The Boy Left in Eden

The Boy Left in Eden

Written January 28, 2008

Edited September 1, 2022

We've had bad luck with children; they've all grown up.

Christopher Morley

 

           Nostalgia is an elixir to me.  The ability to circumvent time would be my first request of a magic genie.  It is a power I covet more than a typical child desires the ability to fly.  My favorite movies are those about time travel.  I was enthralled by H. G. Wells’, The Time Machine, much more for the fantasy of watching Rod Taylor pass through the ages aboard his miracle device than for the author’s more poignant theme of social commentary. My wife, Jennifer, has exclaimed about me, “I’ve never known anyone who wanted to go back as much as he does.”  Guilty as charged.  Once I tried to submit to hypnosis because I was led to understand that the effect is much like a time machine, allowing one to access a moment of one’s choosing and experience the sights, smells, auditory and tactile stimuli of specific past events.  Alas, the attempt failed, probably because as the watch swung before my eyes I was as excited as a five-year-old on Christmas morning. 

                I’ve been skulking around the earth for over half a century and now my own past is history.   Even after fifty years, the very nature of my world eludes me.  I still don’t know where I am, or even what I am.  I may be nothing more than recycled material associated with an isolated consciousness, marooned in an inscrutable universe that is fated, according to the latest science, for a cold, lifeless eternity.  And what of consciousness?  Is it nothing more than a clever adaptation that gives Homo sapiens a leg up in out-competing other species for scarce resources?  Or does the uniquely human trait of self-reflection have a basis in an ethereal spirit beyond the process of replicating DNA? 

            The child from whom I am derived has faded into that hazy realm of the past, obscured by the veil of time that nostalgia longs to breach. That boy possessed a divine innocence; an innate link to the world around him that, if revisited, might provide insight into questions that haunt me today.  It is a trick of the universe that when a child gains the ability of self-reflection his unity with nature is sacrificed in the bargain.  Blithe serenity is traded for anxious awareness.  In possession of whatever wisdom the years have bestowed, I endeavor to reconnect to the lost boy so that I can once again experience the world through his senses, gaining, perhaps, serene awareness.  Lacking a machine that winds back the clock, my only available tool is my conscious mind.  I meditate to “stand in the moment,” to allow my consciousness, funded liberally by its vast museum basement called the unconscious, to return to a time and place behind the veil.    Philosophy and science contend that time may not be what it seems, that all moments persist forever, suggesting accessibility to the past.  In the fashion of Dickens’ Scrooge, led by the ghost of Christmas past, I look in on the boy who I lost 46 years ago. 

         I can see him in the backyard of his home on a sultry summer day.  He is ten years old, wearing dirty and worn shorts and t-shirt, lying on his back in the grass, motionless, arms and legs splayed, his gaze fixed skyward, peering through the high branches of a giant, looming, pine tree.  An airplane drones somewhere far away and cicadas whir in the nearby trees, their song intermittently winding up to a crescendo then trailing off to peter out in a solitary, dying buzz.  The pause in their aria is punctuated by the monotonous whine of the distant plane.  The boy’s thoughts, sensations, and emotions, along with his material self and the rest of his universe are all gathered into a unit called a day, or, more precisely, an afternoon, this one hot and humid, a "dog-day afternoon." This day is contained in a larger unit called August, itself part of something called a year, specifically the one designated 1962. 

          The dog-day ennui has become a common state of his spirit of late, and it usually persists until the onset of a later segment of the day called the evening.  Then, as the cicadas quite, the Sun retreats, and the mugginess abates, the atmosphere about him transforms.  Soft, cooling breezes and chirping crickets seize the stage.  And if a thunderstorm gathers and the sky darkens and the breezes grow into gusts, then his lassitude miraculously changes into something pleasant and nurturing.  As the storm approaches, he seeks refuge in the house, where, from the window in the upstairs den, he revels in the spectacle of the oncoming tempest bearing down upon his world.  The den is extra cozy when rain pummels the roof and windows as he kneels over a board game laid out on the floor. Dice tumbling across a sturdy cardboard surface produce a thick, rich clatter. He might take up residence on a soft couch and delve into a fascinating book as the stormy afternoon sky looms dark just beyond the window.  His favorites are books that describe the interesting ways of insects, their ingenious habits, the subjects illustrated with pictures that depict monstrous eyes and mouthparts, bizarre antennae, and angular appendages.    

