Timshel

I don't believe in a lot.  I do believe art is meaningful, though.  I don't really pretend to know much about most forms of art aside from literature, but today I had one of those sublime artistic moments that is hard to explain.  But I'll try, even though I am pretty sure this chain of ideas will not make sense to anyone else.

I have been missing my dad very badly lately.  My mom is coming to visit us soon, and I'm really excited for her to get to spend time with Nora now that Nora is so much more engaging.  The flip side of this excitement, though, is that it also heightens my awareness of the sadness I feel about the fact that my dad never got to know my daughter and never will.  And he never got to know me as a mother, and I'll never get to share the experience of parenthood with him.

A few days ago I posted this photo of Nora on facebook, and Nate messaged me to say she is smiling Dad's smile.  I didn't realize it until he said it, but he is right.  There's something about the openness of her mouth, the angle of her head, and the proportions of her chin and cheeks that reminds me of my dad's real smile.  That made me go through more recent photos of Dad to compare, and it made me pay special attention to the events in which he is giving his real smile rather than his forced photo smile.








Real smiles: Playing washers in our yard in 2008.

Riding the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls in 2009.

At Vickie's graduation in 2010.

I was so thankful to Nate for bringing this to my attention.  I was thinking about this on my way to school today, though I'm not sure why.  I was also listening to a Mumford and Sons CD that was popular with the rest of the world 2 years ago, but which I didn't bother to download until today.  And then these lyrics came on:

And death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance

And I thought, true.  Dad's death stole whatever innocence I might have had left.  It did not steal his substance.  I hope it did not steal mine, either.  And then the song continued:

But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand


And now I'm thinking, okay, this is getting really weird.  Dad tried to teach us that we don't have to go through life on our own.  And the very best thing that has come from his death is the effort Nate, Vickie, and I have made to be supportive of one another.  And just when this song came on I had been thinking about how my brother had been, figuratively, holding my hand "in this."  And then the song continued:

And you are the mother
The mother of your baby child
The one to whom you gave life

What?  Now, tears.  I could not actually believe these words were coming over the speakers.  I hit the back button to listen again, so it was a little while before I heard that the verse continues with:

And you have your choices
And these are what make man great
His ladder to the stars

And when I heard that, I began trying to figure out where this comes from.  I knew I had never heard this song before, but I knew I have heard something like this quote.  But I couldn't figure it out.  And I listened to the song over and over until I got to school, and I could not figure out what the mother and baby child portion could possibly have to do with the rest of the song, but it touched my heart.

But when I got to my office, I looked this up, and I see that the song is called "Timshel."  Oh, right, I think.  East of Eden.  I've never read it, but I know this concept of Timshel, and I realize that I recognize the quote from this novel.  (We won't digress to talk about how come I know quotes from novels I've never read.)  Further, East of Eden is one of my brother's favorite novels.  One he has been trying to convince my sister to read for years.

I still have no idea what the stanza about the mother is doing in the middle of this song.  Maybe Nate could explain it to me.  But thank you, Nate and Vickie, for holding my hands and always reminding me I am not alone in this.  And thank you for this song, Mumford and other musicians I think are too old to really be your sons.  Somehow you made me feel like my baby will make some of my sadness okay, by way of a song I was not trendy enough to hear until now, which seems to be derived from a book I have not had a chance to read, immediately after my brother who loves that book pointed out that my baby is capable of smiling my dad's smile.

And since that probably didn't make any sense at all, here: listen to the song yourself and make your own memory.  And maybe you can agree with me that Dad probably would have liked Mumford and Sons's kind of Simon-and-Garfunkel-ly vibe.  Or maybe he did like them and he just never told me.  I still get his subscription to Rolling Stone, so he probably knew plenty about Mumford and his theoretical sons.