The Middle road

“Knowledge is not necessarily wisdom”-ancient Egyptian proverb.

The Middle Road
By: Jeanette Stevens

You could be in the same room with my father and not even know he was there. As a young girl I’d often wonder about this phenomenon. In order to contemplate how he could make himself invisible in a room filled with people I had to learn to do the same, in order to spend time watching him in awe. I would spend hours stalking him, waiting for him to come out of the bathroom, walking like a ninja behind his footsteps-where is he going now? What is he doing? I would often ask myself over and over till that alone became a mantra, my reason to be alive even though I didn’t understand why. You could call daddy five times before his eyes would blink away from the source of his absolute absorption, usually whatever was on the tube that night, often a documentary on PBS channel thirteen: nature, nova, wild America, a national geographic presentation; anything that would take him away from the reality of his life at large.

The whole world would fall away and soon he forgot you were even there. Time and again however he would narrate what he was watching. Marty Stouffer would begin about the great black bear of the Appalachian Mountains; daddy would include the size and mass of the creature. How the native American man, revered and cherished the bear, to be a man in certain tribes a rite of passage would include a battle with the beast-no part of the defeated animal would be spared by the people for the victor would become the embodiment of the bear; the spirit of the bear would become the spirit of the man that defeated it. Once he had unloaded this factoid my father would cease to speak, a loaded silence would befall the room I would be drawn into the world of the bear fighter missing another ten minutes of the program. Yet I was wiser, I understood a little more about the American black bear, and I believed any and everything my father said.

I spent the majority of my childhood waiting for a sign that I was special. I endured gratefully hours of lectures for a brief glimmer of recognition of who I was in his eyes. Birthdays and holidays were big in my family; the same people would always show-up: my maternal grandmother, uncle and aunt, cousins and depending on my two sisters and brother- a friend of theirs, would participate in the festivities as well. He would greet them at the door as they came in with “hey how are you? Say what time do you think you’ll be heading out later?” My father did this so often it became common knowledge that to visit us meant you should already know when the visit would end, your exit had to be planned before the shoes, and hat and coat had a chance to be removed. Better he knew this in advance than to be surprised with enduring any extra face time with those people-her (my mother’s) family. It was silent knowledge in our household that special occasions were the only time it was ok for anyone to come over. We rarely had company and God forbid someone show up unannounced, you needed to give him fair warning, otherwise he would manipulate the environment in such a way the tension would literally feel as if it was not only getting thicker but making it hard to breath embarrassing one and all; the poor visitor practically fleeing towards the door.

The lights would go out. Everyone in the apartment holding their breath, especially the birthday girl or boy, the cake my great aunt made from scratch three layered, frosted with homemade chocolate icing would wait glistening in the center of the table. Candles illuminating the faces of my mother and grandmother standing front and center glaring at us kids lest we dare swipe the cake with a finger, but someone was missing... Quickly everyone would look and see who was in attendance, there was always one face missing from the little gathering. “Where is Joe?” my uncle would say. For a second you realized that you hadn’t really seen him all night, which was impossible you would surmise nobody walked out the door….. In a small three bedroom apartment it was near impossible to slip out unnoticed. Yet somehow, daddy wasn’t there. Then someone (usually me, no matter if it were I about to blow out the candles) would break away to find out where he was. And right there! Right behind us in the living room he would be sitting in front of the television, the look of annoyance that was on his face when the festivities had begun and the guests had started to arrive hadn’t left his features; they had in fact marked his face the whole night. He wanted to be left alone, so alone that no one even noticed that he was there. The closer you walked across the peach carpeted living room floor to where he sat on the ancient brown couch, the thicker the air became. It felt like going into a room to be confronted by yet another door, you had to knock to get in, and only if he felt like it would you be allowed admittance. “Daddy we are about to sing happy birthday” tongue in teeth a long loud sucking noise would erupt from his mouth; his head and eyes rolled and lolled around like a bobble headed, googlie eyed, baby doll. Sometimes he would just get up after this brief display of pure irritated histrionics, joints cracking after so long being in repose. At other times a long stream of curse words and accusations, making you feel like a fool for sacrificing your man or womanhood for such as this. He would take his place somewhere in the back outside of the circle, the birthday child (either myself or a sibling) would feel the excitement filling them with importance and joy all of a sudden, for certainly this meant you were special-the big man got up to sing just for you, forget everyone else in attendance-what mattered was the big man standing in the back with the frown and the “hurry the fuck up” look on his face; the dull gleam the candles produced in his eyes. It didn’t even matter that before the lights were flicked he was back in front of the T.V. set.