         This afternoon featured neither a breeze nor any hint of a thunderstorm and the boy sought relief from the heat in the cool grass beneath the towering pine.  He peers at the sky, listening to his world, effortlessly still, maintaining an unbroken gaze; while his thoughts gallop off, like a dog at play, into the clouds and over the horizon of his mind.   He lies in perfect union with the earth and sky in the eternity of each moment until his roving psyche scampers back to reestablish contact.  Then it charges off again to nowhere, leaving his body in stillness. 

          The languorous afternoon stands in stark contrast to the typical summer Saturday evening when neighbors gather with his family under the old pavilion that stands in the back of the yard.  A simple, hipped, shingled roof supported by rough-hewn corner-posts shades a large picnic table on a concrete pad.  An ancient grill broadcasts the aroma of sizzling steaks that have marinated all day in Worcestershire sauce, freshly ground black pepper, onions, garlic, and olive oil.  German potato salad, tomatoes from his uncle’s garden, and fresh corn on the cob slathered in butter round out the fare.  The feast is completed with hand-churned ice cream and his grandmother’s pineapple upside down cake. Ron Howard’s seven-year-old voice singing “Gary, Indiana'' bursts forth from speakers of the stereo that his father set to full volume and aimed at the porch windows, so that his favorite 33LP, the soundtrack from “The Music Man,” could fill the evening air.  The boy, along with the other children, streaks across the yard in pursuit of lightning bugs rising in the gloaming, collecting them in empty peanut butter jars to create living lanterns against the nighttime shadows. 

           But on this August day, like many others of late, as he lies under the giant pine, his thoughts turn to death, the ultimate transformation of all living things that is shrouded in such deep mystery that even his parents cannot explain.  In years past, he laid with his grandmother, preparing to nap, her fleshy arm draped over him while her musty essence pervaded the room.  When he asked her about dying, she described a crystal heaven replete with streets of gold that would welcome all good people upon their passage through the one-way portal, a place her late husband dwelled in right now and where she was anxious to join him. 

        He thinks back on his only experience of human death, that of Pop Acker, the old man who lived across the street, the father of his beloved babysitter, Joanie.  The boy, four years old then, witnessed as much as his elders would allow.  He pedaled his tricycle up and down the sidewalk on his side of the street as cars arrived and departed and adults with serious expressions hustled up and down the front steps to enter and exit the Acker home, while some lingered on the large front porch, waiting.  Important doings were progressing within, and he longed to be there himself, watching the spectacle firsthand.  But his mother, who was herself in the Acker house and no doubt presiding over the event, had issued strict instructions on his boundaries upon her departure.  Pop Acker was dying, she had told him, and although that house had always been open to the boy, no need to even knock first, today it was off limits.  The mutters of distant conversation that prevailed all day were suddenly broken by forlorn wails and a short time later a big, solid-black automobile arrived.  A man in a suit as black as the car emerged and entered the Acker house.  Pop Acker was dead and the boy, peering at the scene from the seat of his tricycle, was full of wonder and curiosity.  That evening, many of the neighbors congregated at his house for dinner, and the boy approached his mother, who was filling the dishwasher.

“Did you see Pop Acker die?” he asked.   

“Yes,” she replied in her detached way that implied he was not to inquire further.  But this was too big and he couldn’t restrain himself. 

“What did he look like when he died?  What did he do?” 

