I’ve been reading collections of fairy tales, public-domain stuff you can get for free on your Kindle. One was a Norse bundle with a 70-page introduction working to prove that the taletellers had turned the gods of Valhalla into giants who wanted to eat Christians (can’t blame them).

Anyone who was whelped on Grimm’s knows the ubiquitous three sons, who loom even more prominent in the Norse collection. Generalized plot: The father or king – somebody in deep authority – sets a seemingly impossible goal such as rescuing a maiden imprisoned in the farthest room of an impregnable castle. The two elder sons, over-confident wingnuts, charge out blindly to do the deed and get killed/captured/lost, or just poop out. 

Finally, the youngest son – the wastrel (in the Norse versions, he sits around all day with his feet in the fireplace ashes) – decides to continue the quest, in the face of general derision. He succeeds, in part through a fool’s fearlessness, in part through doing the unexpected, in largest part because he doesn’t give a damn about how things are supposed to be done or what will happen to him next.

In these translations from the Norse, the son’s name is always Boots.

I finished that collection and had an epiphany:

I am Boots.

I’m the youngest of three sons by some 13 years. While my elder brothers earned their bread through toil, and amassed enough moolah to meet old age with relative equanimity, I’ve blundered my way without a goal, with no clear idea of how one is supposed to exist in the world, not so much ignoring the rules as not letting them register. 

Of course, the parallel is limited: I have not gained half a kingdom (the default Norse reward for offing a giant). More significantly, my elder brothers were neither over-confident or thoughtless.

So, rather than a sneer at elder recklessness, this entry of mine is a paean to my brothers, Rod and Vic, who saved my butt more times that I will ever know, who showered me with kindness, who protected me throughout all the years of my growth, despite my battle against morphing into an acceptable human being.

Indeed, if they had a fault, it was in protecting me too well. When my father died, they made all the arrangements, did all the paperwork. When my mother went nuts in California while I was doing grad work at Stanford, they saved me from the consequences. As I squelched through life, “no direction home,” working half time or less, bumping from one odd job to another, they never said a condemning word.

Rod and Vic both died in their 80s. They lived “good” lives in every sense of the word. But if my brothers never fit the fairytale stereotype, nonetheless… 

I am still Boots – and still bootless. 

For the last few years, I (Derek) have been emailing out what I call “ruminations” to a bunch of friends. For no good reason, I’ve decided to post them here, in no rational order, hopefully one a week. I’m already out of order because I posted one before I wrote this to describe what I’m more or less doing. So you get the idea: None of this will make coherent sense, I just feel like doing it.

Linda and I sit on the front porch on a late-summer evening, side by side on the old Voyager car seat that’s the most comfortable butt-nestler in the house, watching the sun go down. Invisible to all other houses in upstate Pennsylvania Sullivan County, we face west, tucked into the side of a wooded hill that rises quietly below and above to tell us all’s fine and decent.
The declining sun shines directly into our eyes, so we don straw hats, the brims canted low to filter the aggressive rays. The downslope of our trees and the upslope of a hill across the creek lie between us and the setting sun, which sheds a glory on the trees, on me, on life. It declines and incrementally disappears about 35 degrees above what would be the dead-ahead horizon. To the left (south), the hillside light withdraws slowly from the trees. It’s not a shimmer leaving, but a statement being sucked away, the sky reabsorbing what belongs to it and was lent for a few hours.
In its wake, the darkness nibbles up the hill with a sense of devourment. And I’m afraid. Not of anything. It’s a primal fear, laid against the unblemished glory of the dying sun. Sometimes I’m half falling asleep. When my eyes fly open, the slow darkening – the encroaching absence of light – has crept farther up the hillside. And I’m afraid. I nod off and waken. And I’m afraid. Not a big afraid, the little afraid that doesn’t require a reason.
In the city, the sunset often gouged me – my heart ripped out, the question of existence answered with a pitiful negative. Here, the afraid is a gentle sadness that holds the promise of tomorrow.
This evening, Leiao, our daughter Caitlin’s wondrous dog who lives with us, sits on a rock beside the porch, pretending we and the rest of the world do not exist (and why should we?). I talk to her regularly – josh, yordle, snicker and sing to her. Most often she pays no obvious attention, though I know she’s listening.
This evening, I say to her (as I often do), “Arf!” and a couple other stupid doggy things. She wiggles not an ear. Again I speak “Arf” – softer, more endearingly. She responds nowise. Then, in a conversational tone, I murmur, “Leiao, would you like to come up and spend some time with us?”
Without hesitation, she trots onto the porch and looks me in the eye. I’ve always known she was bright, but this is the first time I realize she can recognize syntax.
Between dogs and myself (sometimes a few yards, more often just a couple feet), I wonder what it means to be alive, especially at sunset.
Back inside, Linda asks me to stop getting blasted on foul, cheap whiskey sloshed into dying diet Pepsi. I toss the Pepsi. Much better.