I wanted always to be near him, I felt consumed with the feeling that I was in the presence of greatness. Every year for two months my father took a vacation from his job. A night job he has worked all of my childhood and adult life. It took almost thirteen years but eventually I learned his career to be a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home in Harlem, NY. The subject of his employment was never a topic for discussion-period, you didn’t ask-it was none of your business, like asking the age of an elder; forbidden. I looked forward to his vacations this meant that we didn’t have to sleep at night without him; it was like the whole apartment was wrapped in this blanket of protection. The vacations were always around summer recess, sometimes spring break but always when we would be able to have him to ourselves. When we were really young my father would wake us up very early in the morning, before the sky turned blue telling us to get dressed. We would rub the sleep from our eyes and dutifully dress. I being the eldest dressed the fastest and made sure that my sisters and brother were ready before he began to walk out of the door. More often than not however we would find ourselves running out of the building trying to catch up with his retreating forms.

After the stop at the fruit stand for assorted melons, peaches, apples oranges and other fruit, he would stuff them in his backpack; I would stretch up to my tip-toes to zip the backpack, then grab my sisters and brother and commence the mad dash of keeping up with his long strides and quick steps. Our destination was always the same: to The Bronx Park; a 718-acre site that was last owned by the Lorillard’s, a family of tobacco manufacturers and their historic Snuff Mill still stands in the park. The western part of the park was devoted to the New York Botanical Garden in 1891, and then the Bronx Zoo opened in 1899. The area that remains parkland today features one of the last surviving red maple-hardwood forests in the city and the many pathways running through it are popular with joggers. The Bronx River (the only freshwater river in the city) also winds through the park for two miles and small populations of heron, muskrat, beaver and turtles live on its banks. In the eastern section of the site, known as Starlight Park, are baseball, football, soccer and bocce fields. Fishermen congregate at the Soundview lagoon, located in the southeast. For kids, there are seven playgrounds scattered throughout, and a playground associate supervises.

It was during our treks through this forestry jungle that we learned of medicinal plants, various types of vegetation, of how a man could live off of the bounty in a forest if he would only stop to look. Of mint and how it grows what it looks like, poison ivy a prelude to a miserable itchy rash. Once after a rainstorm that happened the night before; we were walking through the forest; suddenly my father spun around and told me- for I was always right behind him- to tell the “other ones” to follow his footsteps exactly, because of the thick mud and giant puddles swarming with mosquitoes it was imperative that we follow close behind our guide. By and by we stopped in the deepest part of the woods- that is he stopped and all four of us stumbled into each other after he halted abruptly. Standing still we were instructed by him to close our eyes and listen. Suddenly Bronx Park woke up, the sounds of birds singing talking and fluttering in and out of trees began to fill our senses. The warmth and brightness of the rising sun as it made it’s decent from over the clouds in the east made the temperature in our faces rise. I could smell the scent of the earth; she emitted a pungent odor of green things and flowers. He then passed me a fruit, of which I passed to my sister who passed it to my brother and we watched with hungry anticipation as my youngest sister began to munch and gobble her breakfast. “Pay attention” my father said just then, snapping us all out of our muse. “You see over there?” He pointed one long thick leathery finger to a spot in front of us; completely covered by trees, brush and bushes, through the densest part you could see a hole big enough to see the darkness on the other side. “Yes” we replied in unison, though now the sounds of the forest had much less of a utopian ring to it. “There in the middle of the forest is a lab.” “A lab?” we say together, “yes, a mad scientist was long ago banished to live forever out there, for his work was too evil, even for the evil society we live in. This was his ultimate creation; a man that could naturally camouflage himself with his surroundings.” “Is he a robot?” I asked swallowing my mounting fear. “No I just told you he is a man, and…he is probably watching us now” At this my sisters and brother and I were ready to leave, my father got a big laugh from the whole episode, but every snap of a twig, buzzing of a bug, or light feathery touch of grass on our legs had us held tight in the cold grip of fear. This did not stop him, he continued to talk of this “man” of how he had super human strength and perfect tracking skills, we would never be safe unless we found our way out of the forest; the latter of which daddy achieved with ease. He always made us feel safe; even as the mad scientist’s creation tracked us through the forest.

