker plate. I can smell Mr. Haberer’s cherry pipe smoke and him holding it, with a cardigan on and the paper he held up like a shield, a bourbon (I guess) on the rocks in a crystal glass on the spindled little table at his side. Clockwork. Brother comes in home from a trumpet lesson. He’ll run upstairs then run downstairs with his hockey stick whether its winter or spring. Somewhere something was being used as a puck and something else for ice. And something else for the blood that’s always somehow inside the ice. In Toronto at least. There was always blood inside the ice.

If I’d been raised in that house, my life would be unrecognizable. I’d use the dishwasher. I’d have cats. I’d be perfectly comfortable living in a normal house on a street with other houses looking back at me. I’d take my car to get detailed. I’d be married.

The only thing I would have stopped for was to check the summer grass under the hemlock border and the ditch in the front yard. We used to bury Coffee Crisp and Caramelo chocolate bars and Tootsie Rolls in the snow, still in the wrapper. Then we would forget. And there’d be a Caramelo all squished on a bare knee once the weather turned warm enough again to play outside. At least it was better than sap.

All this comes back to two things: what two things could two angels hold up to God and say, “See? Here? We did it. Here is a beautiful thing the way those angels did in Two of a Kind then offer up Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta so God keeps the lights on a while longer. It’s different for The Happy Prince. And at six, as I would now probably, I believed the title. I have always been a very literal person. I was so literal that I once called 441 from the party line dial phone at a cottage we rented in Muskoka every summer. On the way to Muskoka we always stopped at a place that had “The Best Ice Cream in the World.” I would order the Butterscotch Sundae. It came in this special glass and with a really long spoon. It was no lie. It was the best ice cream in the world. But one summer we didn’t stop. We didn’t see it, or we drove so fast we missed it. My father told me it was no longer there. I couldn’t believe it.

I asked him, “They can’t close down the ice cream store that has the best ice cream in the world, can they?” He didn’t answer.

He and my mom went to the neighbors’ cottage, the dad was an old friend of my dad. My sister was outside building a fire or something else she did much better than me. (Don’t get me started on water skiing.) She said she was going to stay out all night on the top of the boathouse to see the Northern Lights. We saw them every summer. One form or another—the billowy ribbon ones, the carousel one that has the different colors, and sometimes it was a vast and bright swathe against the sky like a giant bubble being made using a stick and string. I always agreed to do things with my sister because she so seldom asked. It was like pretty much were living in parallel universes that shared a bathroom. While I waited for her, I sat on the nubbly couch. I knew about 411. You dial it from anywhere to get some information.

“Information,” a lady (it was always a lady who had the information) answered.

You can see where this is going. I’m going to bother this poor woman with my concern for the quality of ice cream all over the globe if this one enterprise of sundae making and really long spoons were to vanish forever from the Southern Ontario wilderness of Muskoka— what, just what, I ask you, Information Lady, what’s to become of us?

I was persisting when my sister came in. She knew right away what was going on and grabbed an apricot from the bushel baskets, the kind we have to collect in a month’s time which meant if I’m wise I’ll claim these now.

The lady said, “A lot of restaurants say they have the best something in the world. Even ice cream.”

“But this place actually does have the best ice cream in the world. I’ve tasted it.” I wasn’t letting this one great wonder of life on earth just disappear.

My sister took the black plastic receiver from me. She looked straight at me with water still dripping from her stupid wet hair because maybe she caught on fire and had to jump in the water.

“I’m sorry. My sister is just being unreasonable.” She said this like she wasn’t nine. “Yes, I’ll explain it to her,” she kicked the couch a little aggressively. I skooched away. She said, “Thank you” to the lady. Then she didn’t explain anything.

But that’s how literal I was. And still am. I’ve taken steps to understand that just because it’s said it doesn’t mean it impacts anything beyond this one instant of time, after which it will have dopplered off into silence. Then, if you bring the statement up at a moment outside the frame of this very moment, you will get very strange looks that will make you question the architecture of this very moment. So don’t do it. Think of time as space, and you’ll be fine.

There’s this statue. It’s in the center of the town. The town is not a wealthy place. Everybody has hardships. It’s like the town where if all the sad people in Hans Christian Andersen stories all lived in one place. This is that town. It’s grim, but Grimm’s is a whole different collection of stories. It’s a bad title for a book for kids. Almost as bad at Richard Scary, and yeah I know it’s two r’s but what’s the point? Scarry is even worse if you think about it.