She turned quickly, holding a dripping plate in one hand, a dish towel in the other, and knelt toward him.  Her eyes opened wide as she puffed her cheeks, then blew out a hard breath.  Then her mouth formed a circle, and she sucked in hard.  Her eyes fixed in a gaze, she held her breath, tensed her quivering face and retained the pose momentarily for full effect.  Just as suddenly, and without a word, she went back to her dishes.  He inquired no further.      

        Pop Acker’s viewing ensued a few days later.  The boy had gleaned information from the adults to learn that the corpse would actually be on display!  To his amazement and delight, he would be allowed to attend.  At the funeral home, standing amongst the knees and thighs of the assembled adults who murmured in low tones, he looked up at his uncle Bill, who rarely denied a request, and asked him to pick him up so that he could see the body.  His uncle lifted him and carried him to the casket.  Pop Acker was laid out in a formal suit of clothes, nothing like he had ever seen the man wear when he was alive.  His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be sleeping.  His skin looked unreal, too shiny, like rubber.  The boy leaned out from the grasp of his uncle, who made no attempt to restrain him.  He touched the rubber hand and marveled at how cold it felt.  Pop Acker made no response.  Clearly, he was not just asleep.  There was no life in that body.    

        Six years later, on this August afternoon, the boy investigated his world.  He knelt transfixed for a half hour or more over an ant hill, watching its denizens transfer into their nest, bit by bit, a morsel of ham he had placed in their vicinity.  Later he captured a large carpenter ant and cast it into a spider’s web that hung on the back wall of the detached garage adjacent to the house.  He looked on in utter absorption as the spider bound its writhing prey, finishing it off with poisonous bites.  His fascination was tempered only slightly by guilt and sadness. 

          Emerging from the garage he sought refuge from the heat in the cool grass under the pine tree where we found him. The cicadas whirred their incessant song, the airplane droned in the distance, and he was lonely, although his naïve brain had no word for the sensation.  A growing sense of separation that had begun to infect his psyche years earlier had expanded, ever so slowly.  Now it dominated his mood much of the time but never quite surfaced as a tangible thought.  It loomed in the background, coloring his perceptions.  Sweltering in the grass the prostrate boy recalled the coldness of Pop Acker’s embalmed hand, and the insidious process arrived upon a tipping point.  It congealed into a sense that he was isolated, alone and aching for a lost connection.  And with that … the boy was gone, cast out of Eden. 

         I am no longer the boy who lay on the grass a half a century ago in the backyard of his house under the giant pine tree.  Seemingly not in spirit and certainly not in tangible material.  Every particle of matter that comprised his body is now someplace else, a bit here and a bit there – part of the grass perhaps, or the soil beneath, or other, far distant soil, part of a river or an ocean, and maybe even part of you.  Every organ has been changed out, and in place of each, a replica has been installed.  The replacement parts are not as good as the originals; they don’t work quite as well. Just a minute or two of reclined posture on my back in the grass nowadays and my muscles begin to cramp and grumble.  My mind stays close to home, plodding along well-worn paths that come nowhere near to breaching the horizon.

        I’ve seen other living things, including people, deteriorate over time as their parts were gradually exchanged for less competent replacements, until the process ceased altogether. The corpse, forsaken by life's magical spark, melts back into the soil from which it sprung.  I have seen bodies in all stages of decay, but I have never caught a glimpse of the departing emotions and thoughts, which, at the moment of death, escape through some hidden back passage along with the life force that kept the whole enterprise operating.   Or perhaps the “life force”, the consciousness of being, was composed only of neural synapses and organic compounds that disintegrated along with the rest of the corpus back into the earth.