Museums were a very special treat, it served as visual affirmation of all the lectures we were made to sit through. It was at the Metropolitan Museum of art that I first bore witness to the Mentu Neta, the Egyptian book of the dead. The long scroll of papyrus encased in its glass display, red hieroglyphs that highlighted spells; it was read from right to left-I could barely look at the text for fear of the curses it had inscribed within. As he explained the meaning of the scroll and hieroglyphs running his fingers over the glass I wondered again, who could he possibly be. Who was this man? Mounting fear of that finger on the glass and the growing annoyance on the face of the security officer only deepened my intrigue. He had absolutely no regard for the guards, keeping people away from the precious artifacts. He would run his whole hand silently over the faces of Osiris, Anubis or Bas. When viewing the temple of Dendur, the imported Egyptian house of worship, my father would instruct us first to say a prayer to the statue of the Gods: bas, Anubis….then we would turn around to the water surrounding the temple and throw in “wishes” either quarters, nickels, pennies or dimes. Our eyes would close and our wishes thrown into the still waters the temple of Dendur lay nestled in. To believe in something so constantly and so great rendered my father invisible to me. Devoid of fault, excused of injustices and mistakes. To see him is to witness the voice and not the man.

In order to understand myself better I first needed to understand this powerful force in my life. I have come to realize, that he is a source of challenge within myself. I wanted to be better brighter and less consumed with my thoughts. “There are two things that can happen to a man of knowledge”; my father said to me once “either all the knowledge he has accumulated will achieve him enlightenment or make him crazy”. For many years I wrestled with this, what was meant by “make him crazy”? I watched as over the years he dissolved into his bottle. As the anger at his life worsened his temper would flair out of control over the slightest issue. He and I talked less, the relationship between my siblings and he began to unravel. When he looked and really focused on you it felt similar to the brief flashes of warmth on a winter afternoon, the sun suddenly glowing bright and sunny filling the observer with a false comfort from the cold. Love was not something you were a part of; in love you played your part. Giving one person unyielding power over the starved emotions of the recipient; I would beg the question often growing up- did he really love me?