So there’s all these people trying to get through it all. There’s a composer who is running out of ink or oil and either his lamp is low on oil or his pen is low on ink. See, real problems. And there’s a girl who needs to help her father who is sick and she doesn’t have enough ribbons to sell or something very sad. And there is a swallow who had plans to fly south. He stopped flying, though, when he heard this statue say, “Swallow, little swallow.”

So the swallow alights on the shoulder of this statue. He notices that the entire statue is painted with actual gold. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he knows. That’s the key to great storytelling. Get right to it. Don’t get lost on all the side roads or soon you will understand that is all side roads and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t told a story.

It’s autumn, and the sparrow knows that this is his chance to get it right, to help someone, and not be greedy. He is in love with a reed (It’s Wilde. Art just has to be beautiful) somewhere in the South (we aren’t even told what country we’re all in), but he feels bad for the Happy Prince all covered in gold. He also noticed that the Happy Prince had sapphires for eyes and rubies for his lips, who was this guy?—Oh, and he had emeralds and diamonds (of course he did) in the hilt of his, yes, silver sword.

“They call me the happy prince. They call me that because all my life I was always happy. Everything came to me before I even asked. I was surrounded with beauty, with nothing but beauty.”

“And the problem?” asked the swallow.

“Swallow, little swallow,” said the statue, “I was only happy because I never stepped outside the walls of the palace. No one ever told me—” he caught hit breath—"Noone ever told me so much sadness and suffering—Now I see, and I see it all the time.” He breathed in, reset his shoulders. “Swallow, little swallow, Do you see that girl in the window there. She is tending to her sick father, and she has run out of money and no one will help her.”

“Yes,” said the swallow, “I see her.”

“I want her to be cared for. Take the diamonds from my sword and deliver them to her.”

This, the swallow did. And the Happy Prince felt a real happiness.

The following day, the swallow was nestled asleep in a small space under the Happy Prince’s hat.

“Swallow, swallow, little swallow,” said the statue.

“Yes, yes, I am awake,” said the swallow fluttering his wings awake.

“There is a young man in the window above the well. Do you see?”

“Yes, I do . . . .”

At this moment, my father and my mother returned from the party. The babysitter was sent off. I returned to the last part of the story. The swallow had, by the time things had settled again in this world, dispatched rubies and diamonds to all the people in the village. The prince asked the swallow to take the gold they had painted him with, so foolishly, and the swallow delivered this gold as instructed so the village would all it needed for generations to come. As the swallow flew, he felt the chill of the winter wind. Soon frost would form on his feathers then he would never see the beautiful reed he loved.

Men from the town council stood at the base of the prince’s statue.
”Hmmph, now that the town is so successful we really ought to have a better avatar than this horror,” said one man.

“I shall have it melted down by noon tomorrow. We shall make something that really speaks to the heart of our village.”

A day passed. The prince did not hear from the swallow.

Another day passed, and the prince was placed on fire and went to sleep, closing his eyes to the world he was thankful to have seen.

And God asked an angel to go down the earth and find something beautiful that will make God have any faith in these humans at all.

My father had joined me on the couch. I was crying. He was crying as well. By the time the angel was scooping up the frozen-to-death swallow and the lead heart of the prince and flying them back to heaven, I was in deep sobs, bigger sobs than I had ever had to cry ever before because every single show I had watched in my six years always had a happy ending. There was Charlotte’s Web that I had heard about in recess and steered clear. I sobbed and sobbed as the credits went up the screen for so many people who must have been just devasted the entire time they made this masterpiece.

My father was crying hard now, too. The two of us were a mess. I was kind of glad not to be alone in my witness to the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. I also wasn’t sure who should comfort whom. So we just sat there side by side while the music kept going long enough to support our grief. It was just a little bit louder than my father crying, though not for the same reason as me. His dad had died in a car accident, and their last conversation had been a fight, but we could still cry together, each in our own heart-exploding sorrow. This could happen in this world.

The reason I am telling you this is that this evening at around 6:15 in Asheville, North Carolina, I walked outside a store with my daughter. The store is massive, and it is in a line of other massive stores. The parking lot shares a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. And when we stepped outside we saw this sunset over and involving the mountains. Not just breathtaking, breathmaking. Just gorgeous. We and other people were oohs and aaahs about it. And we got our phones in our hands and held them up to this almost-as-good-as-the-northern-lights sunset. And we looked to our right all the way up to Lowe’s, and to our left all the way to Office Max. And we saw everybody doing this. In the parking lot, all along the curb and sidewalk, one lady in the middle of the road almost as though she wanted to get the absolute best picture of this magnificent light and was willing to risk being hit by a car, or maybe she would direct the imaginary driver’s attention to the sky because something beautiful was going on. Just beautiful enough to give us a little bit of hope. We all saw it. And it awed us.