Here it is, Christmas again, and
instead of thinking about Bethlehem and the manger, I am thinking about
Job. Once, I asked my friends Mary Ann
and Danna to discuss Job with me. It’s a
very ancient tale by scholarly accounts and pre-dates the Christian era by
about four hundred years.[i]
The tale is old, but the concern is the same.
Why do bad things happen to good people? It sounded like it would make a
good topic for discussion, but it was a futile exercise because Danna is a
committed atheist and refuses to treat God as a character in the story, and
Mary Ann is a feminist whose main concern is Job’s wife’s suggestion to “eat
dirt and die” sometimes translated as “curse God and die”.
I called my brother,
Norman, and he reminded me of the idea of infinite regress, reasons for reasons
and so on and on. He brings up the old
problem of circularity as in the chicken or egg proposition. These are ideas that make people
uncomfortable. My brother suggests this
phrase as an alternative: “Things happen
and I reason.” We share a laugh, and a
Merry Christmas wish. I miss my brother
at Christmas, but North Carolina is a long drive. We are getting older, and we have fewer
family members.
I
am attracted to the beginning of Job’s tale that shows God is an entity that
will bet. Satan taunts God, and God
takes him up on a proposition to test Job.
First Satan is allowed to take away Job’s worldly possessions and family
members and then his bodily health and comfort.
Job has many friends who posit reasons for his affliction based on the
assumption that God punishes for a reason.
Their ideas would fuel the contemporary self-improvement industry with
many new book titles. How about: God is Just; Learn Seven Ways to Avoid
Being Wicked or Perverse. Job
maintains that he is puzzled, and, in the end, he demands to speak directly to
God. I am not a scholar, but I think it
is unusual for God to appear because a human demands it. God appears to Job in a whirlwind, and,
basically, the answer is who are you to question me. I am God.
I made the universe. That
reason still stands today. It is
inscrutable.
Huntington’s
Disease (HD) runs in my family. [ii]
It has wiped out substantial numbers of relatives all of whom are missed this
time of year. It is a dominant
gene. This is how it works: If you inherit the gene you get the
disease. It’s a 50/50 proposition
provided you don’t have two parents with HD which would increase the chances
significantly. It is a disease that
secretly begins at birth. You can’t be a
recessive carrier. If you luck out, you
and your future children are safe from HD.
I am safe as is my brother, son and three other cousins who lucked out
in the great HD lottery.
Any gene negative child will end up as a caregiver to an affected parent or family member. Caregivers are under constant stress. Death usually happens before the age of fifty. My great-grandfather lived into his sixties, but my grandmother, aunt and two cousins all died between forty-five and forty-nine. The death is a hard one very like ALS. Woody Guthrie died of HD. My younger cousin, Sarah, kept track of Woody’s son, Arlo, as if his fate was tied to hers. We used to watch Alice's Restaurant at Thanksgiving and nod knowingly at Arlo's declaration that HD ran in his family. We would laugh when that fact did not disqualify him from the draft. Instead, it was the arrest for littering. People in an HD family see the signs years before the serious symptoms manifest. It is just a little something in the gait and a slight movement of the lips. Sarah lived with me for many years until I was no longer able to help her.
Any gene negative child will end up as a caregiver to an affected parent or family member. Caregivers are under constant stress. Death usually happens before the age of fifty. My great-grandfather lived into his sixties, but my grandmother, aunt and two cousins all died between forty-five and forty-nine. The death is a hard one very like ALS. Woody Guthrie died of HD. My younger cousin, Sarah, kept track of Woody’s son, Arlo, as if his fate was tied to hers. We used to watch Alice's Restaurant at Thanksgiving and nod knowingly at Arlo's declaration that HD ran in his family. We would laugh when that fact did not disqualify him from the draft. Instead, it was the arrest for littering. People in an HD family see the signs years before the serious symptoms manifest. It is just a little something in the gait and a slight movement of the lips. Sarah lived with me for many years until I was no longer able to help her.
Sarah loved
Christmas. In the late 1970’s we did not
have much money and wanted a free tree, so we staked out a good one growing by
the side of the road. On a starry night,
we got into our plum colored Gremlin and slowly drove up the West Saugerties
Road. With our object spotted, we jumped
out of the car, sawed it down and stuffed it in the back seat then beat a quick
retreat to Boggs Hill. We decorated the
little tree and celebrated heartily with a glass of wine and cigarette.
In later years, we
laughed at the memory of our purloined tree. Sarah died at age 48. Then, Sarah’s younger sister, Nola died. [iii]
As I stood with Nola’s two children in the Woodstock Cemetery, I tried to look
at them with the eyes of a stranger. I
did not really know them, they have grown up in Chicago and Italy, and it was a
relief to distance myself from them.
When I was a
child, I wondered why my mother never mentioned her mother. There were no “mom” stories, no memories of
books shared, and no Christmas moments.
