The Ant in the Attic

Behind my childhood home in the ideally named community of Deephaven there was an old two-bay garage and storage area, which our family called the Old Garage. The garage itself housed a vintage Ford truck, at least for a time, which has some connection in my mind with my grandfather’s handyman Walt Trolson. Across from the entrance of the garage was a square enclosure with cinderblock walls about four feet high. Here our dad regularly burned the family trash—a ritual that probably is no longer permitted in suburban Minneapolis. The Incinerator (another Icon on the map of my childhood) was the scene for one of the great dramas of my first years, the night my sister “fell in the fire.” This left her with burns treated by a doctor who still made house calls, but no permanent injury that I’m aware of. I know that it also left my father with a terrible pang of guilt every time he thought of the moment of inattention that had led to his daughter’s mishap. 

Still, sorry Sis, sorry Dad, the Old Garage moment that is most indelibly imprinted on my mind today was not this high drama. In fact, it was no drama at all. It was the seeing, and mine alone, of a solitary ant, which happened across my field of vision while I was playing in the attic over the Old Garage with Billy or David or Tommy or Shelly or  some other boyhood pal. I realized, seeing the ant in that moment, that I was likely the only human being who would ever see it; and that it otherwise would live and die unseen by anyone, except by other ants, possibly by a predator that would end its brief, inconsequential ant life. 

The next question that occurred to me and the only vital question, it seems to me now, was, Does God see the ant? Implicit in that question was the realization, at some deep level of me, that if God did see the ant, then the ant mattered, the ant had meaning, the ant had a place in creation. And, horrible thought, if God did not see the ant, then God might as well not exist. Indeed, God might not exist at all. 

I want to express my experience as clearly as possible and without any exaggeration. It may be that this did not occur to me all at once but arose as a realization in my child’s mind over a period of time. But the realization was this, that the meaning of all existence depended on whether or not God saw that ant. 

This is a more important matter than Walt Trolson’s connection with the Ford truck or even my sister’s admittedly traumatic close encounter with trash on fire. This is the only question there is. 

Because if God did not see that ant, then he probably doesn’t see me or my sister or our dear departed Dad or even Walt Trolson. And then where are we?

Approaching the Bridge

It all goes back to my grandfather, Daniel Bull. His 31-page memoir inspired me to spend thirty years listening to the life stories of 80-year-old people. That was the essence of my one-man business, Memoirs Unlimited, a private ghostwriting service. From 1988 until two years ago, I interviewed elders and edited their stories into private books of memory. Now finally surrendered to retirement, I have left that professional writing life behind. 

What you learn following a parade of 80-somethings through the towns of their lives is that by that age most things drop away. It’s delightful to share time with someone for whom ego is only a Latin pronoun. Eighty-somethings, or the successful ones with whom I worked, have ceased obsessing about themselves and their accomplishments. They were all more interested in memorializing their parents and grandparents than their own doings. My clients knew they were leaving this earth and soon—crossing the bridge from which there is no coming back, wanting to leave a few precious things behind on this side of the chasm. They entrusted these things to me to assemble into a book. 

Now 70 myself, I realize that my own dropping-away is here and ongoing. I saw this last night as I watched the only professional sport with any attraction for me anymore, NFL football. NBA: too woke. NHL: too cold. Baseball: wake me when it’s over. I missed the end of “the game of the year,” Mahomes over Allen, Chiefs over Bills in OT, because I just don’t care. Maybe it was the Patriots’ lackluster exit from the 21-22 season that did it for me, but I think it’s more than that. I am approaching the bridge, still in the distance but near enough to see. And all that matters is the One waiting patiently on the other side. 

This morning I fly back to Florida, where my wife and our condo and croquet club await. I will be jetting back and forth once a month, probably all year long, because I have a foot in both places now: here where we raised our kids and still have a home that is far too big for two old people; and there where I’ve found that 900 square feet of condo contain just about everything I need.

Also, I am flying back and forth because I’m in formation to be a spiritual director, a three-year process of instruction, practical training, and supervision beneath the enormous circus tent of the Catholic church in a small concession manned by Oblates of the Virgin Mary. Between now and October, that training includes service as a prayer companion to individuals who want to deepen their relationship with the One who waits and watches. I have prayer companions now in both Massachusetts and Florida, and Zoom, except in need, doesn’t cut it. 

This vocation, which grows in me, is mobile; relies on no fixed location; can be applied in a church, in my office, on a park bench, on a beach—wherever two are gathered together. Or three. Because He, that One waiting there, is also standing here. Always and wherever we are.  

Now and again, I am privileged to be sharing the life stories of others. 

My Morning Page

For forty years I wrote for food while thinking, When I get to seventy, I'll write for love. 

My role model was Norman Maclean, author of my favorite work of non-religious* nonfiction, Young Men and Fire. Maclean was a revered teacher at U Chicago who wrote only academic papers and books until the age of seventy. Then, thinking he was about nothing more than putting down a few stories for his children, he wrote the luminous A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories and the posthumously published YM&F.

Now that I'm seventy, like Norman Maclean, though still eight years short of the age at which Grandma Moses began painting for serious, I have told myself until very recently that I'm too tired and that writing is too hard. 

In the last month or so, though, I find that I have more energy. It's partly the Noom diet, with which I lost 15 percent of my body weight since midsummer; and it's partly the Noom exercise program, which invites me to perform things like burpees, something I haven't even said since I stopped playing schoolboy lacrosse fifty-three years ago. Today, I have more energy, and I surprised myself by actually springing up yesterday at the words “Let us pray.” 

That’s not the only reason I am writing my first post in nearly five years, however. The trigger was a text from my friend Todd at three in the morning Friday. It read: 

My main main man who may be up this early, I am here with Jane and I want to access your blog entries from our trip desperately to read and reminisce, could you grant me access

I was up, as usual, at three in the morning, and Todd and Jane were too because they were on the “overnight” at Pat House, a L’Arche home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The exchange that followed led to my reopening this blog to public view. 

Todd and Jane were, as you'll read under the L'ARCHE entries at left and right, the two L'Arche assistants with whom I took a cross-country trip five years ago, in company of core members Woody, Doris, and John. This trip was the culmination of my two years “in Community,” as L’Archers say, and one of the peaks on my life map.

It was deeply gratifying to realize before dawn on Friday that by chronicling our days on the road in the L’Archmobile (my 2016 Toyota Sienna minivan), I had performed a small, very small, service for two friends to whom I am devoted. 

It is with that smallness in mind—and heaven protect me not with delusions of grandeur—that I take up keyboard and courage, proposing now to write a bit every day. I will take inspiration from a dear writer friend of mine who every day upon waking sits down to her “morning pages.”

Lord, give me the courage and the discernment to write briefly each day my own morning pages—

—from experience

—without politics or ideology

—without mentioning family members by name

—with faith

—with hope

—with sobriety   

I’ll conclude this morning page with the famous words of my beautiful grandchild (they know who they are), “Amen, alleluia, boat!”

*NOTE: Actually, YM&F is quite religious, though I suspect Maclean, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was unchurched in adulthood if not outright atheist.