        Forty-six years have passed since the boy and I became separated.  But that very moment exists in the conscious “now” of some sentient creature who dwells millions of light years across our relativistic universe.  For, as this being moves about, his “now slice” cuts into history predating my birth or pivots into a future beyond my death, and all moments in between, depending on his direction of travel.  Albert Einstein described this vagary of our universe in 1905, inspiring him to conclude that “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”  

          Ponder for a moment the enigmatic words we use to try to describe temporal events.  Soon it will be later, but later never comes because wherever I am, it’s always now.  I remember then, and I occasionally notice now, but I can never remember soon or anytime later for that matter.  I only occasionally notice now because I’m often busy anticipating later.  Anticipating is like backwards remembering.  Both memory and anticipation are sometimes inaccurate. depending upon mood.  Mark Twain once said, “I have arrived at an age where the only things I remember are things that never happened at all.” 

            The egoless boy is gone, and I remain in his stead.  The encumbering ego imposes itself on my mind in such a way as to dampen fascination, relentlessly diverting my attention to matters pertaining to pride and self-image.  It commandeers my focus, colors my vision, and taints my perspective.  So, I’ve been searching for the boy in this mysterious place, the egoless boy who investigated his world with unfettered vision. I came across a poem that reminded me of him because it describes him so well.  Perhaps it will evoke a memory of your own. 

 

     To A Child

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast, and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee—

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build;
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life's queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange divinity still kept.

Being, that now absorbs you, all
Harmonious, unit, integral,
Will shred into perplexing bits,—
Oh, contradictions of the wits!

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
may make you poet, too, in time—
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!

 

Christopher Morley

 

         I discovered that poem when my own son, Geoffrey, was four years old, and in him I saw something that I longed for so much in myself, that child who accepts life’s queer conundrums.  I need to talk to the lost child.  I want to ask him some questions.  I used to believe that I needed to console him, to hold him and tell him that he is loved.  But I’ve come to realize it’s the other way around.  I am the child of that boy.  This place that I don’t understand changed out all his parts to make me.  Not just all the molecules of his body but also his unpretentious connection to the universe.  I still occasionally, during a walk, look in on an anthill, but I don’t recall how to be utterly captivated by it.  I can’t kneel for so long on the sidewalk and maintain an uninterrupted focus.  While washing dishes a few days ago I looked up from the sink to witness, in the corner of the window sash, a mayfly struggling in a spider’s web.  It thrashed its legs and wings in desperation as the spider busily entwined it then moved in for the kill.  Revulsion and something like fear shoved fascination aside.  

        Recently I returned to that back yard of my childhood.  It appears so much smaller than I remember.  The huge pine tree that provided shade a half century ago is gone.  Cluttered rhododendron beds and overgrown shrubs dominate the terrain, and any otherwise unencumbered ground is paved with winding gravel paths that disappear into the brush.  The vast expanse that we ran across as children has been obliterated by a tangle of vines and shrubs.  The old pavilion, site of so many summer revelries, was demolished long ago.  From the adjacent street I peer into the confines of my boyhood realm.  In this moment, from this place, my mind streaks across the universe to an unknown planet in a distant galaxy and mysteriously melds with the perspective of another who has ambled into my 1962 and paused for a moment, perhaps himself reminiscing on a lost past.   I hear the echo of children’s laughter as they pursue luminescent insects on a summer eve, smell the wafting aroma of pepper steak searing on the old grill, the entire reminiscence surrounded by the convivial sounds of adults celebrating a summer Saturday night.  The resonance of “76 Trombones” rings through my memory, then wanes, replaced by the voice of Shirley Jones singing “I wish I may and I wish I might…”

Robert Preston joins in quietly, “Goodnight, my someone, goodnight.”

       In this inscrutable universe our experiences live forever. There is no less validity to the perspective of someone across the cosmos than there is to my own, and in his time-slice of now, as it crosses a planet called Earth, located on the outer arm of the Milky Way spiral galaxy, a ten year old boy is reclining in the cool grass on a sultry August day, lost in a timeless moment, without dismay, without pretense, his strange divinity still kept, a part of nature’s great, impulsive heart.