I now think it was Delayed Stress Syndrome. My mother’s teen years were shared with a
mother with HD. In all, my mother saw
five family members come down with HD, and she did not have the advantage of
understanding the whole genetic proposition.
The disease was simply referred to as “The VB curse.” She must have
lived many years in fear of that curse.
Fear of the VB
curse probably made my mother the unbeliever she became in her life. She once told me that her maternal
grandfather (an HD victim) said that only bad people went to church, and she
believed him. When I wanted to go to
Sunday school like the rest of the kids, she would just drop me off at the
village green in front of the Dutch Reformed Church. I was on my own.
Job was a
practitioner of his religion. That is
why God chose him. Job was very careful
in his practice to offer burnt offerings for all of his family members in case
they had neglected their own duties. “For
Job said it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their
hearts. Thus did Job continually.” Feminists will note that he did not seem to
have the same problem about his daughters.
I have always thought of a practitioner as a person with a context for
devotion. (I think I might have read
that somewhere.) Burnt offerings did it
for Job. [iv]
Before Sarah lived
with me, she and her husband, Carl, lived with our grandfather Henry
Wilgus. He was getting elderly and
didn’t mind the company. One night, I
got a call from her. I could hear
Grandpa’s voice in the background loud and insistent. Sarah was alarmed and asked me to come down
and see what was causing the problem. I
arrived and could see right away that the main problem was a half-pint of
whiskey tucked into the cushions of the easy chair. He wanted me to know that there were diseases
older than the Bible, and that I should beware.
He was no more specific. I knew what he meant. He had cared for his father in law, wife and
daughter, and, now, we both could see the very early symptoms in Sarah’s walk.
Henry had seen generations die of HD. I changed the subject to other things,
and he calmed a bit. Then, he asked me
to someday write a book called A Country
Store about his adventures as owner of the High Woods Store. Grandpa was a transplanted Jersey boy. He was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
If I could go back
in time as an observer able to view the scene, hear the voices and smell the
cooking smells of a Sunday dinner at my grandfather, Henry Wilgus’s country
store in High Woods – If I could really go back for one hour with the Ghost of
Christmas Past – I would be joyful.
Instead, I have to rely on my seventy year old “mind’s eye” and the
helpful advice of other family members.
Dinner was at
twelve on Sundays. There would be a
dozen or so places set at a table for family and others who might happen
by. Kids would zoom around the empty
dance floor or, in the summer, look for new kittens, search out wild
strawberries or, hang around the rail near the “High Woods Honor Roll” sign at
the corner. Henry had created and placed
the sign there to honor local people who served in WWII. (Eventually, the County made him take it down
as it was not properly authorized to be that close to the road).
Seated, then, at
the long table, bowls of food would pass from hand-to-hand. There were always boiled potatoes, mushrooms
in savory gravy, canned peas, and a baked meat such as chicken or fish. A stack of white Bond bread cut in half and butter
would always accompany the meal. Dessert
would sometimes be canned peaches or fruit salad, but there was always the
option of strawberry, chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
Henry was an
active man always ready with lively conversation. For kids, the opening line was often, ”I’ll
give you a nickel if you can spell Mississippi."
That was a good deal since a candy bar cost a nickel. For fellow fishermen, such as fiddle player and
dance caller, Percy Hill, there were good natured gibes such as “You’re a god damned liar” as
they engaged in the fun of tall fishing tales.
There were true quarrymen, like George Whittaker, who would come in
after 1 PM for a beer. (No alcohol until
1:00)
I think I will
start a blog on the subject of Henry Wilgus’s country store. I don’t know where it will lead, but I do
know that there was once a shining bit of true American rural life centered in
a small part of Saugerties, New York called High Woods. The people were fun, inclusive, intelligent
and brave. They loved nature and tended
to be quite patriotic. Their meeting
place, for a time, was a small country store that had a small filling station,
served beer, and had a dance floor and juke box. Local artists and writers felt comfortable there and came by for beer and dancing. Everyone did know your name, and, if you were
new, they would learn it right away.
[ii] HD used
to be known as Huntington ’s chorea because of the uncontrollable movements
that develop in the course of the disease.
[iii] Nola
Dashing about illuminated with a warm smile-- That
was Nola as a child. She was the
youngest of all the cousins. As the
baby, she was allowed large amounts of mischief. She would sit on your lap for a moment, and
then be off again. She was Grandpa’s
pride and joy, and well loved by her parents.
My most resilient thoughts are of Nola as a little, little girl. Full of mischief and exuberance.
You could tell that she liked to be happy
and her enjoyment was infectious and made everyone else a little happier too. She had a great capacity for love.
When Tammy and Nola came to Woodstock, we were
overjoyed to find our dear Nola with the same wit and fun nature undimmed by
her HD symptoms. It was especially nice
for her Aunt May to see her again.
[iv] Cato in
his treatise on agriculture reminds the housekeeper in the rural manor that
‘the master practices religion for the entire household’.” P. 17 vol 1 Boggs, Norman Towar. The Christian Saga.
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