A Full Circle Day
An old dog's life, the grandprogeny gets promoted, and the death of a dear friend
[T]he corporate and institutional machines humanity has built have no use for people the machines can’t exploit or use to make a dollar. But Martha just knew she had a purpose, even if it was to smile and laugh, to persist, to play the calliope, and to treat everyone like God’s children, whether they acted like it or not.
Yesterday traveled full circle. In the morning I got to go watch my granddaughter graduate from Kindergarten, and in the evening I meditated on the death of a friend, Martha Gibbs, formerly the calliopist on the Belle of Louisville.
Amelia was giggly and excited; sometimes she doesn’t like crowds, but she also likes being the center of attention. Also, the two Kindergarten classes practiced a song that included American Sign Language, and she does have a slight penchant for performing. It was good to see her excited, to see the other kids excited and nervous. It reminded me of the blind optimism I often saw in high school field trips when I worked on the Belle; there are spaces of times in life when your dreams aren’t invalidated in the name of what is mislabeled common sense, industry, and the “dignity of labor.” These times are not sequential, either, but they do happen less often once you reach the age when you’re supposed to go out and not be a drag on the societal flywheel. When we’re young, it’s more common to hear things like “Live your dreams!” There’s a version of this after the great corporate engine has used you and is generally forced by legislation to let you retire that sounds like “Now you get to do what you REALLY want to do!” In between these drops of jingoistic irony there’s a space of time during which your dreams become hobbies and the optimism can curdle into bitterness, resignation, or self-doubt. After all, maybe you never had it in the first place, right? And the gatekeepers are perfectly happy to let you think that.
Well, fuck that noise. It’s true that into everyone’s life, a little unpleasant work does creep in from time to time. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you find a regular job you like and that ticks most of the boxes for you. These boxes are different for everyone. For me, a job had to be interesting, useful, and on some level, socially redeeming. Other than that, a job is a job and helping someone else make money is the least socially redeeming way anyone can spend their time. Thus, having been kicked out of the machine yet again, I wander again the world engine, writing and remaking my world one word at a time as if each utterance is a brick.
This is something I hope to pass on to my granddaughter, the way I hope I passed it on to my daughter. I think maybe I did.
Later in the afternoon, I found out that Martha Gibbs died. Martha was the calliopist for the Belle of Louisville. She’d been having health problems for a while. The last time I spoke to her, last Fall at RiverFest in Cincinnati, she was still waiting for her heart surgery. But she was always upbeat. Martha’s laughter and mood was infectious, and even though I’m generally immune to that kind of thing, it was impossible for me NOT to feel better when I saw her. She didn’t often talk about herself, except for sometimes her ailments and her trouble getting up and down the stairs. She sometimes allowed herself the grace to feel tired, and she was the sort of person who apologized on the rare occasion when she was too sick to come play the calliope.
It was good to see her excited, to see the other kids excited and nervous. It reminded me of the blind optimism I often saw in high school field trips when I worked on the Belle; there are spaces of times in life when your dreams aren’t invalidated in the name of what is mislabeled common sense, industry, and the “dignity of labor.”
You just sort of felt the urge to be protective of Martha. She was independent and not one to ask for more help than she thought she needed; but you couldn’t help but want to protect whatever it was in her that stayed so buoyant and upbeat. There are people who need protecting and those we should try to protect whether they need it or not. There was something indomitable about her, something that persisted and insisted in a world that doesn’t respect individual persistence; the corporate and institutional machines humanity has built has no use for people the machines can’t exploit or use to make a dollar.
But Martha just knew she had a purpose, even if it was to smile and laugh, to persist, to play the calliope, and to treat everyone like God’s children, whether they acted like it or not. She met casual disregard with understanding and forgiveness and did not lean into the well of sadness I know she carried. Anyone who insists on that kind of optimism and determination carries pain in their soul. It’s a reaction against torpor, an insistence on faith. She didn’t often let it slip, but sometimes I saw in her eyes that whatever was going on, she’d seem something worse. And she didn’t let it defeat her.
Bless her and her memory.
Martha was always quick to call my writing my “gift.” I don’t necessarily subscribe to that, but I understand what she meant. This poem, from my new collection The Call Sign is Jonah, reminds me of her.
hugs and a soft fist-bump to your words, Mick.