Thinking about when Farnoosh told me about a conversation she had with Paul Haller, in which he described hearing his grandson Marcello crying upstairs and he recognized it as a different kind of cry from his more regular I’m thirsty or I need to be changed cry.
I love that we can tell the difference in kinds of cries, I said, as we drove the curve of the the onramp onto 101, and it reminded me of when Mark E. said he could have a sense for what kind of session it would be from how someone rang the doorbell. Involved in his entrance is also saying hello into an intercom, but as i remember it, it wasn’t even as much as hearing the hello, but just the way someone presses the buzzer to be let in. Do they hold it long, or just long enough.
So Paul knew he needed to go check on Marcello, and when he walked in, Farnoosh said, Paul said, he said, to himself, Sure enough, Marcello had that look that said, I can’t keep doing this. Marcello, at the time of this story, is two years old. And Paul is listening to his grandson’s weary & vexed cry, and hearing in his tone, I can’t keep doing this.
And it reminded me of what might be the bookend to Paul’s reading of Marcello’s cry. One afternoon, Stanley, pretty close to the end of his life, at age 100, told me, I feel like my life is really starting to come together.
Your memory of Stanley Kunitz sent me back to The Wild Braid (how great to own the book and to be able to reread your gentle, loving conversation of 2003) when he was recuperating from a hospitalization and “in the other world” and the exchanges that followed his recovery. I am so grateful for that book. I buy extra copies and press it on all my friends. Now that I am in fact living with a man who delights to wake each day I thank you for giving shape and substance to the man who thanked the world for life in The Round. It really came together.