Lives and mothers

The unexamined life is not worth living. Or is it, isn’t worth living? What was it in the original Greek? Plato said it, or Socrates, or Aristotle. I think it was Socrates. These men were forever saying quotable things. One feels it would have been near kingly to have lived in that time as an amanuensis, recording thoughts for the future.

At times, I want to remind Plato that the examined life is not entirely all it’s cracked up to be. It was Swift in Gulliver’s Travels who elucidates this point so finely, where an increased visual aptitude leads to the discovery of flaws in what Gulliver thought was a flaweless woman.

Sometimes I’ll watch a television show and wonder about the lives of the characters, and I’ll have to stop myself from going much further, and instead, I’ll wonder about the lives of the people playing the characters, whether they’re happy, if acting on this show is everything they dreamed it could be, if they have a dog, or children, or a drinking habit. Examining the lives of others is not worth doing.

A beautiful thing happened on the way to work today. Okay, a beautiful thing did not happen on the way to work today. However, what if it had? Imagine how much better my day might have been? In fact, in retrospect, as life is always expertly lived in hindsight, something beautiful did happen on the way to work. I was standing on the sidewalk, near puddles on the garden path, and my daughter asked me to smell a pink azalea with her. It didn’t smell like anything, and in fact, all she asked me to do was touch it, and it was not beautiful, because I was thinking about the traffic coming, and the sunlight, and the hour of the day, but when looked at from some distance, you could see how it could be thought of as beautiful.

Today is the sort of day that a person should be reflecting on their mother. My mother was young once and lived in the Midwest. Later, when I knew her better, she was my mother. I remember her near boundless capacity for reading books to her three eager children, of Lions and Witches and Wardrobes and Taran wandering towards becoming the High King. I also remember my boundless capacity for sleep. And later, as we aged, I remember her boundless capacity for falling asleep while reading, the words starting to slur together, and our, or perhaps just my gentle nudges, trying to remind her to stay awake.

I blame her for my own interest in reading. Live long enough and you’ll be able to blame your parents for all your failings. I wish she’d have been teaching me to use an abacus or learn microfinance, but I fear that sleep may have taken both of us too soon had that been the case.

I remember too, walking during the evening with my mother, the wind just beginning to rise, to life the veil of oppressive heat from our home in the valley. We’d walk by small culverts where the frogs were serenading one another, towards the foothills, blue at the end of the day. We’d talk about the things that were important to me back then, school, girls, God, and she’d listen. She’d listen.  And sometimes, many times, that’s all that a son could ask for.