My father’s room was to me a vault of mystery. There in his closet was stacked every which way, his books. Books that were separate from the family reading materials, they did not reside out in the open never ever to be thumbed through and read by anyone, family or friend. I would come up with crafty ways to get him to relinquish one of his secrete treasures to me. Often in conversations he would quote from a text albeit Carlos Castaneda in “The lessons of Don Juan” or his most prized “Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas by Marcel Griaule” the quest for the privilege to read these works became a struggle I waged with him for decades, before finally giving up; I read “The lessons of Don Juan” myself, I was able to find a copy in my college library. It took all those years before I discovered that what was in the books would become a foundation of mythic and superstitious proportion as I based my life around them, knowing and believing in the words before I even had a chance to look at and read the pages. I just took his word for it.
Like him I had my world of reality, and the world the way it would be if I would release the brain cloud and make my dreams real. I was often told: “there is a difference between fantasy and reality” no one ever deciphered for me what that difference was. If I’d known that the difference was simply the essence of my own spirit and power to make what was not yet “real” my reality-things would have been different. I’ve also never seen it accomplished. What you are then left with is a deep soul crushing disappointment in yourself; disappointed in your own ability to create; which breeds a deep resentment and loathe towards anyone that has the power to make their dreams real. You are left with a deep sense of inadequacy, shooting blanks within the womb of the soul body connection failing to bear fruit; life. I watched as everyday he sunk further and further down the hole.
Within ourselves is a point we reach when all things become immaterial, it is never advised to visit this place often for some of us do not know our way back. We retreat so far into the core, searching for answers begging for the power and strength to withstand yet another failure, forgetting that falling most often repeatedly is the only way to walk. We forget that our lives are only ours to create. We become a part of the caste, hand that was dealt. Without even realizing that it’s only the innate comfort of fitting into a role that keeps us stagnate sometimes forever. Come on stupid! You yell inside the four walls of your cranium, hoping that it would knock around and ultimately seep into the mushy brain matter, igniting a spark fit to be the saving grace of a lifetime of stuck misery. He walked to the crossroads and had a choice to make, yet instead of making a choice to choose a solid path to follow, he decided to continue down the middle road in hopes of coming up with the answer for the correct path in which to walk. Almost thirty years later, he is still trying to decide, yet because he is beginning to grasp the false concept of time, it is speeding up racing to beat him to the finish line, beating him to the punch at every turn-it waits for no man, this “time” and all the while he realizes his “time” is almost up. People around him will begin to succumb to “time” his mother, his best friend (only real friend at all) and icons: musical, comical, and in sports. Like a turtle my father is seeing reality, he has spent to much “time” on the middle road. Fleeting it is, one day you are twenty, the next fifty without even declaring a life for yourself that would allow you to take back your “time” to manipulate as one so chooses. I’ve watched my father try to slow down his time by not thinking about it, drinking swallowing bottles of the fiery liquid, all the while trying to numb his urgent thoughts. As he watches out bleary eyed and oblivious to all thoughts and feelings, hearing and seeing life as a whisper, only he the endured must bear. Of course what he does is make “time” run, he knows this but is now addicted to the rush between himself and his mental mortality, irrationality created by the idea of himself he could not figure out. The catalyst will be his death he fears, and yet all the while he yells at his children, he turns cold towards his wife, leaving her and them to find love and support elsewhere as he sits somewhere in the house with them. He knows-“how dare he” “how dare I” repeated over and over in his brain, while he adds a joint to the sweet escape of the liquor. These little bastards!! What the fuck are they LOOKING at: he thinks this when he looks at their little needy hopeful faces. But he knows….my father knows what life is. He knows what’s in the history books. He graduated high school with a perfect 4.0, but did not fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor.

When he approached the middle road for the first time; he chose to hold off the decision making. What are his children left with, this dichotomy of light and dark; brilliant yet not bright enough to achieve the ultimate power, the power to own his own time. We are left with a broken dream and a shattered promise, we are left to fend for ourselves, we are left with the soul crushing fear that we will become him…we are left with his sadness and hopes, we are his dreams as well as all the nightmares of a carefree childhood. What are we left with? What am I left with, what will I do? When you look up so high into a face that cannot sufficiently show you the sun, because of sleepiness and work, when you become old enough to realize something is terribly wrong here; when you are I who could understand so young that he was a failure-to himself. My father my bright dream my ascending star, my knight, my mentor, who is he? Sometimes I feel if he could pull himself out of his thoughts, his drowning unfulfilling thoughts, I could follow suit-alas! I will have to stop walking the path behind my father like a ninja, silently walking in his footsteps, placing my feet in his shoes; and walk a different path from his. Somehow I know in my soul that my freedom will become his. The spell will be broken it will free us all. Like a Louisiana funeral march we have all silently walked down the middle road with daddy, he never turned around for to long to see who was behind him; but when he did it was always with anger and sadness, the blues personified, trapped in the same ole melody, never interpreting the rhythm to improvise his own tune. When I stop, it will be short, my sisters my brother, my mother with run up into my back, for I walk up front, with him, so when I stop they will slam into me and they will stop as well. I intend to turn around facing them and walk down my road. They will all follow suit.

But will my father? I will call him: “Daddy?” I will try to call him to me, beseech him to stop! I will yell! But the big man will smile at me from afar take out his cigar, tell me like he always does, “you do it girl, go for it” and he will turn his back on me and keep walking.

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