Be Present

“Be present”, she told me, as much said to herself.

Did she know she was prescient, true to her name?

I head out on a Saturday morning destined to cross Pennsylvania,

West to east, across the Delaware, and to the end of the continent.

I mere chauffeur and observer.

Only one other is like I am, a stranger.

Neither of us are a high school friend, college friend, brother-in-law, sister-in-law.

We are not husband or son or daughter-in-law or grandchild.

We have never met her, barely heard her name in thirty, nay, forty years.

I walk into the neat, carefully painted, Victorian B&B.

Names are thrown at me this way and that, I who cannot remember one,

Have to master a couple of dozen.

Who belongs with whom?

What are each to the dearly departed?

A grieving five months delayed,

For the convenience of summer, she having passed two days after Winter Solstice.

The deceased was an award-winning seamstress by avocation.

This collection of fine people reminds me so much as a matron’s dress, she might have crafted,

In family plaid, worn in Glasgow or Edinburgh or Inverness, even Achnacarry.

We, Scots, are proud of our plaids, a metaphor for family as the fabric of life.

Each of us a single thread, from a sheep shorn, the wool skirted, cleaned, carded, roved,

And then dyed so that one strand of yarn is exceptional from the other,

Much as we are each unique.

Then it is to the loom where the master weaver carefully lays us out into a village.

Woven together, these six siblings with their others, or if widowed, not,

Seem a fine piece of plaid, cohesive, if very different personalities.

Like so many, they have lived everywhere, and are settled or unsettled,

According to some set of random or predetermined conditions.

They inhabit the four corners of America, like pick-up sticks,

Not one in the same place as the other, scattered by the gods.

The common thread is a small Pennsylvania college town,

I know but have never seen.

She, who is with us, but no longer with us, was a “townie”.

So was I, eventually, but elsewhere.

“Be present”, she told me, that is the secret of it.

It is on Sunday, that the truth of it becomes so apparent.

Her angry twin sons, aloof, annoyed, betrayed, glared through the spectacle,

Of hypocritical aunts and uncles or so-called friends, college roommates,

Some who did not know she had fought the good fight for twelve years,

Before succumbing to that most virulent and unforgiving of diseases.

Her angry twin sons who despise our trespass,

And their father for perpetrating such a sin against her memory as this travesty.

One by one, each of us in our own way, even strangers, such as I,

Sing out the mantra – “Be present”,

Because in those deepest, darkest moments of self-doubt,

The only thought one has is what one has left undone.

I haven’t thought of Euripides in half a century,

Yet he finds his way into Constance, a minor, but important role.

Here, the high priestess of yoga and drum circles,

Having successfully chased away the sons and many of the others,

Beats her drum, shakes her rattles, and passes around a satchel.

“This is the ‘Intentions Purse’.

There are slips of paper for each of you.”

His words are staring back at me,

“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”

Also prophecy, I have told her as much, frequently.

She is a friend and I intend to “Be present”.

That beautiful plaid dress is Emperor’s clothing.

We are modern people, people who are so busy,

Self-important, accomplishing little of importance,

Collecting experiences, for the stories each of us might need to tell,

Working hard to be the smartest person in the room,

Each certain of the superiority of his spirituality,

Knowing we are guilty of non-presence,

For the inconvenience,

Of “being present”.

Even now, each of us is only present, because of the price of it.

A Scotsman understands.

Free rooms, free breakfast, free anything if someone else will pay the bill,

The beach nearby, a bustling town, fair to good restaurants,

For me, another new experience.

I would like to get to know the two angry twin sons.

They seem like they have a tale to tell.

But, they come and go, wives in tow, quietly and quickly.

They refuse to reside here with those who might revel while they cry.

Like all families, there are deeper and darker secrets,

A twin-son’s mother-in-law is dying to share.

It’s not her plaid, what could a pull on this or that thread hurt?

Seems husband, widower, father has a “friend”,

Much like mine is to me, but his with reciprocity.

He wondered to his twin boys in January,

“What possible harm could come from including her in the wake?”

The “friend” is not here, but this unconfirmed piece of gossip,

Is too salacious not to repeat, conveyed by so reputable a source.

Yes, the angry twin sons are annoyed and betrayed,

How present was dad for mom?

If this extended family is completely honest, they would admit they don’t like each other much.

Behind the yoga, drum circles, smiles and polite nods at the person who speaks too much and too long,

Is a deep longing – to be anywhere else.

They can’t wait to escape and have ready-made excuses that require an early departure.

They resent being present.

They hate the discomfort of it.

It is only me, the curious anthropological stranger, who hangs on.

It is rewarding to be a demi-god, on the outside looking, smugly, in,

Until one realizes life is a mirror.

Different plaid, different time, same indifference.

Same unwillingness to be selfless.

How different are my priorities from the widower’s?

My prophetess is correct, “Be present”.

Be present for the ones who matter, who need you and want you.

Become indispensable in the lives of the people who love you.

In this Atlantic beach town, I am an actor, playing a role, sometimes comedy, sometimes drama,

But a player imitating life for an audience, who will forget me by this upcoming Saturday.

I will find myself back in my own Pennsylvania college town, a thespian performing the part of loving husband,

Responsible son-in-law, part of an adopted plaid of Croats and Slovaks.

Not all is the play.

I am a kind son, a doting grandfather, a compassionate father, a good friend.

I could be a better brother or uncle, but I am not a bad one.

When she tells me to “be present” she means for the others,

I suspect she knows that I hear the words differently than she conveys them,

And she is swept in with those for whom I must “Be present”.